Compaq Presario 2200 - Win.XP sp.1 - ram not known - hdd size not known

The laptop won't boot from the hdd due to Unmountable_Boot_Volume.  The previous owner 'caused' this to happen by indiscriminately loading music files onto the root of C: from an external hdd.  I know, or think I know, how to effect a cure by booting from an XP cd but the dvd drive will not boot from any cd including the XP cd, Knoppix 4.02 LiveCD and an NTFS4Dos bootable cd, all of which boot successfully on other hardware.

The boot sequence has been changed in bios and the dvd drive can be heard 'seeking' for a short while in the bootup sequence then nothing else.  Obviously I could just throw in another dvd if I CARED to fork out about $150.--, and may eventually have to do that, but thought someone might have something else for me to try (cleaning perhaps) before committing to such expense.

Thank youThere is i still believe from years ago a certain limit to how MANY files can reside in the root folder. If you can hook up the drive as a slave in a known working system and clean out those music files you might be able to re-install it and have it boot properly.
There are adapter cables for about ten bucks that will allow you to slave that drive into a desktop machine...
Careful what you delete ...if you're not sure of a file leave it. But the music files should be fairly obvious.
After finishing i suggest running chkdsk and defrag on that drive before you attempt to boot from it.

Hope this helps.

patio.  8-)Thank you Patio.

After reading your reply I have already ordered the adapter kit.  I'll post back later with result.



Hdd is a Seagate ST93015A 30gb file system [highlight]NTFS.[/highlight]

I slaved it on a desktop running Win.98se and used NTFS4Dos successfully to access files, could not locate .wav files but only 100+kb available on disk.  

Chkdsk /f in Win.98se showed the following message(s):
Recovering orphaned file I_MIGH~1.WAV (59538) into Directory File 59535
Recovering orphaned file I_MIGHT_BE_WRONG.WAV (59538) into Directory File 59535

(Plus a few more like the above, all .wav files.  I couldn't find any of the files on the disk.)

Also displayed were:
Adding 8 Bad Clusters to the Bad Clusters File
Correcting errors in the Master File Table's (MFT) Data Attribute.
Correcting errors in the Master File Table's (MFT) Bitmap Attribute.
Correcting erros in the Volume Bitmap.
Windows has made corrections to the File System.

- followed by  breakdown of the hdd's space allocations.

Seagate diagnostics now shows the file system is now  [highlight]FAT32[/highlight] and brought up 51 instances of:
The following Sectors MAY be damaged
LBA:  117111
STATUS : Write-reallocation SUCCESSful!
USAGE: Unresolvable.

A second run of Seagate diagnostics showed a further 9 instances of the above.

Still using Win.98se I tried to format the disk but Format hung after 10% and could not be canceled.   So slaved the disk on a desktop running XP Home SP.2 and again tried Format which hung after about 10% and again could not be canceled.  I canceled the process in Task Manager and got the message "This disk cannot be formatted".  Tried Partition Magic which formatted the partition but displayed the format as "Raw".

So - out with the big guns.  Plugged up the hdd as Master, booted from the XP Home cd (genuine version) and ran Setup which, after accepting the EULA, produced the message "The partition is either too full, damaged, not formatted or formatted with an incomplete file system.  To continue installing Windows, Setup must format the partition."  ACCEPTED that after which Setup displayed "Setup cannot format this partition." and setup had to be terminated.

A final run of Seagate still shows the file system as FAT32 and displays:
ATA Full Test Result: Failed
Long Test Failed (date & time)

So I guess the disk is physically or electronically busted but does this "Windows has made corrections to the File System." mean that chkdsk run in Win.98 changed the file system from NTFS to FAT32?

Apologies for such a long post, couldn't cut it down by much.

ThanksI doubt that chkdsk 98 would have even run if it was an NTFS setup but i've seen stranger things before...

Windows made changes to the file system means it attempted to fix corrupt file entries, directory's etc...

NTFS wasn't AROUND in 98 days so it probably would have said cannot recognise file system on this drive.

I suggest re-slaving the drive and trying to recover whatever data you need. Not passing the drive fitness tests is definitely not a good sign.

You might be having funeral services for that HDD unfortunately...

patio.  8-) Quote

You might be having funeral services for that HDD unfortunately...