XP wont boot

[SonicVanguard]

This might be a hardware issue, if it is - mods please move to the appropriate forum.

I've got a friend from church that has a Dell Dimension 4600 that is out of warranty (she only got the basic 90 days thing). Out of the blue it shutdown on her and now when you start it up you get a BSOD:

UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME

Technical Information:

STOP: 0x000000ED (0x81B2F290, 0xC000009C, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)

Tried safe mode, booting to last known working configuration...tried everything in the boot menu.

According to Michelle, she was just working on a Word document when this happened. She's "not sure" about anti-virus protection - but she's pretty sure it came with "something". She's also not sure about Windows updates - but she says she's not changed any settings since she got it. So my guess is that Dell would have turned auto-update on. She said she'd not installed any software and wasn't browsing at the time. She does have broadband (charter cable) but I doubt nothing more than Windows firewall (if it was turned on) for protection.

I'm sure Dell included a recovery disk, but she's not sure where it is Is there anything I can do beyond the recovery disk to find out what's going on? Can I remove her hard drive and hook it to my system as a slave and find anything out? I'm not the most tech-savvy in this respect, although PCM is helping me a great deal in those regards. But I do follow directions well, so if there's anything I can do that will help her out, I'm more than willing to do it.

Michelle is a teacher and there's lots of information on this computer that she needs. I know that running the recovery disk means a complete overwrite of the hard drive, so any ideas are welcomed advice.

TIA.

[Panama Red]

Pulling her drive and putting it in your machine is a good place to start, Dave. I'd recommend scanning her My Doc's area with your antivirus first before saving the files. After the backup, you can run Adaware, Spybot, and a full virus scan on her hard drive. Then do another scan at Trendmicro.com and see if anything else shows up.

[tempus]

if its an IDE drive then set the jumper to slave otherwise the computer may not boot. Do you know what kind of drive it is? If it is a maxtor then download and run powermax to check the drive...it may have failed.

[SonicVanguard]

I've been mulling over Google trying to find stuff and it appears the boot.ini file may be corrupt. If I can get to a DOS prompt, then "chkdsk /p" might help me - big problem is she's got this stinkin recovery disk (she found it and brought it over) but no way to get to a DOS prompt. I'd make a XP boot disk, but this Dell doesn't have a floppy drive. Is there any way to make a XP boot disk using a CD?

[Ob1]

www.ultimatebootcd.com

edit: http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/utilities.html

look for the editbini

[SonicVanguard]

Actually discovered that my XP Pro CD would get me to the recovery console (and thus the DOS prompt). chkdsk /p is currently running and at 12% - should be at 50% by Saturday afternoon at this rate

I'll let you all know how it goes from there.

[SonicVanguard]

Ran chkdsk /p and at 25% completion got "2 or more unrecoverable errors, please reboot".

Now I personally think the reboot part is quite funny - unrecoverable errors=reboot, go figure. But...I think I'm to the point of hooking her hard drive up to my system and getting everything I can for her and running the Dell recovery disk.

[SonicVanguard]

Wow, I ran Salvation HDD Scan and Repair from the Ultimate Boot CD and it found over 5000 bad sectors in the first 15% of the disk. Is this something that can be fixed, or is the hard drive toast?

[Panama Red]

Time to recover what files you can and replace the hard drive. Bad sectors aren't fixable. They'll grow as you use the drive.

[SonicVanguard]

Originally Posted by Panama Red Time to recover what files you can and replace the hard drive. Bad sectors aren't fixable. They'll grow as you use the drive.

That's what I thought. I'll see what I can recover for her - I did run the SN# through the Maxtor website and it shows to still be under warranty. I'm wondering if they'll honor that even though it's pulled from a Dell.

[Panama Red]

Maxtor will tell ya to go thru Dell. They don't handle prebuilt warranties directly.

[glc]

If the Maxtor site shows it still under warranty, I'd bet they will honor it. Otherwise, it would come up and tell you to contact your OEM. Go ahead and fill out the RMA form on Maxtor's site and see what happens. You will probably need an error code from Powermax, it's also on the UBCD.

What I would do first is try to get off all the data you can before playing with it any more. If Powermax fails (which it sure sounds like it will) you should do a full zero fill then try to partition and format it. All those bad sectors MIGHT just be logical failures and not physical failures - she may have picked up a real nasty if she's on a cable modem without firewalling, current antivirus, and all Windows security updates. It's also possible it's overheating or a ram module failed, this can corrupt a filesystem in a heartbeat.

[SonicVanguard]

I ran PowerMax from the ultimate boot CD and got the error code.

Ran Memtest86+ and the memory tested out fine. I opened the case and found just tons of dust and cat hair - it was almost caked on the bottom of the hard drive. I'm betting from what I saw it overheated. The case design is terrible - no air flow whatsoever.