6 replies to this topic

[RussF92767]

Hello all -

     I have a Dell Inspirion Laptop with Window 7 Home Premium Installed.  Two days ago I get the BSOD with the words "Unmountable Boot Volume" and the following error code:  0x000000ED (0xFFFFFA8006384CD0; 0xAFFFFFFFFC0000185; 0x0000000000000000; 0x00000000000000000)

     The drive had two partitions on it, C: and D:  (I changed the DVD drive to E:)  

     System Recovery just runs and run and runs.  I let run over night and it is still attempting repairs the next day.

     I restart the system and boot into the Command Line.  When I go to the Command Line The C: Drive, which should be the Windows Drive, says it is the "Recovery" drive.  The D: drive is still listing as normal, so I am somewhat accessing the hard drive.

     The X: Drive is suppose to be the "System Restore Drive".

     When I do "chkdsk /f /r" on the C: drive I get that everything is OK.

 

     I did a "bootrec /fixboot" and a "bootrec /fixmbr"  Both said they were successful.

     Rebooting brings me back to the BSOD.

     I booted the computer from a Ubuntu CD.  It says that all of the DVD on the D: Drive is still there and listed under the title I gave to that drive.  When I try to access the C: drive it will tell me it is "unable to mount"

 

     If I try to boot in Safe Mode, it stops at classpnp.sys and just hangs.

     If I try to navigate around the C: drive from the command prompt, I can not find anything familiar.  I can't find the Windows folder, can't find anything.

     I have tried to do a System Restore and it says I have no former restore points (which is odd, since I know I created some)

     "Last Know Good Configuration" just brings me back to BSOD.

     The C: had NOTHING valuable on it.  All of that data was backed up and I can restore it.  The data on the D: drive was voluminous (500 gb) and NOT backed up, so if I do a complete wipe of the hard drive I will lose a lot of data.  I have no means of backing it up short of purchasing an external hard drive and booting the laptop in Ubuntu and transferring it off.  I don't mind losing the data if I have to, but if I can save it, I want to.

    There were no odd or erratic behaviors before any of this happened.

     Any idea on how I can fix this?

[RussF92767]

I was able to navigate around a bit b choosing to load drivers from a Windows 7 Install disk.  I found the following.

The "E" drive appears to be the former "Windows" volume and would contain the balance of the 1 TB hard drive.  I can not access it.  When I try to, the computer just hangs.  If I try to access it from CMD prompt, it times out.  

Again, the drive has two partitions and I can access the other partitions, Recovery, Tivo and Boot, I just can not access the "E" partition.

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Edited by RussF92767, 17 February 2014 - 08:06 AM.

[8210GUY]

From what you have said you are probably over my head with this, but while you wait for someone with greater insight, I mention the following, as I know moving\changing partitions can kill systems, now as this is a laptop, it is unlikely to have more than 1 hard drive, as such the drive could have a few partitions on it.

 

Now it will have 2 partitions at a minimum, the OS drive (C Drive) and the recovery partition (usually hidden), there may be a further partition (D Drive) for storage, there could be systems with different approaches, but this is what I see all the time.

 

Now as such all these partitions are on a single drive, and what I do know is if you change the OS Drive letter the system will be lost, because the way it works is by changing the location of where certain elements can be found, can make a system fail to run.

I appreciate you didn't change the C Drive, but given it is still the same physical drive I have to wonder if what you did has altered the drive enough for it to fail to find the recovery partition any more ?

 

Sorry I don't have anything more specific, but I mention it incase it helps show up anything, hope you get a result.

[RussF92767]

I didn't change the C: designation, but from what I have read that when a "Recovery" partition is created, it can change the name of the drive to protect data, which is all good and well, but I have to be able to access the data!

If I try to "Start Windows Normally" it will start down the road of accessing that partition, but then quits.

I've done those tasks in the past on other computers and never had it alter the partition designation, why this one?  I suppose there is a first time for everything.

[8210GUY]

Yes I know the "C Drive" was not touched, but what I am saying is basically could there be a chance that due to the way the drive as a whole was set up by the makers, is there a chance that any deep registry entries\markers may have been affected as it is physically just a single drive to cause this ?

 

I have never been a fan of partitions, but I know many are, and I know makers often include them so a user can save files to the partition, then if a reinstall is needed they can wipe the C Drive without issue, and the files on the D Drive are untouched, but I have no idea what effect changing these can have on a system, but I offer the thought incase it inspires anything.

 

One thing you could try and hope it still works, is to recover the system to the factory state, I appreciate you may have been wanting to do this, but I am unsure if you have tried accessing this at boot, Dell systems (as best I can see) allow you to access the recovery console via pressing CTRL + F11 as the system starts, assuming the settings required for this have not been corrupted during what's happened, but if you can access that then you should be able to recover to the factory state (needless to say back up any data you can access first), I can only hope that this helps.

[RussF92767]

Dell's ePSA "Pre-Boot Assessment" gave me a hard drive failure with a "Status=7"  According to message boards, this means a drive failure.    

I ran the test again and low and behold, it passed!    

Still can't access that drive though.  If I can't find a way into the new "E" drive, I am going to move data off the drive through Ubuntu and wipe the drive.  Not how I want to spend my free time, but I feel like I am left with few options.

[8210GUY]

Well no it's not the best answer you want to have, but in this case I honestly believe this will be your fastest solution, save what you can (prime example of why backup's are heavily suggested), and recover to the factory state via the CTRL + F11 at boot, others may have deeper insight and suggestions, but when a system is seriously upset, I find this the fastest and surest way to get back to a working state, that more importantly a stable state, sorry I have no better suggestion to offer, hope you get a result.

Edited by 8210GUY, 17 February 2014 - 01:48 PM.