BSOD - boot trouble

[Panama Red]

Finished my daughter's new machine and have a problem. Here's the system specs.

Case - my old Gateway midtower
PSU - Antec SL300
Mobo - Asus A7V8X-MX SE Onboard video, audio, and lan, M-ATX
CPU - AMD Athlon XP 2000+
RAM - 2x256 PC2100 Kingston VR
HDD - WD 80Gb 8Mb cache
Pri Optical - Sony CDrom
Sec Optical - Khypermedia 8x DVD Burner
Kbd & mouse - Fellowes wireless combo black
Monitor - Sony Trinitron 17"
Speakers - Creative SBS230 2.0
OS - Win XP Pro Student Upgrade

BSOD right after first restart from Windows Update. "Unmountable Boot Volume". Read all the info at MS Knowledge base, all the threads here at PC Mech (most link back to the same MS KB info) I've been able to continually overcome the problem by going into the Recovery Console and using "chkdsk /r" or "fixboot" or combinations of the two. On a couple occassions, I've had to do a repair from the installation set up. Once the repairs are completed, the system boots again and runs stable. All hardware is reported correctly in the device Manager and no conflicts. Reformatted and reinstalled XP Pro 3 times, same results (Note: this is an update cd and I have to insert a Win 98 cd to validate ownership of a previous version at the appropriate time) I've run Digital Lifeguard from a floppy and tested the drive on line at the WD site. Both tests say the drive is good. Ran Memtest86 to check the memory and it, too reports no errors.
I have the system completely set up with all the normal services tweaks and software installs I always do. I've checked the Asus site and I have the latest bios installed. Something is continually corrupting the boot files, but for the life of me I don't know what it is. Hope somebody can point me to the solution.

[ktkendall]

Perhaps the IDE cable? How is the drive jumpered and what type of cable?? I'm thinking either that and I would perhaps get a zero fill utility and wipe the drive out that way and begin again by partitioning and formatting the drive..But even before all that just to save myself time and perhaps more grief I think if U have another HD you could swap into there and see if the truble persists would help U trac it down to see if it is indeed the HD itself..

[lil Jimmie]

I'm thinking along the same lines as ktkendall, check your IDE cables, HDD jumpers and bios settings on the HDD configuration.

[Panama Red]

Thanx for the ideas, guys. Got the new cable installed, so I'll try that first. Also, I do have another 80Gb hdd on hand. It's a 2mb cache unit though. Was planning to install it in my sons's this weekend for additional storage. Think I may test with it first though. I'll let you know how I come out.

The drive is presently jumper to CS and it's on an 80 wire. I tried it jumpered to the WD Neutral postition, but it didn't change the boot problem. Prior to one of the reinstalls, I did a zero fill, forgot to mention that in my first post.

[glc]

Is bios virus protection turned off?

[Panama Red]

Good go, kt! It was the 80 wire ide cable. All's well! Thanx for ideas guys.

[ktkendall]

Amazing how such a little thing can make such a big difference..Glad to here it's fixxed..