Emergency computer help

Hey guys. Heres the story.

Lately my computers been acting weird. Telling me that my winamp files and wahtnot are corrupted, and freezing up randomly (the harddrive light will stay on when it freezes). Not a big deal, i was planning on setting up an ftp server on it so i cold backup my stuff and just relaod windows or something.

But.
2 nights ago, it froze up, and upon trying to reboot it, it gave me the stupid stop error. "unmountable boot volume" or something. I've tried everything, screwing around with the BIOS settings, starting in safe mode, but it still gives me the stop error every time. I tried using my roommates XP reinstallation CD to do it that way, but the computer freezes when trying to install windows, in the same way that i mentioned before.

I don't know what to do, i can't figure out how to format it, or to get it to work in any way! help!! :(

*edit* running XP home on an AMD machine BTW,just in case you need the info.

Hey guys. Heres the story.

Lately my computers been acting weird. Telling me that my winamp files and wahtnot are corrupted, and freezing up randomly (the harddrive light will stay on when it freezes). Not a big deal, i was planning on setting up an ftp server on it so i cold backup my stuff and just relaod windows or something.

But.
2 nights ago, it froze up, and upon trying to reboot it, it gave me the stupid stop error. "unmountable boot volume" or something. I've tried everything, screwing around with the BIOS settings, starting in safe mode, but it still gives me the stop error every time. I tried using my roommates XP reinstallation CD to do it that way, but the computer freezes when trying to install windows, in the same way that i mentioned before.

I don't know what to do, i can't figure out how to format it, or to get it to work in any way! help!! :(

*edit* running XP home on an AMD machine BTW,just in case you need the info.



Hmm it sounds like there is a problem with your boot sector. Physical or software.

Ok this is what I think you should try. Take the bad hard disk and put it in another computer with an operating OS slaving it to the main HD. From that OS you should be able to access and back up your files unless your HD is completelly gone.

If its just a sofware problem an Fdisk /MBR should clean up your boot sector alowing you to reuse the HD


FYI if you do start a back up on another comp make sure you virus scan it just in case the problems are not caused by a virus.


Oh and another ideea. You might want to try MandrakeMove. Its a full operating system(linux) that can just boot from the CD. Its full featured and it can read ntfs and fat 32 partitions so you could see if you could acess your HD that way.

you could find MandrakeMove here as an iso download:

Fdisk? MBR? Sorry,those terms don't really hold much meaning to me... But, maybe you couldexplain WHAT they do, and what... "brands" you recommend to use, that'd be great. I've pretty much come to the conclusion that i'm ging to have to take out this hard drive and slave it to a different computer in order to fix it. What a pain in the arse.

Fdisk? MBR? Sorry,those terms don't really hold much meaning to me... But, maybe you couldexplain WHAT they do, and what... "brands" you recommend to use, that'd be great. I've pretty much come to the conclusion that i'm ging to have to take out this hard drive and slave it to a different computer in order to fix it. What a pain in the arse.



fdisk is a program used to create partitions and mess with them


It will be automatically installed if you create a boot disk(at least it used to be in win 98)

if you boot from this disk and run the command >fdisk /MBR it will clear up your boot sector


still IMO your best bet is to try hooking it up to another computer and pray that the disk is still physically good.

Ya, ill agree with the others, put the hard drive in another computer andm ake sure hte hard drive is still working. ive never had a hard drive fail on me, woot. and thank god cause i have too much info on them....