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BSOD: Unmountable_Boot_Volume (ack!)

Discussion in 'Windows Vista' started by XyloCB, Sep 29, 2009.

  1. XyloCB

    XyloCB Guest

    I am having some major trouble with my laptop and would be very appreciative
    of an help that anyone could provide!

    Short Version:
    Randomly the other day on booting, my laptop blue-screened with the
    following error: UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME

    I'm running Vista (32) and most of what I've read has not been able to work.
    I can't boot into Safe Mode (same blue screen), so doing anything that
    requires that doesn't work.

    Unfortunately, when I boot off the Vista DVD, it doesn't seem to see the
    drive at all, as far as I can tell? When I first run System Recovery, a
    "System Recovery Options" dialog pops up asking me to select an OS to repair.
    Nothing is listed there, but it gives me an option to "Load Drivers" for my
    HD, unfortunately, doing so doesn't seem to actually give me any driver
    options.

    Most of the solutions I've seen on the web say to do Startup Repair or go to
    a boot prompt and do chkdsk, but when I try to do startup repair, it tells me
    it can't do it (NoHardDrive?) and when I go a boot prompt, it won't see my C:
    drive.

    Now, oddly enough, when this first happened, I tried all these things, and
    on one random reboot, it seemed to work just fine out of the blue! I used it
    fine for about 12hrs. until all of the sudden it wouldn't boot. This time it
    gave me a blue screen error on disk.sys / PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA a
    couple times upon trying to reboot once or twice, before now just reverting
    back to the problem I had before: UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME.

    So I'm stuck: can't boot to the drive (BSOD, even in Safe Mode), but
    Windows Repair doesn't seem to see the drive. Any help would be MOST
    appreciated!

    Thanks!
     
  2. XyloCB

    XyloCB Guest

    More information / long version:
    For those that are curious for a bit more info.:
    - The stop code given was: 0x000000ED (0x862539A0, 0xC000000E, 0x00000000)

    - The computer is a laptop and the hard drive is a 160Gb SATA drive.
    (Seagate Momentus ST9160823AS)

    - Since when I try to turn on the computer it doesn't automatically tell me
    it can't find the hard drive (and from what I can tell, BIOS seems to see it
    fine), but instead starts to boot then halts, I don't think the hard drive is
    just loose or such. Even so, I pulled it out and made sure it was firmly
    pushed back in twice, and that seems ok.

    - When I just go past the "System Recovery Options" dialog (by clicking
    Next) and try to do a Startup Repair anyways, here's the error I get:
    Problem Event Name: StartupRepairV2
    Problem Signature 01: ExternalMedia
    Problem Signature 02: 6.0.6000.16386.0.0.0.0
    Problem Signature 03: 0
    Problem Signature 04: 65537
    Problem Signature 05: unknown
    Problem Signature 06: NoHardDrive
    Problem Signature 07: 0
    Problem Signature 08: 0
    Problem Signature 09: unknown
    Problem Signature 10: 1168
    OS Version: 6.0.6000.2.0.0.256.1
    Locale ID: 1033

    - I have tried to boot to Last Known Good Configuation to no avail.

    - There's only two things I can think of recently that may have caused this
    problem. In either case, if these were the causes, I would think that the
    machine would be easily fixable, but it has not been.
    1) I've been having a lot of problems with the CDROM drive in the machine,
    and online the advice I got was to remove the upper and lower filters from
    the registry. I did this, and also backed up the registry appropriately
    before hand. I can't imagine that this would be the problem, however, as it
    was two lines pertaining to the CDROm drive that I removed, and nothing major.
    2) I also ran a registry cleaner on the registry (after doing a manual
    system restore point). I believe it was Registry Mechanic from PCTools, but
    I don't remember off the top of my head.

    - The first time I started up the machine and got this problem was after I
    had hibernated it by closing it. The second time was after it had shut
    itself off from what I think was maybe overheating (I was running some
    intensive apps and it happened to be on a table where I don't think the fans
    had enough breathing room...this has happened a few times in the past if I am
    not careful to keep the bottom fans clear). After the second time is when I
    got the disk.sys / PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA blue screen twice, before
    getting the UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME problem again.

    - I talked to two different guys at SeaGate, thinking that perhaps there
    were some drivers I needed to load to allow Windows Repair to see the drive.
    One guy told me I need to load some SATA drivers (from where?) with F6 at
    startup, but the other told me that was not necessary with Vista. The other
    guy also suggested I use their SeaTools tool which I burned to a DVD and
    tried, but that also can't seem to find the drive.

    - The controller appears to be an Intel ICH8M but I don't know if any
    generic drivers would be necessary for that in Vista? And isn't that a whole
    family of products, or just one?
     

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