Help my computer wont boot into windows. I get a black screen with a message saying it has stopped to prevent damage and says to try booting into safe mode to fix the problem. When I try booting into safe mode I get a blue screen that says basically the same thing plus it says I have an Unmountable Boot Volume. Please help if you have any experience with this problem and thanks in advance.

Try a system repair.--How to do a system repair.--Boot from the xp cd and go past the recovery console to the install menu. Select repair the existing installation. You won't lose any data except the xp updates.You MUST install at least SP1 and all the updates for security reasons. Unless you have a slipstream sp1 cd you will have to d/l sp1 and all subsequent updates. Be sure the firewall and A/V is active before going online as you will be susceptible to sasser and msblaster. If you don't want SP2 go to autopatcher.com and d/l SP1 and subsequent updates. Please post back within 24 hours or I will delete the post from my follow up list. Thanks. It would be a courtesy if you would post back and let us know if the fix worked or not.

Oops. I see you have a Dell. You may not have a full XP cd. Please post back within 24 hours or I will delete the post from my follow up list. Thanks. It would be a courtesy if you would post back and let us know if the fix worked or not.

OK I booted to the XP CD and went by the recovery console and now I am on a screen that shows the partition size and available free space on the drive. It shows the drive as being empty. In other words the size of the drive and the free space are the same. I dont know how this happened. The system was working fine the other night when it was shut down and the next day when I tried to boot up is when I started having the problem. I have cable internet is it possible that a virus completly wiped out my hard drive including the OS? The only options I have from the screen I am on now is to set up Win XP or to delete the partition. When I go to set up Windows it says I need to format the partition because either the partition is full, damaged, not formatted,or formatted with an incompatable file system. I am assuming that if the drive is wiped out it wont make any difference if I go ahead and format.

I am not familiar with Dell's proprietary software but if you are willing to lose all your data and start over again go ahead and format and install XP. Please post back within 24 hours or I will delete the post from my follow up list. Thanks. It would be a courtesy if you would post back and let us know if the fix worked or not.

Am I right in assuming that if the drive size and the free space are the same that the drive is empty?

That is a valid assumption. After you reinstall run CHKDSK /R from the recovery console. The HD may have bad sectors on it. Note space between K and /. Please post back within 24 hours or I will delete the post from my follow up list. Thanks. It would be a courtesy if you would post back and let us know if the fix worked or not.