Unmountable Boot Volume at Startup

[Unforseen]

I have a Dell Inspiron XPS Generation 1 that is about 4 years old now. About a week ago I was booting up my computer and i got the blue screen of death giving me the "Unmountable Boot Volume" error. Everytime I start my computer I get this error and it won't let me boot into safe mode or anything. I have a feeling that my hard drive is dying or my boot.ini file is corrupt. I have a ton of music and documents on my hard drive that I need to get access to. What do I need to do to get back into XP so I can backup these files? BTW, I do not have a floppy drive nor do I have my Windows XP CD. My only hope at this point is if there is some way I can create a bootable CD and get into the recovery console from there. Any help on how to do this would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Unforseen

[Kubie]

Do you have access to ANY XP disk? I have repaired problems like yours using my XP disk in other's computers.

Kubie

[Unforseen]

Unfortunately, no. I only have a Vista CD that came with another Dell laptop I have. I have had 2 desktops that both had XP but the manufacturers (HP, Dell) decided not to give me the reinstalllation CD's.

[glc]

Remove the drive and connect it to another computer with a USB adapter to recover your files. Fixing an unmountable boot volume REQUIRES an XP CD, correct version.

[Unforseen]

I just wanted to let everyone know that I fixed my problem. I found an XP CD and used the recovery console and typed chkdsk /r and it fixed everything. Good as new for now.

[glc]

I would recommend you run some hard drive diagnostics - that can be a sign of bad sectors. To access the builtin Dell diagnostics press F12 on startup.