Scary computer problem
On Wednesday night I was doing my usual thing with the laptop, keeping an eye on my Ebay auctions etc, and had left my laptop for a few minutes while I checked on dinner . When I came back instead of my login screen (5 minutes before it locks out the screensaver) I saw a BSOD with the wonderful message:
unmountable_boot_volume
Stop: 0x000000ED (0X8A730590,0XC000000E,0X00000000,0X00000000)
Message said to try rebooting, then if that didn't work to try uninstalling my new software/hardware in Safe mode (none). Reboot got as far as the Windows XP splash screen before the same message. I tried to load in safe mode, a bunch of files started loading, it got as far as showing "mup.sys" on the screen where it hung for about 30 seconds before giving me the same BSOD.
I pulled the hard drive and reseated it. Did not help. After a Google search with the desktop I tried loading and booting from my Windows XP CD, and hit R for Recovery Console. It got as far as going to the c: drive with the following message:
c:\The specified drive is not valid or there is no disk in the drive
Typing chkdsk of any flavor does no good.
I then installed the hard drive in a sata to usb enclosure and tried plugging it into my desktop. After a while the USB setup completed and it came back with some message that the drive was not available (which makes no sense, when I tried to boot the laptop into safe mode the drive was being read- it loaded a bunch of files before the BSOD popped up).
Thursday I took it to a friend who works on computers for a living. He was able to find both the Dell diagnostics partition and the recovery partition, but the main C: drive showed as not existing. He thought it was a corrupted NTFS table. He found a program which could see the data on the partition, but had no way of copying it unless he had the paid version of the software ($100) and the drive enclosure I had left at home (I had put the drive back into the laptop).
When he set up the usb enclosure with his laptop and tried to plug it in he had the same problems as I had, where it seemed like Windows Explorer froze (it did not do anything for almost 3 minutes) and he was unable to see anything.
His diagnosis- hardware failure. The drive is also making a click-click-clicking noise.
Computer is a Dell Vostro 1500, 2 years old no more warranty, Windows XP Home, drive is a Seagate 160 GB. All patched and updated, I was using it about 5-6 hours a day and it was shut down properly each time it ran. Behind a firewall and using Avast Antivirus, also scanned regularly with Malwarebytes Anti-malware.
If anyone has had any experience with a data recovery service that is reasonably priced and competent (sometimes mutually exclusive, I know) please share. I discovered my most recent backup is April 1st (no, the irony is not lost on me). I have a lot of stuff on that drive that would take months to rebuild. Some data is just not replaceable (emails).
Thanks.
unmountable_boot_volume
Stop: 0x000000ED (0X8A730590,0XC000000E,0X00000000,0X00000000)
Message said to try rebooting, then if that didn't work to try uninstalling my new software/hardware in Safe mode (none). Reboot got as far as the Windows XP splash screen before the same message. I tried to load in safe mode, a bunch of files started loading, it got as far as showing "mup.sys" on the screen where it hung for about 30 seconds before giving me the same BSOD.
I pulled the hard drive and reseated it. Did not help. After a Google search with the desktop I tried loading and booting from my Windows XP CD, and hit R for Recovery Console. It got as far as going to the c: drive with the following message:
c:\The specified drive is not valid or there is no disk in the drive
Typing chkdsk of any flavor does no good.
I then installed the hard drive in a sata to usb enclosure and tried plugging it into my desktop. After a while the USB setup completed and it came back with some message that the drive was not available (which makes no sense, when I tried to boot the laptop into safe mode the drive was being read- it loaded a bunch of files before the BSOD popped up).
Thursday I took it to a friend who works on computers for a living. He was able to find both the Dell diagnostics partition and the recovery partition, but the main C: drive showed as not existing. He thought it was a corrupted NTFS table. He found a program which could see the data on the partition, but had no way of copying it unless he had the paid version of the software ($100) and the drive enclosure I had left at home (I had put the drive back into the laptop).
When he set up the usb enclosure with his laptop and tried to plug it in he had the same problems as I had, where it seemed like Windows Explorer froze (it did not do anything for almost 3 minutes) and he was unable to see anything.
His diagnosis- hardware failure. The drive is also making a click-click-clicking noise.
Computer is a Dell Vostro 1500, 2 years old no more warranty, Windows XP Home, drive is a Seagate 160 GB. All patched and updated, I was using it about 5-6 hours a day and it was shut down properly each time it ran. Behind a firewall and using Avast Antivirus, also scanned regularly with Malwarebytes Anti-malware.
If anyone has had any experience with a data recovery service that is reasonably priced and competent (sometimes mutually exclusive, I know) please share. I discovered my most recent backup is April 1st (no, the irony is not lost on me). I have a lot of stuff on that drive that would take months to rebuild. Some data is just not replaceable (emails).
Thanks.