Unmountable Boot Volume Error In Windows XP

Unmountable Boot Volume Error In Windows XP. 

I got this error on a Windows XP Service Pack3 (SP3) PC after a power outage.

The system was going into a continuous boot loop where initially I could not even see what the blue screen error was.

So pressing function key F8 repeatedly while restarting brought me the to the Windows Advanced Option Menu.

Here I selected “Disable Automatic Restart on System Failure“.

Now, on the next restart I was able to see the warning message “Unmountable Boot Volume Error”.

The solution to this problem was to:

• Find the original Windows XP CD and to boot up via CDROM.
• To ensure that you boot up via the CDROM you need to go into your PC’s BIOS settings by pressing the “DEL” key when restarting your computer.
• In the BIOS settings find the area where you can specify the boot priority and make the CDROM/DVD Drive the first boot device.
• Insert your Windows XP CD into this drive before booting up.
• While booting up via CDROM you will get the option to do a repair install by pressing the “R” key. Do this.
• When you are presented with the command prompt which will like like “C:”,
• Type in “chkdsk /R” without the apostrophes and hit the ENTER key.

Depending on how much corruption of data or bad sectors CHKDSK enounters, this process can run from a few minutes to a few hours.

In my first test, CHKDSK ran for 5 hours and stopped at 75% for about 2 hours. If you have the time and can leave the system on overnight do so.

Interrupting CHKDSK is not advisable. But I had to get some files off the system and was impatient.

I had to restart the system and begin the procedure again. In this case, it completed in about 2 hours.

I was then able to boot up without problems.

My first order of business is to get the files I require off the system and then do a thorough check of the hard drive using a drive utility supplied by the hard disk manufacturer.