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"Unmountable Boot Volume"Win XP

Software KB

kb# SW00014

When booting up to

This page was last modified on 07/25/02

disable cache memory in bios.

Preventing 'unmountable bootvolume' and/or loss of ability toboot Windows XP

We are seeing a lot of students with Windows XP (not just IBMs) who suddenly

can no longer boot their computers. We are researching the reasons/solutions. 

REASONS 

We believe this is happening because Windows XP is shutting down or goinginto hibernation mode before all files are properly closing. When the computeris turned back on, the files that were not closed are corrupted - sometimespreventing Windows from booting. Interestingly, we frequently get several of these a day --- but have had nofaculty/staff to bring one in. We suspect it may have to do with the waystudents are using their computers - perhaps they have lots of extrabackground tasks (such as file sharing) running and are impatient with waiting

for a normal shut down.

Here are some preventative measures you can take: 1) Avoid hibernation mode - turn your computer off and wait until it hastotally finished closing before closing the lid. 

2) There's a Microsoft patch below - but it is applied to all IBM R31s and 32sthat have the Clemson image on them. It is usually not applied on all IBM 31sbought last summer that do not have the image on them. 3) There are a number of issues related to disk caching that may help. Onepossibility is to turn off write caching on your C: drive in Windows. Here arethe steps to do that: 

Double click My Computer Right click on your C: drive Left click on Properties 

Left click on Hardware Left click on Properties Left click on Policies Uncheck: Enable write cacheing on disk 

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Left click OK

SOLUTIONS 

If this happens to you, here are the steps we take to try to get you going

again: Put a Windows XP CD in your computer and start the Recovery Console. Run aCHKDSK. This takes a while.... but fixes the problem about 75% of the time.You can read about this by going to http://www.microsoft.com and clicking on

Support and reading MS Knowledge Base Article 297185. 

If this does not work, we can sometimes remove your hard drive, put it in our

hard drive 'cradle' as a second hard drive in a working Windows XP computer,and boot. When it's booting, Windows sometimes recognizes there's aproblem on the second hard drive, runs a SCANDISK on it, and fixes it. 

If neither of these fix the problem, the third solution is to reimage if it's one of our recommended laptops with partitions on it - and there is no loss of data. If it is not one of our imaged hard drives, Windows may need to be reinstalled -

with possible total loss of data. 

Students who have Windows XP and are NOT using our IBM R31 image shouldconsider doing one Windows XP critical update from February 2002. (Thisupdate was applied to our image, but not to the default IBM load for thosewho do not have our image.) It's a critical Windows update - and can be seenat http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;Q315403& .If this update is not applied to your computer running Windows XP, there is a

bug in Windows that can cause your hard drive to quit starting Windows. Afterthis happens, when you turn the computer on, you get a message about

'Unmountable Boot Volume'. In some cases, we can fix it by putting the harddrive in another computer and letting SCANDISK fix the problem. There have also been some students with IBM R31s who have a similarproblem after applying Windows XP SP1. Windows will no longer boot. 

The solution to both of these problems (if SCANDISK does not help) is torestore back to the last backup or the original Clemson image if it's a Clemsonlaptop. If it's not a Clemson laptop, the user will need to get his original CDsto restore his hard drive. The hard drive is not actually broken, but some

important parts of the data are gone. 

Another possible cause for large hard drives to become corrupt is use of standby - closing the lid without turning the computer off. See this article:http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;331958 

If the second parameter (0xbbbbbbbb) of the Stop error is 0xC0000032, then the file system is damaged.

You need to run chkdsk /r 

If you can get hold of the startupdisk when you enter Startup screen press R for Repair 

Enter Administrator passw and run chekdsk /r 

If this is not working run fixboot command.

Succes

Here's an idea if you really run out of other ones, just hook the HDD up to another

computer, install Windows Xp, transfer the Hard Drive Back, and there ya go, it should work just fine....Windows XP seems to be very good about this, it removes all the drivers fromthe other hardware(previous pc) and installs new ones for the new system. I've had to do

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this once before when a friends computer refused to let us install, and its worked just finefor him:grinthumb

Since I gather this was a working system before, it could also be a damaged file system.

You need to use the recovery console to do this--it is one of the menu choices at start up if you installed the recovery

console. If you didn't, you need your Windows disk 

When the Welcome to Setup screen appears, press R to select the repair option (you may have to type in an

administrator password, or if you didn't have one, hit enter).

Type:

chkdsk /r 

 press ENTER.

At the command prompt, type:exit

 press ENTER to restart your computer. When Windows reboots, it will run a checkdisk and repair the file system if 

 possible.

After that, I'm afraid you've either got a failed harddrive (how old is it?), or a totally screwed up disk that needs

repartitioning or reformating.

Unmountable boot volume.

This error can occur during some Windows XP installations. It can lead to a situation where you can't boot Windows

XP, nor can you uninstall Windows XP and revert to your old operating system.

This behaviour may occur if the following conditions exist:

· You are using an Ultra Direct Memory Access (UDMA) controller with your computer.· You are using a standard 40-wire connector cable to connect the UDMA drive to the controller instead of the

required 80-wire, 40-pin cable.

· The basic input/output system (BIOS) is set to force the faster UDMA modes.

To fix the problem, try one of the following:

1. Check the file system:

• Start the computer with Win XP CD in the drive (ensure that you have the boot sequence in the bios set to

CD-ROM as the first boot bevice).

• Press a key when you see “Press any key to boot from the CD”.

• On the Welcome to setup... screen, press the R key on your keyboard to repair the Windows XP

installation using Recovery Console.

• Type 1 when you see “Which Windows installation would you like to log on to <to cancel, press

ENTER>?”.• Type the administrator password when you are prompted to do so.

NOTE : If no administrator password exists, just press ENTER.

• At the command prompt, type chkdsk /r , and then press ENTER.

• At the command prompt, type exit , and then press ENTER to restart your computer.

-or-

2. Replace the UDMA cable.

Replace the 40-wire cable with an 80-wire UDMA cable.

-or-

3. Set failsafe BIOS defaults.

· Enter Setup during the boot sequence.

· Load the 'Fail-Safe' BIOS default.

· Save and exit Setup.