[JohnE]

Okay, so I am literally half a world away from home, and my laptop (Dell Inspiron 600M, Windows XP) has sh*t the bed on me. It starts up, but instead of going to the home screen, it gives an error message saying "unmountable boot volume". WTF?

Computer guy here says I need to run the system discs, which of course I dont have. (Do I need to go Dell?) And none of the Tech gurus here are allowed to work on privately owned computers.

What did I do wrong, how do I fix it and prevent it from happening again? And if/when it gets fixed, will I lose everything on it?

Anybody? Beers in it for you if you can help...

 

[Kornphlake]

Without some kind of disc you can't do much. It sounds pretty terminal, at the very least you'll have to reinstall the OS, it may be as severe as needing a new harddrive.

 

[Quo Fan]

Try re-seating the hard drive. Open the access panel, remove the drive and then reinstall it. It may have just come loose.

 

[Silver]

Do you have access to anything else you can boot from?

A Knoppix live cd maybe?

 

[JohnE]

Not that I am aware of, I can ask around. Is that a fixer cd? I am pretty compu-ignorant...

Quo, as for operating on it, I am holding that as a last resort.

 

[binary visions]

Knoppix isn't a "fixer" CD per se, it's just something you'd be able to boot from to look at the drive and see if the drive is hosed, or if it's just unbootable.

You can download this:
http://ftp.uni-kl.de/pub/linux/knoppix/KNOPPIX_V5.1.0CD-2006-12-30-EN.iso

...and use a CD burning program to burn it onto a disc, then try booting with it. It'll boot up into a desktop and you should be able to stumble around enough to find the Explorer-like utility, which will let you look at your drive and see if the folders and such are still intact.

 

[Silver]

Knoppix isn't a "fixer" CD per se, it's just something you'd be able to boot from to look at the drive and see if the drive is hosed, or if it's just unbootable.

Yep. If you can see the files and the drive mounts, Windows and/or the MBR is hosed. No big deal, your data is still there.

If the drive won't mount, you're in trouble. Start thinking about how much that data was worth to you...

 

[JohnE]

I get the start up screen that asks about different ways to start (Last good mode, safe mode etc...) and no matter what you pick, it comes up with the unmountable boot volume message.
I think I am hosed, wife says ship it home to her and she will have it checked at home. Right now that is my best option.

Oh yeah, BV, thanks for the link, but the firewalls here wont let me access that info. Big brother and all...

Thanks all for your input!

 

[binary visions]

Hmm, actually it's a really good sign if you're getting that menu option, it means at least part of the boot sector of the drive is good and the whole thing isn't totally cooked.

You don't have your Windows XP CD, I assume?

 

[Quo Fan]

I don't know about you BV, but I don't travel with my XP disc. Unless I'm going to fix someone's computer.

What it sounds like, is that your windows installation got corrupted. Ship it home, have your wife get windows re-installed (without the format option), and your data should still be there.

 

[SPINTECK]

I had the same problem. I ended up buying a new hardrive for my laptop and intalling the old drive in a portable HD converter, which allowed me to access the other sectors on my old drive for a while. Once you put the old drive in one of those external HD housings, you can just connect it to any computer via USB or 1394.

Once I installed the new HD, I had to do the windows install, which is a pain in the ass, but I still got away lucky and it sounds like you might get lucky too. Taking apart my fujitsu wasn't too tricky and I was desperate anyway.

Good luck.

 

[JohnE]

Postscript-
Turned it over to a guy with the system discs. He said the Windows was corrupted, so Spintek had the right idea (Apologies to anyone else who suggested it...).
Laptop is up and running again, thanks to all who threw in their ideas!