UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME WinXP

I have an Acer Aspire One. Its a very small computer that has no disk drives. I have no Wincdows XP disks.

I pressed F8 and tried Safe Mode. I tried Last Known Good Configuration. I tried Directory Services Restore Mode.

Nothing will get me out of this BSOD loop.

I can download a file on another computer and store it to a zip drive if that can help.

Please help.

 

Does your BIOS support booting to that Zip drive? Does it at least have a floppy disk drive?

 

No Nothing. I dont have any drives. I really am a novice and need a step by step on what to do. Please help.

 

I've never heard of such a thing on any type of personal computer. Even the very earliest computers from Radio Shack had a floppy drive. That's very strange. You probably have the capability to connect some sort of additional drive to the motherboard but that would require you to purchase a card that plugs into the motherboard and attaches the drive. For that you'd have to take the thing to a computer repair shop. Actually, a computer repair shop would have the necessary card to do that, at least for diagnostic purposes. How old is the computer anyway?

You're having a problem booting from your hard drive and therefore can't connect to the brain of the computer (the motherboard). In such cases it's necessary to use an alternate route to the motherboard via a different drive, such as a floppy drive, an optical drive (CD/DVD), a flash drive (USB), or a Zip drive (SCSI). Without an alternate route, there's simply nothing you can do to diagnose or fix the problem. Sorry, man.

The good news is that I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed when it comes to diagnosing hardware problems and perhaps someone more astute than me can think of something to try. The bad news is that you're not getting any bites on this thread (other than me). You might do well to post your question in the hardware forum rather than this forum (software). I'll check in on you there. Good luck.

 

Pretty much every AspireOne comes with a recovery partition on the hard drive. Pressing F8 might bring up the "repair computer" option in the boot menu; you'd have to start pressing F8 repeatedly IMMEDIATELY after powering on to bring up this menu. If a "repair" option is not listed in the F8 menu, restart and try F10 or F11 or F12. I haven't seen many AspireOne netbooks that come with WinXP, most (not all) of the ones I've worked on have Win7. If the recovery partition is unavailable or corrupt, your only course of action is to acquire a Windows install disc that corresponds to the sticker on the bottom of the netbook, then you need an external USB CD/DVD drive to use as your primary boot device to start the re-install process. If the Windows sticker on the bottom of the netbook is worn (meaning that all the ink as been rubbed off and can't be read) or missing (remove the battery, sometimes the sticker is under battery) then you'd have to purchase a full LEGAL copy of whatever version of Windows you want, it will include the product key sticker. Legal versions of XP w/ legal product key stickers are not easy to find anymore, maybe eBay? You can try contacting Acer for a set of 'Recovery Discs" for your PC which include drivers, I know that HP has this option and is much cheaper than buying a new Windows disc and license and saves the headache of installing drivers which is hard to do if you can't get online.

I hope this helps, at least a little :-o

Happy Holidays :-D

 

See Mark, I told you there were sharper tools in the shed And forget what I said about cross-posting this in the hardware forum. I just learned that doing so is considered poor form. What I learned is that if you ever believe that you've posted in the wrong forum, you should contact one of the forum moderators by personal message and explain yourself. If they agree with you they will move the thread to the appropriate forum.