[lesmimes]

hi,

i am using xp home on an hp pc (therefore no recovery discs). after a blackout, i got the unmountable boot volume blue screen. i have searched the forums, talked to hp and got the same answers. the problem is none of them work.

i cannot restart in safe mode or last good configuration. a friend made the 6 xp set up floppy disks for me and theat gets me into the repair and once there, chkdsk does not work. i have tried both /p and /r and both times i get the message:
autochk.exe could not be located in either the startup directory or the cdrom drive.
type the full path <including drive letter> for the location of autochk.exe

i tried fixboot and it says it fixes something, but on restart i am stuck back in the blue screen.

one of the hp guys suggested i install an earlier version of windows, so i can backup files before a full system restore. i found my old office 97 cdrom, but i don't know how to install it with a whacked out system.

it just occurred to me that i am dumb. office is not an operating system and i know that. i have a version of xp pro. will that work? if so, how do i install?

help!!!!

lm

 

[norton850]

It looks like the recovery console is looking for autochk on the CD which you don't have. Does it work if you type a:\autochk.exe

 

[lesmimes]

nope. i get autochk.exe cannot be found in the specified location

 

[PGJG]

I have just fixed a similar problem on a friends PC (Compaq 5000 series). He was getting the same problem. I'll explain what I done. I did everything that you have tried such as the six disks and chkdsk didn't work either. I have also went to the manufacturers website but they were looking payment for a disk which I think they should have supplied in the first place.
Anyway I took the hard drive out of the friends computer and put it into my own as a slave drive, something for which I was a bit wary of at first. I was lucky. My own computer found the second hard drive and set it up automatically. I think it has to be done manually on some PC's. I then ran AVG Free Edition Antivirus software on the offending drive. It found 5 viruses and 3 of them were in the boot sector which were preventing the PC from booting. I removed the hard drive from my PC and put it back into the friends one. His PC booted up, no problem. I installed AVG Free Edition on his PC and found another 578 viruses. Some were the same virus downloaded over and over again but saved in different folders. AVG can be downloaded free from AVG I must sound like an ad for AVG but it is good. If you have a second PC or can find a friend who is willing to let you open his PC, it'll be worth a try.If this works, you could also run a Spyware program.

 

[lesmimes]

thanks. that's basically what i did. except that all of my data was corrupted and they had to run a data retrieval program and now it works and i am once again a happy camper.

 

[PGJG]

Glad i could help in some way.

 

[cozza]

im having exzactly the same problem as you. I bought a new harddrive and installed xp onto it. Used my old harddrive with all my files on it as a slave but whenever i click to access the drive it says 'The disk in drive F is not romated. Do you want to format it now. Yes - no. I obvously click no. I have posted another thread onto this forum located at: http://forums.techguy.org/showthread.php?p=2772777#post2772777 Please help