Okay so, my coworker was having computer problems and brought in her desktop for me to fix. There were several problems that I was able to take care of, including the removal of 4 viruses. Her user account settings were corrupted so, I brought the computer home to create a new one and restore her document files. I upgraded to service pack 3 and everything seemed fine. Now I get an error message when I try to boot up the machine. UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME. I asked her to locate any system restore CDs, but she hasn't been able to find them. The computer is A Dell P4 with 512MB RAM. What am I going to do? She's going to kill me!

__________________

Model number? I can't get Dell's web site to work at the moment but I think you can order recovery disks.

__________________
EVGA 650i mobo with Intel e8400 Core 2 Duo
4 gigs OCZ 800 ddr2 ram and 160 gig sata hard drive
EVGA GTS 250 SC - Windows 7 - 64 bit
See my test at http://www.pcpitstop.com/betapit/sec.asp?conid=23014579

use any XP SP3 cd... i have several at work... if you get one from dell it should be a light blue color.boot to the xp install, go to the repair console and use FIXBOOT.
you may be able to do it w/ a sp2 disk.. in fact you SHOULD be able to do that, as it just recreates the boot links.

Also use the fixmbr command to repair the master boot record.

__________________
I'm here, you may now make your next two wishes.

Beat Me, Whip Me, Make Me Use Windows!!

Every Piece of Electronic Equipment runs on a finite amount of smoke. The systems are normally very efficient at reclaiming the smoke and recycling it, however, should you do something to let the smoke out, your system will become useless.

SAVE THE SMOKE !!

New PC :
New: Phenom 9500 Quad 2.2, 4gb ram XP Pro 64-bit (Sata 0), XP Pro 32 bit (sata 1), 40 eide HDD (music), Pioneer Blu-Ray Burner, HP Multidisk CD-RW/DVD-Rom, 2x250 Seagate HDD's, ATI Radeon 3870, Asus M3A32-MVP Deluxe WiFi-AP

Old PC:
P4 1.5GHz, 768 Ram, hda-80Gb (80Ubuntu), DVD R/RW

Most Dell Computers come with a recovery partition utility. Usually pressing Ctrl+F11 as the computer is starting should get you into the recovery utility so you can restore computer to how it was when the user first bought it - make sure you have a backup copy of your friends documents though.

but remember.. recovery partition does just that.. takes it back how ever many years to how the computer WAS. You will need to reinstall every program... re set every setting.... and

remove all the crapware.


again

the fixboot/fixmbr allows your computer to start rapidly by repairing the boot info and the master boot record.... time to resintall is hours (after all is said and done).. time to fixboot....say 15 minutes.

__________________
I'm here, you may now make your next two wishes.

Beat Me, Whip Me, Make Me Use Windows!!

Every Piece of Electronic Equipment runs on a finite amount of smoke. The systems are normally very efficient at reclaiming the smoke and recycling it, however, should you do something to let the smoke out, your system will become useless.

SAVE THE SMOKE !!

New PC :
New: Phenom 9500 Quad 2.2, 4gb ram XP Pro 64-bit (Sata 0), XP Pro 32 bit (sata 1), 40 eide HDD (music), Pioneer Blu-Ray Burner, HP Multidisk CD-RW/DVD-Rom, 2x250 Seagate HDD's, ATI Radeon 3870, Asus M3A32-MVP Deluxe WiFi-AP

Old PC:
P4 1.5GHz, 768 Ram, hda-80Gb (80Ubuntu), DVD R/RW

I think you can order recovery disks.

I would order recovery disk, but she'll lose all her documents.

__________________

slave the drive save the data

i still think the repair w/ fixboot will do a lot.

__________________
I'm here, you may now make your next two wishes.

Beat Me, Whip Me, Make Me Use Windows!!

Every Piece of Electronic Equipment runs on a finite amount of smoke. The systems are normally very efficient at reclaiming the smoke and recycling it, however, should you do something to let the smoke out, your system will become useless.

SAVE THE SMOKE !!

New PC :
New: Phenom 9500 Quad 2.2, 4gb ram XP Pro 64-bit (Sata 0), XP Pro 32 bit (sata 1), 40 eide HDD (music), Pioneer Blu-Ray Burner, HP Multidisk CD-RW/DVD-Rom, 2x250 Seagate HDD's, ATI Radeon 3870, Asus M3A32-MVP Deluxe WiFi-AP

Old PC:
P4 1.5GHz, 768 Ram, hda-80Gb (80Ubuntu), DVD R/RW