i can not boot at all.windows xp always restart after the booting logo from xp appears. the following error in a blue screen is shown: unmountable boot volume and a long text. I had a electricitz breakdown and after this it always restarts. I tried disabling caching and shadowing, but it did not work. Can i place my hard disk in an other pc or should i boot from cd? Will i loose my data if i try one of this both solutions? Any other ideas how to solve this without loosing my data? Thank you very much.

Insert the XP CD and boot to it, running the Recovery Console. Then, at the prompt type chkdsk /r

Life is more painless for those who are brainless.

thank you for your posting. unfortunetely I forgot where i put the win cd. Any other alternatives, like installing the hard disk in other xp pc? will i keep the data?

Thanks for the help

You will need a XP cd and the cd key that was used on the original install.

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. Unless you have a slipstream sp1 Or SP2 cd you will have to d/l sp1 or sp2 and all subsequent updates. You MUST have at least SP1 installed and the updates for security reasons. Be sure the firewall and A/V is active before going online as you will be susceptible to sasser and msblaster.

i moved twice and unfortunetely i can not find the windows xp cd and the key.I bought windows vista. Can i install vista as my default system? What will happen to my data and the programms? will i loose them? thank you

You may be able to but suggest if you are going to install and work with Vista a clean install would be best. Check the Vista forum for the install and recovery of data.

i made a mistake.I can not install vista due to requirements. I must install a new windows xp again. What will happen when i make a new clean install of windows xp ( i dont have the originall cd and the key). What will happen with the data from hard disk and with my bookmarks in mozilla firefox?

With a fresh install you will lose all data. You may be able to access the data and save it from another machine if the hdd is installed or using another system from cd like ubcd. I will post a link to ubcd next.

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

thank you for the link. what are the following steps i should do after i download UBCD? I appreciate your patience

Suggest you place the hdd in another machine and copy and save the data then do the install and copy back.