Unmountable boot volume and chkdsk/r wont work

i got the blue screen with the unmountable boot volume message. i put in a dell xp cd and it wouldnt read it. i then hit F2 and changed the boot order to start with the diskdrive. i got to the recovery console and typed chkdsk/r. the result was "the command is not recognized Type HELP for a list of supported commands."

i have a dell 4100inspiron. my usb and port1 drives are broken cause of drops.
i've been running really low on disk space the last week cause im a idiot. i think i had 80mb left. i was about to make room too till this happened.

i dont want to lose my files. i have a lot of pictures and documents that cant be replaced that are valuable to me.

whats my next move? thanks

 

Try "chkdsk /r" (space between k and /)

 

hahaha...thank you. i did forget the space.
i got in return

CHKDSK is checking the volume...
CHKDSK is performing additional checking or recovery...
CHKDSK is performing additional checking or recovery...
CHKDSK is performing additional checking or recovery...
70% completed.



its taken over a hour to get to 70%..bad news? normal?

 

Not unusual, and you may see the percent completion number change to something lower more than once before it's done.

 

wow...it worked..windows started. i usually have bad luck with stuff like this.
do you think the problem happended cause i have 80mb left on my harddrive? or is this a problem that happens from time to time reguardless of circumstances.



thanks for the help doug.

 

You never know. I assume you have at least a 30 or 40 GB HD in that laptop. Only 80MB free space is a very dangerous place to be. Try to free up at least a gig.

 

i have 20gigs. the first thing i did was free up a gig. the reasons i let it get that low are im a idiot and my usb and port1 drive both are non functional. they both were plugged in and my laptop dropped and they both snapped. so i couldnt move files to my portable harddrive. i was removing flies by copying them on cdr's ( i dont have a dvdburner for my laptop) and i just put off taking off files for awhile and i ran out of memory.

from my reading its almost impossible to fix my usb drives since there connected directly to my harddrive. some people told me the effort and money it would take to solder it back isnt worth it. i should just be a new lap top all together(i have a dell 4100 inspiron)

do you think i can use this http://www.cablestogo.com/product.a...898&engine=adwords!654&keyword=(usb+parallel)

and connect a portable harddrive too?
thanks for the help once again dough

 

Looks like it's for hooking a parallel printer to a USB port on a PC-- of which yours are non-functional. You could hook the laptop up to a LAN and copy files over the network to another PC. I might also be tempted to get a 2.5" external HD enclosure, and temporarily transplant the laptop HD into it. You could then plug it into the working USB port of any other PC, and move files off of it.

 

My Hat off to TheDoug for posting the answer to. Try "chkdsk /r ( space between k and / ) I have been trying everything i could think of for two days to get my PC up and running again with no success.You are amazing "Thank you" from the bottom of my Heart Sincerely kevspc.