MountainNetworks
IS-IT--Management
- Apr 24, 2003
- 74
A client called me in to fix a failing Windows XP Pro Boot. The machine was in a "stop" state complaining of an unmountable volume.
What happened? According to the client, there were two people accessing a program at the same time in a non-networked version of an accounting program. One user accesses the system via remote using "GoToMyPc." The program seg-faulted and did the traditional "send error" deal. From here, I'm not sure if the user rebooted themselves, or if the machine rebooted itself. In either case, the machine blue-screened with the "unmountable volume" stop error. My analysis of the system leads to the conclusion that the user actions did not cause the problem. The events merely occured in consecutive order which made their "boss" point the finger of blame on the users.
In the "stopped" state, the machine couldn't even be booted into safe mode. Out came the XP Install CD. I tried booting into repair mode. XP is different from Windows 2000 in that you only get command line repair tools.
Commands fixmbr or bootfix seemed to risk unrecoverable erasure of all data along with the partition tables. So I ended up doing chkdisk /r. I had to do this a few times. The first time it quit at 22%, the next at 51%, then 68% and again at 72%. Finally the chkdisk /r command succeeded and the system was able to boot in normal mode.
A couple of times I was tempted to execute the fixmbr command, but decided to keep trying chkdisk /r because each time it proceeded a little further. My next step would have been to try and make the drive a slave of another computer and copy the data, then reinsert the drive into the original system and try things like fixmbr and bootfix. Only as a last resort would I have reformatted the drive.
Persistence paid off in this case, though I don't understand the science behind what happened. Hope this experience helps someone else.
What happened? According to the client, there were two people accessing a program at the same time in a non-networked version of an accounting program. One user accesses the system via remote using "GoToMyPc." The program seg-faulted and did the traditional "send error" deal. From here, I'm not sure if the user rebooted themselves, or if the machine rebooted itself. In either case, the machine blue-screened with the "unmountable volume" stop error. My analysis of the system leads to the conclusion that the user actions did not cause the problem. The events merely occured in consecutive order which made their "boss" point the finger of blame on the users.
In the "stopped" state, the machine couldn't even be booted into safe mode. Out came the XP Install CD. I tried booting into repair mode. XP is different from Windows 2000 in that you only get command line repair tools.
Commands fixmbr or bootfix seemed to risk unrecoverable erasure of all data along with the partition tables. So I ended up doing chkdisk /r. I had to do this a few times. The first time it quit at 22%, the next at 51%, then 68% and again at 72%. Finally the chkdisk /r command succeeded and the system was able to boot in normal mode.
A couple of times I was tempted to execute the fixmbr command, but decided to keep trying chkdisk /r because each time it proceeded a little further. My next step would have been to try and make the drive a slave of another computer and copy the data, then reinsert the drive into the original system and try things like fixmbr and bootfix. Only as a last resort would I have reformatted the drive.
Persistence paid off in this case, though I don't understand the science behind what happened. Hope this experience helps someone else.