Unmountable Boot Volume

[Acriku]

Okay, so I have that blue screen that is helpful to tell me my hdd is f*cked up. UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME - that screen. It started as a plain screen saying hal.dll was missing or corrupted, and then progressed into that. I ran windows repair, used both chkdsk /p and chkdsk /r and then proceeded to use fixboot to create a new boot sector. Nada. The chkdsk commands ended at about 20-30% with a line saying unrecoverable problems have occurred or something. I am one step closer to reformatting, but if you guys know of a solution to avoid reformatting, then I'd be glad not to.

I am running WinXP Pro, and can't get my diag details currently (see above for why :P) so if you have questions on hardware configuration I can reply as needed. Thanks!

[erjin999]

Dude, that sounds major bad.

Try a utility for your harddrive model if you can find one. Most manufacturers will have one that will let you try to access/recover or at the least tell you if it is totally stuffed.

[GUNWOUNDS]

does your HDD make a thumping scratching sound that sorta "knocks"  like a bad car engine?  How old is it?

[Megashrap]

Dude, that sounds major bad.

Try a utility for your harddrive model if you can find one. Most manufacturers will have one that will let you try to access/recover or at the least tell you if it is totally stuffed.

Yea, most brand name ones will have the test utility for dload to floppy or wherever you want it.

But that does sound like it's time for a new one if you get that. I had a Maxtor a year ago do that with the same message, and after I used the utility test on it it basically told me to return it due to bad unrecoverable sectors/missing boot sector.

[Acriku]

I'll check the manufacturer's website (Western Digital) for any sort of utility. The disk itself is about three years old, and sometimes but not usually I'll hear a small clicking sound in the drive but it doesn't last for long. Would reformatting not even help? I was hoping not to have to buy another hdd at least for a while.

[gryphon]

It's not the hardware but the partition itself I think.

[GUNWOUNDS]

I'll check the manufacturer's website (Western Digital) for any sort of utility. The disk itself is about three years old, and sometimes but not usually I'll hear a small clicking sound in the drive but it doesn't last for long. Would reformatting not even help? I was hoping not to have to buy another hdd at least for a while.

I had a laptop that started clicking periodically..... turned out the clicking was an indicator it was on its last legs.  Had to get a new HDD.  IF its the same normal sound that it made when you first bought it... then ignore it.  But if this clicking sound is somewhat recent, i would consider a new HDD.  3 Years is a good stretch, the old laptop HDD i had was 6 years old.  But most HDD's are lucky to make it to 5.  Especially if you're a gamer and a frequent web surfer.

Oh and i did reformat the HDD that was dying... and it worked better afterwards but it was only a temp fix.. it died a couple weeks later.

[erjin999]

The Click of Death. Best bet is to recover any data you can and run !

Attach your HD to another working comp and move data off if you can.

[gryphon]

guys, the darnd hard drive boots ok and the clikckedy-click sound is just it's head moving.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/297185

If chkdsk didn't help try to recover Windows with an installation disk. If that doesn't work just reinstal it. The drive is (besides afilesystem problem) ok.

hall.dll is the driver that allows your Windows installation to "talk" to your harddrive. If Windows can't do that it can't find your boot partition, or any other partition for that matter and dumps an error on your screen without booting into Windows.

[GUNWOUNDS]

hopefully its ok then.  Let us know Acriku.

[erjin999]

Some normal clicking is fine. But sometimes it becomes really loud and repeats in a very frequent manner (more then once a second) then something is up.

I have had more then one hard drive die like that on me at work.

[Acriku]

Well, I tried to setup Windows XP but it couldn't even read what partitions were on the disk so I couldn't even delete the partitions or select them to install. Time to start shopping for a new hard drive and start crying over the lost data... *tear*

[Megashrap]

Did or could you even try the WD site utility for it? Or diagnostic utility rather. Because Maxtor's utility will tell ya in a matter of a few minutes if it's dead or alive. I'm sure that WD has that also.

[Andrew]

You may want to check out Ultimate Boot CD. It has lots of utilities on it. Possible one of them may help you (maybe even mount the ntfs and get files off it.)

[gryphon]

My solution for those situations is a Linux Red Hat 5 installation CD. Deletes everything from the FDISK option. You might want to try a DOS bootdiskette with Fdisk on it or booting into command prompt if your Windows installation CD allows that.