My Laptop died.....

brettw22
brettw22 Posts: 7,623
edited April 2024 in Clubhouse Archives
So I was at work today and had my laptop in the car and the battery died so the thing shut off. Not a problem generally, but it won't boot back up. I finally got my digital camera to tkae a picture of the error message that was popping up and here's what it says:

UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME

Basically, my hard drive can't find where to boot from and it's about dead. I'm on a desktop right now, but I HAVE to get this laptop back up and running by this weekend. I'm heading out of town next week and there's a TON of stuff on it that i need to get.

I guess one option is to connect the laptop drive to the desktop and try to read it as an additional drive on the desktop, but I'd have to get some sort of adapter cable to connect the 2.5" drive into the mix.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance..........
comment comment comment comment. bitchy.
Post edited by Ryan_Soundunited on
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  • ND13
    ND13 Posts: 7,601
    edited October 2005
    What is it with you and computers ;):D
    "SOME PEOPLE CALL ME MAURICE,
    CAUSE I SPEAK OF THE POMPITIOUS OF LOVE"
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  • SCompRacer
    SCompRacer Posts: 9,085
    edited October 2005
    Could be the boot.ini is hosed. What op system is it? If XP, you can put in the CD and try a repair. Repair won't wipe the drive out.
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  • brettw22
    brettw22 Posts: 7,623
    edited October 2005
    Running XP Home......i have to find where the hell the cd's would be after this move.........ack.
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  • beardog03
    beardog03 Posts: 5,550
    edited October 2005
    you should be able to download your stuff from one hard drive to the other..

    Try to plug it into the other computer as an external drive...
    or a second slave drive...
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  • PolkThug
    PolkThug Posts: 7,532
    edited October 2005
    Go into your BIOS when it first turns on, select HDD for first boot device.
    Never Forget
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  • polkatese
    polkatese Posts: 6,767
    edited October 2005
    mine crashed a month ago, lost about 7 months of data (got too lazy to backup, expensive lesson). The silver lining: with a new drive, booting up now goes very fast.

    CompUSA carries the small HDD to regular IDE adapter. As long as the partition table info is intact, you should be able to retrieve the data. You need to find the spec details on that HDD to reconfig it to a slave drive. Good luck, I know how it felt. I was there a few weeks ago, and just barely finished reinstalling all the softwares. Now, I backup the data to my home pc, at least once a week, if not more. I found a nifty program made (free) by uncle Gates: SyncToy.exe (part of powertoy XP tweaks) that can be run with scheduled tasks program, to synch my laptop's data directory with my home (desktop) machine.
    I am sorry, I have no opinion on the matter. I am sure you do. So, don't mind me, I just want to talk audio and pie.
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  • AsSiMiLaTeD
    AsSiMiLaTeD Posts: 11,728
    edited October 2005
    Worst case is you go to Frys or wherever and buy one of the external drive kits for the laptop drives for like $25, hook the drive into that, plug that into a second computer probably via USB2, copy all your files over to second machine, and do the system restore thing on your laptop...
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  • Markymark
    Markymark Posts: 111
    edited October 2005
    Polkmaniac wrote:
    Worst case is you go to Frys or wherever and buy one of the external drive kits for the laptop drives for like $25, hook the drive into that, plug that into a second computer probably via USB2, copy all your files over to second machine, and do the system restore thing on your laptop...
    yeah, or you can edit the boot.ini file (if it messed up) by plugging it in to a different computer.

    I would say, check the boot order... it might have gotten jacked. Make sure the hard drive is set as a boot device.
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  • brettw22
    brettw22 Posts: 7,623
    edited October 2005
    hard drive is set as the primary boot device....

    If the boot.ini isn't working properly, i don't know that there would be any functionality of USB if it can't even find the files to load drivers, right?
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  • BlueMDPicker
    BlueMDPicker Posts: 7,569
    edited October 2005
    Give this a read and see if it helps, Brett. Best bet would be the repair option from the Windows install CD IMO.
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  • PolkThug
    PolkThug Posts: 7,532
    edited October 2005
    brettw22 wrote:
    hard drive is set as the primary boot device....

    If the boot.ini isn't working properly, i don't know that there would be any functionality of USB if it can't even find the files to load drivers, right?

    Find your XP disc. Set the CD-Rom as the first boot device and boot it up with the disc in there, and choose the repair option.
    Never Forget
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  • nadams
    nadams Posts: 5,877
    edited October 2005
    Yep, boot off the CD, when the first prompt comes up press enter, when the license agreement comes up press f8, then it should detect your previous installation of windows and ask you if you want to overwrite or repair, and you press "r" to repair.

    Unless you have a crappy OEM disk that just has an image of the machine from the factory, in which case you might be screwed on that route.

    Chances are, nothing is wrong with the hardware, it's simply the fact that the system did not tidily shut down and some files got corrupted.
    Ludicrous gibs!
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  • faster100
    faster100 Posts: 6,124
    edited October 2005
    brettw22 wrote:
    UNMOUNTABLE_


    ....

    Thiers your problem, you finally met your match :D Unmountable LOL
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  • brettw22
    brettw22 Posts: 7,623
    edited October 2005
    Well well well........what a PITA........

    I went to the Fry's here and bought both an internal 2.5" to 3.5" adapter and an external USB housing for the hard drive. I ended up trying the external first and it did get recognized by the tower I'm running Server 2003 on (but not for about 12 hours, which was weird). I couldn't access any of the information on the drive, but it was at least showing up in explorer.

    I ran a "chkdsk e: /r" and after that completed, I was able to access the files on the drive via explorer. I then took the drive and re-installed it into the laptop and I was at first furious that it came right back up to the "windows was shut down unexpectedly" screen that I couldn't get past previoiusly. I was thinking I was just about to kick the thing, so I figured what the hell I'll select "Start windows normally" and I'll be damned if the thing didn't finally come up.

    It's up and running and all is good with the world.......:D
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  • ND13
    ND13 Posts: 7,601
    edited October 2005
    Congrats.
    "SOME PEOPLE CALL ME MAURICE,
    CAUSE I SPEAK OF THE POMPITIOUS OF LOVE"
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  • BlueMDPicker
    BlueMDPicker Posts: 7,569
    edited October 2005
    Time to kick back and groove to some Wynonna! :eek:
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  • brettw22
    brettw22 Posts: 7,623
    edited October 2005
    internet streaming techno to keep "Project Clean Apartment" going....:D
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  • danger boy
    danger boy Posts: 15,722
    edited October 2005
    very cool there Brett. good work man.
    PolkFest 2012, who's going>?
    Vancouver, Canada Sept 30th, 2012 - Madonna concert :cheesygrin:
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