Sometimes you want to kick your computer. Ok, sometimes you want to chuck your computer out of the window. If you get the “Unmountable Boot Volume” message, this may be one of those times. Before you go reformatting your drive, reloading the OS, and restoring all your applications and data; you may want to try a few simple things. You will need your XP installation disk to do this. Insert the CD and then reboot your computer. You will see a prompt, if your bios is configured right, that says something like “press any key to boot from CD.” Press some key on your keyboard to start the XP install CD. When you see the main menu, select “R” to enter the recovery console. This will ask you to enter the adminstrator password. Go ahead and do that. If you don’t know the administrator password, try entering a blank password, i.e. no password. Sometimes that works. If you don’t know your administrator password, then I’m afraid you’re out of luck, unless you want to purchase winternals tools to reset that.
Okay, you have entered the recovery console, what next? Simple type “chkdsk /p” . Lose the quotes, of course. Once that is done, type “fixmbr” . Again, no quotes. That will ask you to confirm. Type “y” . Type “exit” . Your computer will restart. This may, or may not, solve the problem. If it doesn’t, next time try “chkdsk /r” instead. I hope that helps. As always, feel free to email me with questions.
