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How to recover from blue screen on a netbook?

13K views 10 replies 3 participants last post by  spunk.funk 
#1 ·
My daughter's Acer Aspire One netbook is getting the "unmountable boot volume" blue screen error. Following instructions I've found, I set the bios to default settings, which did not correct the problem. The next step is supposed to boot up with a Windows XP CD. The netbook doesn't have a CD drive, but she had an external DVD drive. So I set the boot order to start with CD drive, which didn't work, then to HDD drive, which also didn't work. When I do this, the screen stays black except for a blinking underscore cursor. I've let it go for up to 10 minutes with no change. Exactly what is the right boot setting if trying to boot up to the Windows CD via an external DVD drive? If what I did above was correct, but still didn't work, what else can I do to access the repair option off the Windows CD? Any other thoughts? Thanks!
 
#2 · (Edited)
First boot into the Setup Bios, make sure the HDD is being recognized. If not, the drive may have died. If the HDD is being recognized but still receiving the error, then change the Boot order to be USB first boot device. That should recognize your external DVD drive and the boot disc. Here get to the Recovery Console, type in FIXBOOT and hit enter. You may also have a Restore Partition on that computer. Try hitting the F11 key at boot up and it will take you to the restore partition (if it isn't damaged) here you can restore your computer to Factory Defaults, you will loose any data on the drive. You can back up your data first with an Ubuntu live CD and a flash drive.
 
#3 ·
Right now I have "USB CDROM: Toshiba SuperMultiPA376" set to the first boot priority. Other options are IDEO: ST9160310AS, IDE1, USB FDD, USB HDD, Network Boot: Legacy PCI device, 1. So since it lists the model of the external drive, I guess that means it is being recognized? But all I've got is the blinking cursor on a black screen. Does it just take a really long time to bring up the "welcome to setup" screen from the Windows CD? I've been to this point before, but gave up after about 10 minutes.
 
#4 ·
When you restart your computer, it will go to the First Boot Device, if there is a bootable disc in the drive you will see the message Press Any Key to Boot from CD/DVD. Does the drive light up after you boot the computer? Do you hear the Disc Spin? If not, you either don't have a bootable disc, or it's not recognizing your external drive as a device to boot from.
 
#5 ·
I never get the "press any key..." message, just the blinking cursor. The drive does spin up and the light is on. So I tried downloading Ubuntu per your previous suggestion, but after waiting three hours for it to download, I got an error message that the file could not be saved because the source file could not be read. The file name had a ".part" tacked onto the end. I'll start another download before quiting for the night. Any other thoughts?
 
#7 ·
OK, I got it to boot off the Ubuntu disc (yea!), and got an "unable to mount location" when I clicked on the netbook drive. The text with that error message was different than shown on the "How to Geek" instructions, but I tried to follow the rest of the instructions to force mount. I couldn't get past this step: "Now comes the tricky part. You'll need to type out a command very similar to this one, but you'll need to replace /dev/sda1 with what you see in that message box we showed you above. This command tells Ubuntu to use the ntfs-3g driver, and force mount even if there is a problem."

I'm stuck on the phrase "but you'll need to replace /dev/sda1 with what you see in that message box we showed you above." In what message box? Are they referring to the "Cannot Mount volume" box, which is different than the "Unable to mount location" error message box that I got?

Here is the text in the error I got:

"Unable to mount location
Error mounting: mount exited with exit code 13:
ntfs_attrpread_i: ntfs_pread failed: Input/output error
Failed to read NTFS $BITMAP: Input/output error
NTFS is either inconsistent, or there is a hardware fault, or it's a
SoftRAID/FakeRAID hardware. In this case run chkdks/f on
Windows
then reboot into Windows twice. The usage of the /F
parameter is very
important! If the device is a SoftRAID/FakeRAID then first
activate
it and mount a different device under the /dev/mapper/
directory, (e.g.
/dev/mapper/nvidia_eahaabcc1). Please see the 'dmraid'
documentation
for more details."

First off, I can't boot into Windows to run chkdsk or reboot Windows twice, and the rest of that is pretty much Greek to me.

Any clues there for exactly what I need to type to force mount the drive? Thanks for sticking with me Spunk.Funk!
 
#9 ·
OK, I ran SeaTools for DOS, did the long test, and it found one error "Bad sector found"..."has failed in important diagnostic test"...and recommended that I back up any important data on the drive. Well, that's exactly what I'm trying to do! Just how do I do that?
 
#10 ·
PS...Is the fact that the SeaTools diagnostic test was able to scan all the sectors on the drive at least good news that the drive has not mechanically failed? If so, hopefully I can still access the drive somehow to retrieve my daughter's photos and music before trying to reformat or replace the hard drive if I can't get it to work normally again.

Any more guidance on how to boot up with the Ubuntu disc and force mount the volume?
 
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