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How to recover from a hard drive crash

December 6, 2006 › Sandy McMurray | comment

One of my clients called me recently, with panic in her voice. Her PC had been showing symptoms of a hard drive problem. When she turned it off then on again, the PC did not start as usual. Instead, it displayed an error message, then stalled.

Uh-oh.

After some detective work and several Google searches, we were able to recover her hard drive long enough to back up her data.

error: Unmountable Boot Volume in Windows XP

Although this error usually appears after a hard drive has failed, it can also appear right after you install a new hard drive, if you hook it up wrong.

Before you assume that all your hard drive data is lost, try the following procedure:
- insert Windows XP CD-ROM
- restart computer
- choose "boot from CD"
(for Dell computers, press F12 at Dell logo)
- select CD-ROM as primary boot device
- Windows XP Setup begins
- select R or F2 to Repair a Windows installation
- choose RECOVERY CONSOLE

Note that the Recovery Console is a command line interface. From here on, you will type your commands on the keyboard.

From the Recovery Console:
- type CHKDSK /R then press ENTER key
- when asked "Are you sure?" press Y key then ENTER key
- wait while CHKDSK goes to 100%
- when C: prompt returns, type FIXBOOT C: then ENTER key
(or fixboot d: if working from a D: prompt instead of C:)
- when asked "Are you sure?" press Y key then ENTER key
- wait for FIXBOOT procedure to end
- type EXIT then press ENTER key

If the system does NOT boot to Windows at this point, you can assume that the hard drive is toast.

However, if the system does boot to Windows, you should be able to use the hard drive long enough to back up your data. It hasn't been "healed" from whatever caused the crash -- don't assume that everything is fine. Back up your important data ASAP and go shopping for a new hard drive.

December 6, 2006 › Sandy McMurray | comment on this item