Unmountable drive error in XP

[ahamilton0953]

I'm trying to fix this problem. The CD Rom drive won't run the CD to repair, and it doesn't have a floppy drive, so trying to run ckdisk isn't something I can readily do. I thought there was a way to boot into just a straight cmd prompt but I can't find one.

Anyone have any suggestions?

It's a dell, and am not sure what to do. I've thought about taking out the drive and putting it in another PC in the house ( compaq or dell ) but I am not sure if there are proprietary issues or not with it running.

[telegramsam]

You can't run the drive in another computer without a repair install with an original system disk--not a Dell recovery disk.

You can however, make it a second disk in another computer and retrieve the files from it if it isn't dead. Start with that and see if the other computer can see it.

Be sure to set the jumpers properly.

[ahamilton0953]

Originally Posted by telegramsam You can't run the drive in another computer without a repair install with an original system disk--not a Dell recovery disk. You can however, make it a second disk in another computer and retrieve the files from it if it isn't dead. Start with that and see if the other computer can see it. Be sure to set the jumpers properly.

Well, I took the drive out and put it in as a secondary on my Compaq first ( the other dell is my wifes ) and it ran ckdisk right away, and the problem was fixed. I was concerned with it going in as a secondary it wouldn't work.