BSOD: Unmountable_Boot_Volume... yikes!

Xylo

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 5, 2005
Messages
421
I am having some major trouble with my laptop and would be very appreciative of an help that anyone could provide!

Short Version:
Randomly the other day on booting, my laptop blue-screened with the following error: UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME

I'm running Vista (32) and most of what I've read has not been able to work. I can't boot into Safe Mode (same blue screen), so doing anything that requires that doesn't work.

Unfortunately, when I boot off the Vista DVD, it doesn't seem to see the drive at all, as far as I can tell? When I first run System Recovery, a "System Recovery Options" dialog pops up asking me to select an OS to repair. Nothing is listed there, but it gives me an option to "Load Drivers" for my HD, unfortunately, doing so doesn't seem to actually give me any driver options.

Most of the solutions I've seen on the web say to do Startup Repair or go to a boot prompt and do chkdsk, but when I try to do startup repair, it tells me it can't do it (NoHardDrive?) and when I go a boot prompt, it won't see my C: drive.

Now, oddly enough, when this first happened, I tried all these things, and on one random reboot, it seemed to work just fine out of the blue! I used it fine for about 12hrs. until all of the sudden it wouldn't boot. This time it gave me a blue screen error on disk.sys / PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA a couple times upon trying to reboot once or twice, before now just reverting back to the problem I had before: UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME.

So I'm stuck: can't boot to the drive (BSOD, even in Safe Mode), but Windows Repair doesn't seem to see the drive. Any help would be MOST appreciated!

Thanks!
 
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More information / long version:
For those that are curious for a bit more info.:
- The stop code given was: 0x000000ED (0x862539A0, 0xC000000E, 0x00000000)

- The computer is a laptop and the hard drive is a 160Gb SATA drive. (Seagate Momentus ST9160823AS)

- Since when I try to turn on the computer it doesn't automatically tell me it can't find the hard drive (and from what I can tell, BIOS seems to see it fine), but instead starts to boot then halts, I don't think the hard drive is just loose or such. Even so, I pulled it out and made sure it was firmly pushed back in twice, and that seems ok.

- When I just go past the "System Recovery Options" dialog (by clicking Next) and try to do a Startup Repair anyways, here's the error I get:
Problem Event Name: StartupRepairV2
Problem Signature 01: ExternalMedia
Problem Signature 02: 6.0.6000.16386.0.0.0.0
Problem Signature 03: 0
Problem Signature 04: 65537
Problem Signature 05: unknown
Problem Signature 06: NoHardDrive
Problem Signature 07: 0
Problem Signature 08: 0
Problem Signature 09: unknown
Problem Signature 10: 1168
OS Version: 6.0.6000.2.0.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1033

- I have tried to boot to Last Known Good Configuation to no avail.

- There's only two things I can think of recently that may have caused this problem. In either case, if these were the causes, I would think that the machine would be easily fixable, but it has not been.
1) I've been having a lot of problems with the CDROM drive in the machine, and online the advice I got was to remove the upper and lower filters from the registry. I did this, and also backed up the registry appropriately before hand. I can't imagine that this would be the problem, however, as it was two lines pertaining to the CDROm drive that I removed, and nothing major.
2) I also ran a registry cleaner on the registry (after doing a manual system restore point). I believe it was Registry Mechanic from PCTools, but I don't remember off the top of my head.

- The first time I started up the machine and got this problem was after I had hibernated it by closing it. The second time was after it had shut itself off from what I think was maybe overheating (I was running some intensive apps and it happened to be on a table where I don't think the fans had enough breathing room...this has happened a few times in the past if I am not careful to keep the bottom fans clear). After the second time is when I got the disk.sys / PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA blue screen twice, before getting the UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME problem again.

- I talked to two different guys at SeaGate, thinking that perhaps there were some drivers I needed to load to allow Windows Repair to see the drive. One guy told me I need to load some SATA drivers (from where?) with F6 at startup, but the other told me that was not necessary with Vista. The other guy also suggested I use their SeaTools tool which I burned to a DVD and tried, but that also can't seem to find the drive.

- The controller appears to be an Intel ICH8M but I don't know if any generic drivers would be necessary for that in Vista? And isn't that a whole family of products, or just one?
 
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Depends what mode the Intel controller is in. You might need to install the drivers. It's finally pretty easy, and you can just toss them on a USB stick or such and install them that way via the repair console interface. It should see your disk then, and running chkdsk has always solved this problem for me.

An alternative if you can't get that to work would be to try ultimate boot CD or some BartPE equivalent and run the chkdsk from there. UBCD includes NTFS4DOS which has a chkdsk that sometimes works, though it seems to fix less problems than MS's own, which is probably available if you use one of the Windows-based repair CDs - but then you may have the same driver issue again ;).
 
Vista should already have the appropriate AHCI drivers, no?

boot off a boot disk, run a chkdsk on the drive.

that's the first thing I'd try.
 
Keenan: What do you mean what mode the controller is in? And where can I find those drivers?...I see about a dozen places online that appear to list drivers for that Intel controller, but there seems to be a bunch of variations, and I'm not 100% sure which I have. I'd be more than happy to put them on a USB stick if I could figure out what the right ones are.

j-sta: Beats me, but regardless, booting to the drive = the drive is seen, windows starts to load, then blue screen's....SeaTools and Windows Repair both can't see the drive as existing at all though.


Thanks for the replies so far...
 
On a side note, I just found an old copy of Hitachi DFT (Drive Fitness Tools). It sees the drive fine. I ran the Quick test and it ran fine, but the "Advanced" test seems to just pause (indefinitely?) while doing the media scan at a certain LBA. It starts scanning, then gets to one point, and just stops (or at least appears to).
 
does Vista have a recovery console you can boot to?

maybe the MBR or MFT is corrupt... which could (maybe?) explain why it doesn't see it.

as for what mode the controller is in as Keenan said... somewhere in the BIOS should be an option for HDD Controller mode; AHCI, IDE, might say Compatibility mode, maybe ATA?
 
j-sta: No, I precisely can't boot into Windows Repair...or rather I can, but unfortunately it won't see the drive at all. There in lies the rub! :/

As for the controller, can't seem to tell from looking at the BIOS (Phoenix TrustedCore 1.00.04). I have some options to change the settings for the drive, but right now on "Auto", they are preset (except for an option: "32 Bit I/O" which is set to disabled). There's some other options for changing it over from Auto to User defined, IDE Removable, ATAPI removable, etc. but nothing that seems to fit..

Still not 100% on this part. Only mode options I see anwhere are for LBA Mode Control, Transfer Mode (different FPIO and DMA number options) and Ultra DMA mode.
 
the option would generally be in a different area... probably in the Integrated Peripherals sub-menu would be my guess.
Not positive, as my personal computer is ancient, and my work computers are Dell :rolleyes:

try to find a copy of BartPE or some form of boot disk like that if possible.
 
On a side note, I just found an old copy of Hitachi DFT (Drive Fitness Tools). It sees the drive fine. I ran the Quick test and it ran fine, but the "Advanced" test seems to just pause (indefinitely?) while doing the media scan at a certain LBA. It starts scanning, then gets to one point, and just stops (or at least appears to).

This usually indicates a bad sector and may be the source of your problems. How long did you leave it? The drive test utilities will generally fail out eventually with an error code. You could also try MHDD on UBCD which will give you more details (can you tell I use UBCD a lot? :p).
 
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