Anyone here a computer coroner?

[HereSince1628]

Windows (XP) is shuting down during the boot and giving us an
"unmountable_boot_volume" message.

It recommends going to safe mode and restarting but it gives
us the same error message.

Do we pronounce it dead? I can take it. Just tell me the truth.

[democracyindanger]

1. google is your friend

http://www.techtips4u.com/kb/sw/SW00014.htm

When booting up to Win XP you may get a error that reads "Unmountable Boot Volume". This is probably because your boot.ini file is messed up.
So, what do you do about it, panic and try to mount your boot in your computer...... No that is probably not a good idea.

You can boot to the XP cd and when you see the Welcome to setup press the letter R
You will get a dos prompt
Then type "chkdsk /p" without the quotes and hit enter
When that is done type "fixboot" and hit enter
"Y" and enter at the prompt
Then type "exit" and hit enter
The system will now reboot into Windows

If for some reason that don't work for you, you can boot to the recovery console like above and...
Type "chkdsk /r" then enter
When done type "exit" and hit enter.
This will take longer, but the system should boot back into Windows.
...

[lateo]

2. Or...

the hard disk is just plain dead.

[HereSince1628]

3. Thanks...but about booting the XP cd...?

I found the XP cd, got it in the drive and powered up and I never got to a "welcome to setup" Instead I got a similar message.

Amy idea what I'm doing wrong?

[democracyindanger]

4. Didja press 'R'?

The actual syntax of messages can vary. But try hitting 'R' anyway.

And lateo might be right--your HD might be dead--but I wanted to give you some hope. ;)

[HereSince1628]

5. Thanks for being hopeful...

sigh, it's looking a bit bleak,

But I'll remain hopeful, I don't really know what I'm doing and I'll readily accept that.

...I'm not getting to anything that looks like setup. It'd be my first lost hard drive among 4 computers I've had. I suppose I can suck that up and take it.