Booting failure on laptop...

Calling all yrags...

Published on April 22, 2005 By EventHorizon In Personal Computing

Ok...

I have an old-ish Dell Inspiron 2500...my little brother was playing 'runescape' and it froze then gave a BSOD... Now, I cannot boot into windows anymore.

What will happen is this:

Turn on computer> Shows 'dell' setup screen> Gives a black screen saying 'operating system not found.'

If I leave the computer unplugged for a period of time (10 mins or so) It will show the XP bootscreen for 5-10 seconds, then Ill get a BSOD saying 'Unmountable drive volume.'

STOP: 0x000000ED (0x837D3A88, 0xC00000006, 0x00000000, 0x000000000)

Ill hit the power button, then turn it back on, and it says 'operating system not found' again. Ive tried to enter safe mode when I see the XP screen, but after I select 'Boot in safe mode' it loads for a little while, then BSODs again with the 'unmountable drive volume.'

Im worried that the HDD may have bitten the dust...Is there any way for me to get data off of the disk?

Or maybe its not broken...

Can anyone help?

Comments (Page 2)

EventHorizon

on May 06, 2005

...youngsters....yikes...

Sheesh, quit twistin' my words around.

Well, It'd be nice to get the whole thing running (not crucial though), but there are some files on the drive (Pictures, music etc.) that need to be extracted.

Oh, so an adapter for 'it.' Hmm, what kind of adapter are we lookin' for here...Does it have a specific name?

yrag

on May 06, 2005

You're looking for a Laptop Hard Drive Adapter to Desktop Adapter (2.5" to 3.5")(40/80). If there's a "Mom & Pop" computer shop around, they'll probably loan you one to get the files off or for that matter, do it for you. Frankly, I don't think you're going to get anything off the drive, but....

EventHorizon

on May 06, 2005

Frankly, I don't think you're going to get anything off the drive, but....

Ah, I wouldnt be so sure... If it's showing the XP boot screen and still has enough of XP left to give me a friggin' BSOD...I think there's a good chance the drive is not (totally) corrupted.

Allrighty, thanks for the help...Ill see what I can salvage...

ZubaZ

on May 07, 2005

With knoppix, could I hook up to the LAN here and transfer the files that way?

If the network adapter is fairly current you can.

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Jafo

on May 08, 2005

If there's one drive brand I'd steer clear of it's IBM.....

Drop those letters each back one space in the alphabet and you'll get a better machine....

HAL ....

PurrBall

on May 08, 2005

When my Deskstar died I just got Maxtor.

You may be able to get the XP start files out, but that's all. It's saying goodbye 10101010101010101010101010101010101010's as we speak.

Mine completely went in a matter of minutes.

Jafo

on May 08, 2005

I was given a 'Bigfoot' once....had 2 gig of music videos on it....but took some 'coaxing' with a hammer to get them out.....literally...

EventHorizon

on May 08, 2005

Drop those letters each back one space in the alphabet and you'll get a better machine....
HAL

Oh thats clever...

Jafo

on May 08, 2005

EH....now you know where 'HAL' came from...

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