URGENT VOLUME unmounted help!!!

i went to reformat my main pc (dell 530s) and when i went to reformat it first, it asked if wanted to demount the volume stupidly i said Yes, i know i didnt say yes last time i said no, and reformatted using the windows boot disc (this is vista home premium by the way) now i cant run my pc because its not recognising the volume and letting me use it

i need an idiots guide on how to get it back up and running again, i know the hard drive is fine just need it to be there and recognised and working pretty please

 

Welcome to the forum

I'm a little confused there is no option to unmount the boot volume in windows installer,you can delete the partition/volume or format the partition but the free space will always seen by windows installer as raw.

I'm just guessing without more information but do you receive this message now when your computer turns on? If so this will be cause because your computer is trying to boot from your hard drive which is either damaged,corrupted or semi installed.

First go into bios,hit del or F2 as the computer is booting,go to standard cmos features,your hardrive should be listed here,if it isn't your hard drive is most probably faulty or disconnected.

Now go to advanced bios features,under first boot device set your cdrom as the the first boot device and disable all other devices,now restart your computer.

With the windows disk in your computer should now ask you to hit a key and then it will load the windows installer.

If I'm way off just say and explain which part of this your stuck at

 

Ok I need to do food shopping then il come back n concentrate on it all I think I've either deleted it or it's part installed if I reply with error messages I'm getting later then it may help thanks

 

hia ricky, went into my cmos, sata 0 is set to 320gb, sata 1 says 0gb

i did as you said, but when i get to the windows it loads then all i get is a background wallpaper and a white arrow, it doesnt load windows disc at all

the bios set up said A floppy drive, i dont have a floppy drive in my machine, just sd card/card reader area and a cd rom and obviously the usb ports

its set to IDE or there is an option that says RAID?

 

to add to this, when i first turned the pc on before following the instructions it read on a blackscreen after trying to set up...

"diskette drive 0 seek failure

press f1 to continue, f2 to enter setup"

now i know drive 0 has memory on and its there its just not seeing it

 

Do you have a floppy disk in the floppy drive?If so remove it.

This shouldn't effect windows loading though if you've disabled floppy drive as a boot device.

If you don't have a floppy in double check you've set up first boot device properly,all other devices should be disabled even the hard drive with the only boot device being the cdrom.

If your sure you've set them up properly enter bios go to standard cmos features,at the bottom is a drive labelled drive A or 0,open it it select 'none' you've just disabled your floppy drive now try and install windows.

If you need it,re-enable AFTER you've reinstalled windows.

 

yeah this was baffling me as we dont have a floppy drive i mean floppy drives are like ancient lol

right il follow these new instructions and see, cheers ricky il reply as soon as i can ...WATCH THIS SPACE :confused

 

ok next bit, floppy drive was changed to "none" as we dont have a floppy drive in this pc, and i enabled that first boot was cd rom thing is it loads to the windows disc BUT theres nothing there, just background screen and a white arrow, it wont go further than this

it seems the 350gb is on the c drive its there on sata 0 when i look through the bios set up options grrr computers thanks rikky (sorry i put ricky before)

 

Can you elaborate? Does your computer find the windows disk,do you hit a key and windows loads?what colour is the background screen,light blue,dark blue or black.

Does windows start to load files before it halts or do you not get to this point?

 

Also why are you reinstalling windows, have you recently had problems, do you suspect the hard drive is faulty?

 

i was cleaning the whole computer off, ive done it a few times, no i dont suspect the hard drive is faulty, i have everything i need, photos, music etc backed up on an external hard drive.

.... the black screen comes on and says hit any key to start up with the cd rom, so i do that, it goes to a black screen and there is a white loading bar at the bottom which loads windows, then it goes to a coloured screen with a white arrow as if it is supposed to load the windows cd rom but doesnt load it, thats where it stops

 

darn thing posted twice.

 

I've come across this problem or similar problem before, it actually took an hour for windows to start loading,I know it's nuts but try leaving it for a couple of hours to see if the installation window pops up.

The other thing I would recommend is to format the hard drive again here's two ways to do this without the windows disk,connect the drive to another computer and format it via windows just like you would any drive then replace it into your computer

Another way if you not confident removing a hard drive is using a temporary operating system such as linux mint,this is good because you just need to burn a disk,put it in the drive and it will load like windows,navigate to the drive then format it in ntfs,I would also recommend your run check disk or check disk for errors to check the disk for errors if linux mint has that option.

Whichever is easiest for you,the top download option 32 or 64 bit depending on your computer.

http://www.linuxmint.com/download.php

 

Here's a guide,if you can burn a disk you can run linux mint.

http://www.wikihow.com/Install-Linux-Mint

 

hia, yeah the vista is 32bit, i had read about taking out the hard drive and reformatting it via another pc but the only other pc i have that can do that im not sure is 32bit as its an xp dell thats just sat here doing nothing.

before starting the reformat where i accidentally/STUPIDLY removed the volume or whatever i did i did run a virus scan on that and it gave no errors.

tomorrow il leave the windows running a while see if that works whilst i do other things if it doesnt how do i run this linux mint thing?

id have to follow that link on the old laptop and burn it onto disk then? as im on a netbook at the minute and they dont have cdrom drives just usb.

thanks again for this you are super

 

if it works then obviously il let you know,

and we can take it from there, not sure where you are but its england here so il try this all in the morning and its dark and too late to mess with pcs (which i know i wished i hadnt touched the darn thing in the first place lol)

 

So neither of those options are viable? Your not making this easy:-D I'm a sucker for flattery though-

Do you have any other copy of windows? Any will do even an old copy of xp. Try them if you manage to get to the format partition stage,partition it as a single partition and format it in ntfs.

Then switch disks to your vista disk and try to install windows again.

You can also put linux mint on a thumbdrive here's a guide it's pretty simple.

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal-usb-installer-easy-as-1-2-3/

It's England here

 

I can't put the hard drive into another pc that oPtions out , but I can download the Linux via the link you gave me to a cd rom via my fellas laptop, or as you say I could try the xp version of windows as I do have a copy of that.

Il get up in morning n run the vista cd again & leave it for an hr or so then if that don't do out il try the xp cd, il keep ya posted.


Let me get this right if any of the CDs work and it comes on I need to repair it or install til I get the partition option and format c to nfts then once thats done swap to vista CDROM n install that?

 

Yup Good luck!

 

well i am up and within half an hour the windows vista cd worked to come on, i clicked to install it as no other option would help and i finally got to the partition section then i formatted the biggest which i knew was disk 0 and 288gb so now its installing il keep you informed mwah mwah mwah so much gratitude so far for all the help xdrool:-D

 

ok next bit, the reformat of c was done, i think, so the windows vista starts to reinstall, so far so good BUT when it gets to the point where it needs to restart the pc it goes back to where i had already got to before, asking me to press f1 or f2 for setup which means i then have to reinstall windows again i cant keep reformatting and reinstalling

what is going wrong here ?

 

Don't hit a key If this doesn't work make sure your cdrom is the first boot device then set your hard drive as the second boot device,if this doesn't work once windows has installed the files and restarted enter bios and set your hard drive as the ONLY boot device.

It should then load windows from the hard drive.

 

ok, windows has now installed, and im setting things up on the desktop etc, but what if i turn it off, as cd rom was the first to boot then hard drive was second, am i safe to reload the defaults (hard disk being first etc etc) ???? HELP lol i darent turn pc off lol

 

Yup:-D

 

you will either hear me shout eureeka or ARGHHH if it dont lol its just running updates at the moment

 

EUREEEEKAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA Thanks Rikky, thanks majorgeeks i wuv you guys i am going to write down what happened and how i fixed it, it surely has been an educating LONG weekend lol

:-D i will probalby still never learn lol

:-Drolleyes:-o

 

Sweet,you can't see but I'm doing star jumps:-D

Later...

 

yes i definately cant see, are you uploading the star jumps to you tube? now that is something i can view without breaking it lol

:celebrate

thanks ever so much, im off to thank the dear lady that told me about this forum now