Windows did not start successfully

[bpitts]

While listening to Pandora the other day, my computer suddenly advised there is a problem with windows and shut down. I let it sit a minute, turned it back on, and no problems. I shut down my computer last night and when I tried turning it back on today it says "windows did not start successfully"
I have tried every option it gives me and it looks like windows is getting ready to start, then I get a blue screen and it says "unmountable-boot-problem"

I have an IBM ThinkPak running Windows XP

Thanks

[bpitts]

sorry - it says unmountable-boot-volume

not problem.... ugh - sorry

[spacecat9]

Your hard disk has Failed you will need a new one they wear out. well maybee else a virus or deleted system files maybee caused by a virus.

was the drive noisy and click clack a bit they don't actually need to be noisy but often are. theres a chance that on a cool morning it will function again briefly if you want to back up any files. well some times this happens i once put one in a freezer to get it to work cool hard ware works better 5 minute gave me five. and it did but this is not advisable moister and all but i got my assignment back up 5000 words not to lose. oh yeah before you try that try a dos boot or see an expert if its really important stuff.

but i would try formating and reinstalling the system first before i laid out extra cash.

[BC_Programmer]

there is likely nothing wrong with the hard disk AT ALL.

this is actually a known problem that can occur with the NTFS file system over time- I had the problem as well.

the first thing to try would be to boot from the XP CD to the recovery console (you have the cd right?)
(of you don't have the CD, you can find a recovery console CD Here

with luck, the Recovery console will find your windows installation and let you log onto it. At this point you should run "Chkdsk /f"

once that completes, reboot. If it STILL doesn't work, try again- this time perform a "chkdsk /r" (be warned, this will take a LONG time)

if it STILL doesn't work...


then your in the same boat as I was- It turned out to be a problem related to using the NTFS filesystem on the boot partition.


I solved it by using a Ubuntu CD and copying all my important data to external media- then I resized my partitions so that my boot partition (C) was a 32GB FAT32 volume and my data partition (D) was consuming the rest.

good luck!