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Thread: Major problems booting up my laptop

  1. #1

    Major problems booting up my laptop

    Lately i have been having big problems booting up my laptop. It starts up and begins to load WinXP and then a blue screen appears saying that some of the hardware failed and I should try running in safe mode. When i try to run it in safe mode it won't let me. The same screen comes up. This is the third time this has happened. The last two times I just formatted my drive and re-installed Windows, but im getting tired of doing that. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks a lot!

  2. #2
    With no more information then that I can't really help you. What else does the error message/BSOD say? I'm sure it doesn't just say try booting in safe mode. Have you experience any other problems with the laptop recently (when it would boot up)? Does it only boot up to BSOD part of the time or all of the time?

    -_LeeBkr_-

  3. #3
    Right turn Clyde Nokia's Avatar
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    Hi,

    If you could answer a few of the following it may narrow down what is going wrong:

    How old is your laptop?
    Did you buy it with Win XP installed?
    Have you upgraded any of the hardware from factory default?

    Does the error message give any details as to what hardware failed or give an error code? I would be very helpful if you could post exactly what is says!

    Thanks!

  4. #4
    Do you have any distro that is disk bootable? If so try to boot that disk.

    I am not sure what is wrong yet, you didnĀ“t give a lot of info. Answer the above questions, and if you do have a bootable distro try it out.

  5. #5
    The laptop is about a year old. It didn't come with XP installed, my dad put it on there. I've never upgraded or changed any of the hardware. The message says "UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME" *** STOP: 0x000000ED (0x80E97920, 0xC0000032, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)

    i hope thats enough info but just ask if need more

  6. #6
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    Originally posted here by shadowkingjesse
    The laptop is about a year old. It didn't come with XP installed, my dad put it on there. I've never upgraded or changed any of the hardware. The message says "UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME" *** STOP: 0x000000ED (0x80E97920, 0xC0000032, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)

    i hope thats enough info but just ask if need more
    Have you tested or tried replacing the hdd?
    Might be failing.

  7. #7
    Sorry i forgot to mention, there have also been some physical problems. the back two hinges are broken from opening the lid so much, and the fan hasn't been working properly so im afraid something might have melted. Could this have anything to do with it?

  8. #8
    Right turn Clyde Nokia's Avatar
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    From the Microsoft help site:

    SYMPTOMS
    When you first restart your computer during the upgrade to Windows XP or when you start Windows XP, you may receive the following error message, where aaaaaaaa, bbbbbbbb, cccccccc, and dddddddd are hexadecimal numbers that may vary:

    STOP 0x000000ED (0xaaaaaaaa,0xbbbbbbbb,0xcccccccc,0xdddddddd) UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME


    NOTE: If you receive this error message when you restart the computer for the first time during an upgrade to Windows XP, your original operating system still works correctly. In some cases, a message appears on the BIOS report screen that states that the wrong cable is in use, but you may not see this message on computers that have a fast startup time.
    CAUSE
    This behavior can occur if either of the following conditions is true:
    Your computer uses an Ultra Direct Memory Access (UDMA) hard disk controller, and the following conditions are true:
    You use 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) settings are configured to force the faster UDMA modes.
    The file system is damaged and cannot be mounted.
    RESOLUTION
    To resolve this behavior, use the appropriate method.
    UDMA Controller
    If your computer uses a UDMA hard disk controller, use the following procedures:
    Replace the 40-wire cable with an 80-wire UDMA cable.
    In the BIOS settings for your computer, load the 'Fail-Safe' default settings, and then reactivate the most frequently used options such as USB Support.
    Damaged File System
    If the second parameter (0xbbbbbbbb) of the Stop error is 0xC0000032, then the file system is damaged.

    If this is the case, restart the computer to the Recovery Console, and then use the chkdsk /r command to repair the volume. After you repair the volume, check your hardware to isolate the cause of the file system damage.

    To do this, use the following steps:
    Start your computer with the Windows startup disks, or with the Windows CD-ROM if your computer can start from the CD-ROM drive.
    When the Welcome to Setup screen appears, press R to select the repair option.
    If you have a dual-boot or multiple-boot computer, select the Windows installation that you want to access from the Recovery Console.
    Type the administrator password when you are prompted to do so.

    NOTE: If no administrator password exists, press ENTER.
    At the command prompt, on the drive where Windows is installed, type chkdsk /r, and then press ENTER.
    At the command prompt, type exit, and then press ENTER to restart your computer.For additional information about how to use the Recovery Console in Windows XP, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
    314058 Description of the Windows XP Recovery Console

    If this procedure does not work, repeat it and use the fixboot command in step 5 instead of the chkdsk /r command.

  9. #9
    Thank you very much nokia. I will try what you suggested and hopefully it will work out. Your assistance is greatly appreciated : ) !

  10. #10
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    Well, the hex leaves me cold, but I think it's safe to assume that the UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME message indicates that the computer's unable to mount the boot volume of your hard drive.
    I've experienced similar errors myself, and it's usually because I did something to corrupt the boot sector of my hard drive. If you didn't do anything special before this error manifested, my best guess would be that a virus or something messed up your parition table.
    If you have the XP installation disk, you could try booting up with it and entering "console" mode. There, you can try entering the commands FIXMBR or FIXBOOT, which should rewrite your master boot record and your boot sector, respectively.
    That's my advice - keep in mind that messing around with partitions and boot records can permanently trash your data, but at this point you haven't got much to lose, have you?

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