I'm trying to resolve the issue involving unmountable boot volume. I've read on a thousand sites that I should be running the recovery console with chkdsk. the pc is hp pavillion xt963. while no, it didn't come with an xp cd, I do have access to one. one problem, i set the cd rom to be the first boot device, and it's like the computer doesn't care, it runs right on by ck'ing for the xp cd and goes straight to that error message. all I'm interested in doing now is re-formatting. so can anyone tell me how to get pass that error message, or if there's anyway I can resolve it w/o re-formatting that would help too. thx

I had this problem before and it is a very serious one. I was desperate not to reformat my hard drive so i tried rapairing it with Win XP repair function. So I booted the computer using my Windows intsllation CD, to do that you will have to set up in BIOS your first boot device to be the cd drive. when you boot from the CD go to the repair console and type /help Thsi will bring you the list of all the commands and you will have to find the check disk one, read carefully what the screen says and type this command with "/help " precieding the command in order to get the list of the options for it. The thing is the Windows can only do a check, but it can also do a check and repair, but for the repair, I think you had to type something more after the command itself. Sorry for being so unclear but I am doing this by memory. Just read carefully everything on the screen and you should be ok. Let it run the disk check and after that reboot. This procedure worked fine twice for me when I got the "unmountable boot volume" BSD on start up. Give it a try, you never know! To everybody else, please correct me if I am wrong anywhere in my instructions!!! Good Luck

This information was taken from HP's web site. They do not send out Recovery CD's anymore unless you request them. 1. Disconnect all peripherals and internal non preinstalled devices from the PC, except the keyboard and mouse. 2. Turn on the computer. 3. When the initial blue HP screen appears, press the F10 key repeatedly until a recovery menu appears. The progress indicator that first appears does not indicate that a recovery is taking place. The progress indicator represents the time before the recovery process is started. 4. When the Recovery screen appears, click Next, and then click Yes to perform a normal, non-destructive recovery. 5. To perform a destructive recovery, click Advanced, and then click Yes. CAUTION: A destructive recovery will format the hard drive. This will delete all the information on the hard drive and reinstall Windows XP and the original software that came with the computer. Recovering the system without using Windows KTTD

Forgot to note: When you are dealing with an unmountable boot volume the best way to fix it is to format and reload the OS. You can fiddle with trying to fix it, which normaly does not work anyways. When I run into clients with this issue I simply ask them if they have their data backed up. KTTD

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;297185 "...If this procedure, chkdsk /r does not work, repeat it and use the fixboot command in step 5 instead of the chkdsk /r command."

Thanks so much, everyone! I ended up doing the system recovery that Kevin the Tech Dude mentioned earlier.