My wife’s Dell Inspiron 6000 has ceased to start, coming up with a blue screen and a message saying unmountable boot volume. I know the HDD is fine. It’s XP that has screwed itself up.
How do I get the data off it? I have tried various Linux live CDs but none seems to allow me to access the data on the HDD and transfer it to networked storage.
Also, how do I initialise the on disk reformat/reinstall partition? I know there’s one there as it shows up as a 35gb hard drive and it’s actually a 40gb.
It’s an elderly Dell. I found the drive (a hitachi travelstar) is dated 2005. I know my wife has had the laptop for a couple of years and that it’s out of warranty. I’ve fixed several blue-screen errors before but this time it’ll show the XP progress bar but then comes up with a blue screen with the unmountable boot volume error.
Using the 40 gb (35actual) restore will make it same as the day you got it from Dell. All your or her data files ans such will be gone.
Try putting the XP in and have it repair the
PS Dell has a nice user-to-user forum at http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/ Try your question there too.
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just give dell a call. i have done this a few times and thy can talk you through it . good luck
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Firstly, if you’re under warranty, then call Dell. If not, write down the STOP error code you see on the blue screen (something like 0x00000B1) and google it. You can find out what caused the error and find some step-by-step instructions on how to fix it.
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Most Linux live CDs should allow you to access NTFS partitions, if they don’t then there could be something wrong with the HDD (not necessarily a hardware problem). Other option is to remove the HDD and connect it to an USB enclosure and connect it to another computer as an external hard disk.
To launch DELL system restore, press Ctrl+ F11 at the very first BIOS splash screen (with DELL logo and progress bar, before loading Windows). Then choose Restore, and follow on screen instructions. However, doing this will erase all the data currently on HDD, so backup first !! If you cant launch system restore (if your restore partition is damaged or deleted) then reinstall using the supplied Windows reinstallation CD. I recommend this , since restoring will put back everything that originally came with the notebook (i.e. all the trialware and other unnecessary programs and old drivers).
A hard disk advertized as 40GB actually contains 40×1000^3 bytes, not 40×1024^3 as we would normally expect. Therefore when you calculate the actual size in Giga bytes (computer term) it will be around 37.25GB. If your computer also have a restore partition, then that will take at least another couple of GBs making the available free space somewhere around 35GB.
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