unmountable boot volume

superfly_2

HI,

I have inherited a Toshiba Sattelite laptop from my dad because he cant get it to work.
It tries to start but just keeps restarting. Messed about with it a bit and got it to stay on long enough to tell me that it had an unmountable boot volume.
On a few forums it says that I need the OS disc (xp) but I dont have it. Is there any way around this, can i download it somewhere???

Any help appreciated.

Superfly

fwor

You can't (legally) download XP anywhere, and any of the non-legitimate versions that you might find out there may have things added that you don't want.

A good way to test whether the hard disk has failed would be to download a Linux distribution and boot the PC from that. You can then take a look and see if you can access the hard disk. It could just be something as simple as a corrupted MBR, which can be fixed without needing a Windows CD.

superfly_2

Thanks for your reply, any idea where i can download linux?

debitcardmayhem

superfly wrote: »

Thanks for your reply, any idea where i can download linux?

Look Here for some ideas

fwor

As DCM says, you can look among the dozens of distros available, but if you're not short of bandwidth, I'd just go with Ubuntu:

http://www.ubuntu.com/GetUbuntu/download

If you ~are~ short of bandwidth I'd pick one of the minimal ones such as Puppy Linux.

superfly_2

Downloaded a version of Linux and put it onto disc but no idea of how to run it and there doesn't seem to be the option when trying to start up.

Currently downloading Ultimate boot cd for windows but i think i will have same problem.

Any ideas??

Thanks

superfly_2

Oh, just thought it might help to know that nothing on the laptop is needed it can all be wiped if required.

Thanks

superrug_2

U need to make sure that the laptop is set to boot from cd before H/D.

Go into Bios (usually del or F2) as soon the the pc powers on,

Boot options or boot sequence , make sure cd is above H/D.

gaming_guy

superrug wrote: »

U need to make sure that the laptop is set to boot from cd before H/D.

Go into Bios (usually del or F2) as soon the the pc powers on,

Boot options or boot sequence , make sure cd is above H/D.

Some PCs have a menu that allows a temporary selection of the boot device.

On my machine it's f8 to access the menu. Other machines have it as ESC or f12.

superfly_2

I've selected to boot from the cd drive but still does not boot, tried with Linux, ultimate boot cd and a version of XP sp3 but it doesn't work.

Files on disc are iso image?

fwor

How did you create the CD? If just a .iso file copied onto a data CD, it won't work.

The exact process will depend on which CD burning s/w you use, but typically you will need "Create CD from image".

If you've done that and it still won't boot, re-check the BIOS options, as some have a second setting called "boot from other devices" or similar which you may also need to enable.

If the CD drive is not working, you ~may~ also have the option to boot from a USB device, but that's typically only true for fairly recent laptops.