[joseph456]

I have a Gateway M675 PRR with Windows XP Pro that I purchased on Ebay in August. It was working fine. I had not used it for about a month and today I was updating Microsoft Security Essentials. When I got back to it it was continuously rebooting and came up with the BSOD and the message that it had an "Unmountable_Boot_Volume" and

STOP:0x000000ED (0867786900, OxC0000015, 0x000000000, 0x000000000)

I have an operating system disk from a similar Gateway model (Files on disk are from 2003) and I was able to get to a C: Prompt. I ran chkdsk /p and it stopped at 41% and said the "\$BitMap is corrupt and unreadable." It also said there are "one or more unrecoverable problems." I then ran chkdsk /r and it stopped at 41% and said there were "one or more unrecoverable problems."

Microsoft says the next step is "fixboot" but I was not sure I could use the old operating system disk since this system has XP3 on it. Nor was I sure what "fixboot" does.

What should I do now?

Thanks for your help.

Edited by joseph456, 27 October 2012 - 02:00 AM.

[Advertisements]

I don't think fixboot or fixmbr will help but give them a try.

Sounds to me like the hard drive is defective.

Check the hard drive with the manufacturer's diagnostic tools.
Hard Drive Diagnostics Tools and Utilities (Storage) - TACKtech Corp.
Bootable Hard Drive Diagnostics

[Ztruker]

I don't think fixboot or fixmbr will help but give them a try.

Sounds to me like the hard drive is defective.

Check the hard drive with the manufacturer's diagnostic tools.
Hard Drive Diagnostics Tools and Utilities (Storage) - TACKtech Corp.
Bootable Hard Drive Diagnostics

[joseph456]

Tried them both, did not work, pointed to a possible defective hard drive but I was wondering others have reported a similar problem and were able to fix it. What do you think of the comments at this post:

My link

http://www.geekstogo...en/page__st__75

Will try your recommendations for hard drive

Thanks.

Edited by joseph456, 27 October 2012 - 03:47 PM.

[Ztruker]

I see there are a bunch of different solutions in that thread. Worth looking at each one in turn, you may get lucky.

[joseph456]

This is a Hitachi Travelstar drive. I downloaded and ran DTS. When I ran Quick Test it said that the operation completed successfully. When I ran the Advanced Test it completed than ran Smart Drive and gave me Error 0 x 72 "Defective Device" Technical Result Code 7200E6EE. "The drive may fail soon and should be replaced."

Is there now no question that the drive is bad or should I try the other options.

If I tried the "ntldr" option where would I copy it to since I cannot even get it to list a directory for the C drive?

[Ztruker]

If you can't access the C: drive then there is no way to replace the file.

If this were my computer I would replace the drive and reinstall XP. I hope you have your data backed up as I don't think you are going to be able to save it.

[joseph456]

The Product Key for Windows XP Pro is on the computer however I did not receive an installation disk.

As I mentioned I have a disk with a similar laptop I purchased in 2004 which has Windows XP with SP1? I also have a Windows XP Pro disk that I purchased for another computer which has SP2. Should I use either one of these to install a new copy of Windows XP?. If I do, how long will it take to update it to SP3 as well as add current upgrades?

If I were to take a hard drive from another computer and place it into this one - to make sure that the harddrive is the issue - would it work?