Any ideas with the dreaded "Unmountable_Boot_Volume" blue screen

[troit]

First - My conversation with a Norton technician:

Issue: Popups for an antispyware software began to pop up on my laptop, which is protected by Norton Antivirus. When I closed them down, ran Norton and rebooted my machine I am now getting a blue screen with "Unmountable_Boot_Volume" error. End Session Mr. Joe Bly has entered room.

Mathew has entered room.

Mathew(Wed Apr 23 16:19:29 EDT 2008)>Joe, are you with me?

Mr. ??(Wed Apr 23 19:13:42 EDT 2008)>Hello Matt

Mathew(Wed Apr 23 16:19:51 EDT 2008)>Is this the first time you are contacting us or do you have a Priority ID?

Mr. ??(Wed Apr 23 19:14:10 EDT 2008)>First time

Mathew(Wed Apr 23 16:20:21 EDT 2008)>May I confirm your email address as ??@hotmail.com and direct phone number as 555-555-5555, am I right?

Mr. ??(Wed Apr 23 19:14:50 EDT 2008)>That is correct - Sould I tell you what I've done so far?

Mathew(Wed Apr 23 16:21:06 EDT 2008)>Before that are you connected from the computer, which is facing this particular issue?

Mr. ??(Wed Apr 23 19:15:57 EDT 2008)>No. It will not boot, not in safe mode, not with the Windows XP boot disk, not from USB drive...

Mathew(Wed Apr 23 16:22:06 EDT 2008)>Please provide me your alternate phone number or mobile number if you have one.

Mr. ??(Wed Apr 23 19:16:34 EDT 2008)>555-555-5555

Mr. ??(Wed Apr 23 19:16:55 EDT 2008)>That's it - my cell.

Mathew(Wed Apr 23 16:22:58 EDT 2008)>Thank You for all the information.
Your Priority ID is ??81389??. Please make a note of it for future reference.

Mathew(Wed Apr 23 16:23:42 EDT 2008)>As I understand from your issue description, your PC is infected, there are constant pop ups and now it will not boot. Am I correct?

Mr. ??(Wed Apr 23 19:18:58 EDT 2008)>Popup were only brief - for 10 minutes. I ran Norton Antivirus and when it was finished and asked me to reboot the machine, blue screen.

Mathew(Wed Apr 23 16:26:14 EDT 2008)>??, in order to trouble shoot your PC for diagonising and rectifying all the issues and making it back to the normal mode you need to be connected from the infected PC. Since you are not able to get connected from the infected computer I would request you to contact a local technician.

Mathew(Wed Apr 23 16:26:20 EDT 2008)>Is there anything else I can help you with?

Mr. ??(Wed Apr 23 19:20:51 EDT 2008)>That's it - thanks.

Mathew(Wed Apr 23 16:27:01 EDT 2008)>If you need to contact "Symantec Virus & Spyware Solutions" again please visit http://www.symantec.com/vremoval .

It has been pleasure assisting you. Thank you for using Symantec. Have a great day ahead!!

I guess a big thanks for nothing... so I know that this cannot be the drive because it is only two weeks old as I recently rebuild this machine to upgrade the harddrive. Any ideas? What other info do you need?

[Hain]

You might want to try a fixing the boot sector. I don't it off the top of my head but there is a thread elsewhere:

View: Unmountable_boot_volume
Source: Tech Support Guy Forums
Post created with FASS, the unofficial TFP post generator

Unmountable_boot_volume

You can boot to the XP cd and when you see the Welcome to setup press the letter R
You will get a dos prompt
Then type "chkdsk /p" without the quotes and hit enter
When that is done type "fixboot" and hit enter
"Y" and enter at the prompt
Then type "exit" and hit enter
The system will now reboot into Windows

If for some reason that don't work for you, you can boot to the recovery console like above and...
Type "chkdsk /r" then enter
When done type "exit" and hit enter.
This will take longer, but the system should boot back into Windows.

I did this about 3 weeks ago and it worked fine

A quick Google gets you a lot more results.

[Jinn]

The Windows Recovery above also has two commands, fixmbr and fixboot.. they might solve it. I've used it once successfully, twice unsuccessfully. It really depends on how bad the issue is.

[Ustwo]

Last time I had something like this I finally had to reformat.

It worked but the drive started to give me errors right away.

Died again and I bought a new HD, no problem since.

[Hain]

Also, why are you using Norton?

[troit]

So I pressed "R" from the Windows splash screen. I get the message "Setuip is inspecting your hardware coinfiguration", then blank screen. I can hear the fan running but nothing else - and I've let it sit for 1/2 hour.

I'm about ready to f disk this thing. If I do decide to go that route will it solve the problem?

I'm "F" disking it since everyone know when you "F" disk a drive what you are really saying is "FUCK IT!!!!"

[Hain]

Originally Posted by troit

I'm about ready to f disk this thing. If I do decide to go that route will it solve the problem?

So long as there is nothing physically wrong with the system, yeah that will solve just about all your problems.

If somehow a virus is able to cause this, you might want to check out DBAN, linked through my previous link. In it you can create a "nuke" boot disc that will clean your hard drive, and I mean you can make it spotless zeros. Then you can be sure that any soft problems your computer had before, have been expunged now.

Originally Posted by troit

I'm "F" disking it since everyone know when you "F" disk a drive what you are really saying is "FUCK IT!!!!"

Yep, let us know how that goes.

[Zweiblumen]

A device like this might come handy USB HD adapter.
It gives the possibility to check the drive in an other computer and/or retrieve data from it.

Yours
Zweiblumen
PS: The link is just for info. I have no experiance of that model.

[yotta]

I had this problem when Gentoo's installer decided to shrink my NTFS partition by a few megs despite being told to leave it the fuck alone. I can't remember the exact recovery procedure, but I do remember that after fixing the partition size, a linux boot disk was able to read the files. I hope that helps you.