Tag Archives: Keywords

Troubleshooting a hard drive. Keywords: XP, repair, Symantec, drive letter, shutdown, NTFS, live CD.?

I tried to troubleshoot a Dell computer with the Windows XP media center edition. Windows appears to be starting up, but it reaches the welcome screen and stays there. I tried booting from a Symantec recovery disc from a Norton Systemworks Premier package in hopes of restoring the most recent settings, but the software couldn’t see the hard drive. I tried to repair the installation with a Windows XP OS CD, but it didn’t seem to see the hard drive, either. I thought I could at least leave an Ubuntu Linux live CD so the owner could access the Internet, and after it loaded, it could see the hard drive. I tried to click on the main partition, and the following error message was displayed:

Cannot mount volume.
Unable to mount the volume.
Details
$LogFile indicates unclean shutdown (0,0) Failed to mount ‘/dev/sda2′: Operation not supported Mount is denied because NTFS is marked to be in use.

There was more, but I’m running out of space. Is there any way to get back into Windows as it was?

Keywords: Vista Basic, OEM, recovery, retail upgrade, full version, recovery console…?

I know someone whose Windows installation has crashed. Her laptop came with Vista Basic, but it refuses to boot, and she can’t find any external recovery media. The recovery partition may or may not be accessible.

If I were to pick up the Vista Basic retail upgrade, would I be able to boot from it and use recovery options to fix the existing installation? If not, would the Vista Basic full version let me?

She uses a Toshiba Satellite, and a disk error occurs after startup.

I’m familiar with Linux and live CDs, but I’d like to know my options for repairing the existing Windows installation.

Thanks in advance.

Troubleshooting a hard drive. Keywords: XP, repair, Symantec, drive letter, shutdown, NTFS, live CD.?

I tried to troubleshoot a Dell computer with the Windows XP media center edition. Windows appears to be starting up, but it reaches the welcome screen and stays there. I tried booting from a Symantec recovery disc from a Norton Systemworks Premier package in hopes of restoring the most recent settings, but the software couldn’t see the hard drive. I tried to repair the installation with a Windows XP OS CD, but it didn’t seem to see the hard drive, either. I thought I could at least leave an Ubuntu Linux live CD so the owner could access the Internet, and after it loaded, it could see the hard drive. I tried to click on the main partition, and the following error message was displayed:

Cannot mount volume.
Unable to mount the volume.
Details
$LogFile indicates unclean shutdown (0,0) Failed to mount ‘/dev/sda2′: Operation not supported Mount is denied because NTFS is marked to be in use.

There was more, but I’m running out of space. Is there any way to get back into Windows as it was?