Blue Screen of Death - Any Hope?

[fatgreta]

A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.

UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOUME

If this is the first time you've seen this Stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears again, follow these steps:

Check to make sure any new hardware or software is properly installed. If this is a new installation, ask your hardware or software manufacturer for any windows updates you might need.

If problems continue, disable or remove and newly installed hardware or software. Disable BIOS memory options such as caching or shadowing. If you need to use Safe Mode to remove or disable components, restart your computer, press F8 to select Advanced Startup Options, and then select Safe Mode.

Technical information:

*** STOP: 0x000000ED (0x83380E30, 0xC0000006, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)

[In case it's relevant, I triple checked that I've typed the above numbers correctly].

I tried rebooting the computer, and was taken to a screen with options to boot into Safe Mode, Safe Mode with Networking, Safe Mode with Command Prompt, Last Known Good Configuration (your most recent settings that worked), or Start Windows Normally. I tried each of those options, and each time was returned to the blue screen mentioned above.

There are two things I can think of that happened recently, which may have contributed to this. A few weeks ago, I tried to download printer drivers for a machine I'd lost the disk to. During that install, I ran into trouble and wasn't able to proceed, so I aborted. I checked the printers and faxes area, and the printer I tried to install wasn't listed, so I assumed it was ok to leave things alone. The computer functioned properly for two weeks after that, so I doubt it's the cause.

We have AVG Free on her machine. It's the older version, which isn't supported anymore. She tried to update it, and wasn't able to do that. She had to restart the computer and gave up. That was more recent, but the computer functioned properly for at least three days afterwards, so I'm doubting that was the culprit.

She has Spybot S&D on the computer, and at the same time that she tried to scan with AVG she ran that application, and I believed defragmented her hard drive with the windows utility. Again, the computer functioned afterward.

The X-factor is our roommate, who I don't completely trust with computers. She was using it the night before, and says she shut it down normally and went to bed. When she turned the computer on the next morning, all this happened.

So, can anyone offer me any hope of getting the computer running again? She has not, I'm pretty sure, ever backed it up. There are pictures on the hard drive she'll be very sad to lose, but otherwise no critical files. If we could restore the computer to a working state without losing those photos, I'll be her hero. Otherwise, if we could get the computer working again, I'll be at least semi-heroic. I promise to share at least some of the credit with anyone who can help me out (maybe not your fair share, but I am the guy who lives with the gal...).

Thanks for any help,

Chris

PS - I don't really know her computer's specs, but if there's more information needed I'll try to provide it. We use the laptop with wireless internet, if that's an issue.

[fatgreta]

Oh I'm sorry, I just realized I posted this in the wrong forum. I'll post it in the correct forum, please feel free to delete it here. My apologies.

Chris

[fatgreta]

Originally Posted by fatgreta Oh I'm sorry, I just realized I posted this in the wrong forum. I'll post it in the correct forum, please feel free to delete it here. My apologies. Chris

Oh, sorry again - I double checked and realized this is the correct forum. As you can see, I need a great deal of help...

[EzyStvy]

Introduction to Stop Errors

"Stop errors in a nutshell are errors that are serious enough to cause Windows to stop. They are similar to the blue screen errors that were present on Windows 9x, however there is no option to try and resume the session in a Windows NT Stop Error (Windows 2000 and all XP members included)."

Continued:

http://mvps.org/marksxp/WindowsXP/bsod.php



Go here to search for the error message:

http://support.microsoft.com/default...&ln=EN-US&FR=0

[glc]

I would download and run hard drive diagnostics. That particular error is frequently caused by hard drives developing bad sectors. You download the diagnostics from the hard drive manufacturer and create a boot floppy or boot CD with them.

If this laptop is a Dell, it has built in diagnostics. Press F12 immediately on powerup to access them.