Unmountable boot, diskette seek error

Hi, Got a bad problem here. Was using my Dell Inspiron 530 (Running Windows XP) a few nights back. It crashed. When I tried to reboot, I got a blue screen with the "Unmountable boot volume" error. I went into setup and reloaded defaults. Then I started getting a Diskette drive 0 seek failure and when I continue, I get the blue screen again. I managed to get into the recovery console and did a chkdsk /p - it didn't seem to make a difference. I can boot from CD though. Can anyone help me out? Thanks!

Hi, Sorry to hear of the problem with your Dell. Its sometimes possible to recover from this error….however in a lot of cases it ends up with either a repair installation, a format and reinstall, or the purchase of a new hard drive. We can make some suggestions that maybe will help you resolve the issues in a less severe way, but before we do so, it's important that you review and check your most recent back up/copy /archive of all your important data files photos, music, address books, emails, videos, letters etc., everything in fact that is important to you and that you would not like to be lost permanently. Is it up to date, accurate, reproducible and kept safe on removable media? Even if you only have a few things that are not in your backup ..it would be best to back them up now……whilst you still have a chance to do so…… if your disc is failing then its important that you only boot up once and copy off everything all together , ………..multiple attempts to boot will quickly "finish off " a failing disc. You will either need to remove your hard drive taking all personal safety and ESD (antistatic) precautions and install it in either a caddy or a different machine so you copy your stuff to removable media, (flash drive or external USB drive) or use another operating system to copy stuff off, Linux Puppy is recommended for this.. If your hard drive has suffered electro mechanical failure then neither of the two options will be available to you, and the only way to proceed is to consider using the services of a data recovery laboratory to access the data.( this is usually only financially viable if the data is of high value) as the costs of data recovery in these circumstances are likely to be high. Post back if you need a detailed step by step on using Linux Puppy to copy aff your undamaged data. Regards paws

Hi paws, Thanks for the quick reply. I have an external hard drive and I back up all my stuff pretty routinely. I was also able to boot into safe mode last night and I updated all my backups anyway. So data loss is not a concern. Sorry, I forgot that in my original post. After doing a chkdsk /p, I got the seek error, but was able to get on in Safe Mode, then log into windows normally, but that's still booting from the CD and still getting the seek error. Where should I go from here? D

Hi Ok that's good… Previously you ran chkdsk with the p switch…. i.e. chkdsk /p Please run chkdsk again, but this time with the r switch….i.e. chkdsk /r Tell me if it finds any errors this time Note this scan may take a while……hour or two etc. Regards paws

The drive seek error is because you reset the BIOS settings and enabled your floppy drive, which you do not have. Therefore you get a disk seek error, indicating it cannot find the floppy drive. Going into the BIOS and disabling your floppy drive will resolve that problem. Its a harmless warning that you can ignore until you get your system running properly if you want.

Problem solved. Thank you.

That's good to hear Glad you got if fixed Regards paws