R51 Thinkpad won't boot to desktop

Sunny524 · May 11, 2010

My R51 Thinkpad on power on boots to the Safe Mode Options screen. If I select any option the Windows XP screen opens briefly then I get a blue screen with the message "Unmountable boot volume". It will then reboot by itself, I'll try going into Setup, Start Up, and Boot Order. I've tried booting to a CD with no luck, I've entered "1" to load the default boot menu with no luck. It will also boot to the Rescue and Recovery 4 screen, and it will stay on "waiting for services to finish initializing" for at least 15-20 minutes. It will eventually bring up the full restore, save files etc., screen and if I click on the save files, the drop down arrow doesn't list anything/anywhere for me to pick which files to backup. I did try the 10 consecutive power on button tool, but that didn't change anything. Please help!

Wendy
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plodr · May 11, 2010

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555302
I suspect the causes or either 1 or 3 in the list.

To see if it might be the UDMA issue: restart your computer and enter the BIOS and load the "fail-safe" default settings and reboot.

I did try the 10 consecutive power on button tool
Click to expand...

Have a link or an explanation because I am not at all familiar with this button tool.

Sunny524 · May 12, 2010

I found this on the lenovo forum:

Unplug the adapter, remove the battery, hard and media drives. Press the "power" button ten times in a row, holding it down for ten seconds each time and thirty seconds the last time around.

Plug the adapter (but nothing else) back and try to power on.

I tried your suggestions, but it still won't boot up. I did get it to boot up into diagnostic mode, but after that it went back to the safe mode options window.

plodr · May 12, 2010

If you have a windows disk, you can boot it and try the following:
1) Start your computer with your Windows XP CD-ROM, or with Windows XP boot disks (do not use any disk that says restore or recovery on it because you will lose all your files. pictures, email, etc.)
2) When the Welcome to Setup screen appears, press R to Repair the installation using the Recovery Console
3) If you have a dual-boot or multiple-boot computer, select the Windows installation you want to access
4) Type the administrator password when you are prompted, if no administrator password is set then just press Enter
5) At the command prompt, type CHKDSK /R and then press Enter
6) Once CHKDSK has finished checking and repairing the hard drive, type EXIT and press Enter to restart your computer

If this procedure does not work, repeat it and use the fixboot command in step 5 instead of the chkdsk /r command. FIXBOOT writes a new partition boot sector to the system partition. The fixboot command is only available when you are using the Recovery Console.

Sunny524 · May 14, 2010

I ended up creating a PC Doctor DOS bootable CD. I had to remove the hard drive in order to get it to boot to the CD. I put the hard drive back in and let the program do it's thing. After that was done I followed your instructions and also ran the FIXBOOT utility. Everything is back up and running smoothly so far. Thanks for your help.

Wendy

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R51 Thinkpad won't boot to desktop

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