unmountable boot volume

hello Beefheart, welcome to the forums !!!
ok, what you need to do is put a boot on and kick your computer...LOL j/k...
[edit] sorry, long day at work, typed up bunch a nonsense...this probably comes up when you boot up...you said you did run console recovery...did you build this pc yourself or did you buy it ?
this might be hardware problem also... wrong type of IDE cable and also sometimes when you have firewire type external storage, this error pops up...

I think this is usually caused by faulted boot.ini file...
if possible can you please list your system specs ? thank you

System, Dell dimension 8100 , p4 1.7 256rdram.

The unmountable boot volume comes up everytime i boot up, even if I try to boot into any of the various safe modes, so I can't get into windows.

I went into the microsoft support, found this. http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;297185

I'm pretty sure this isn't the UDMA problem they mentioned, since this just sprang up randomly. I did everything they recommended with the recovery console, but it didn't work, and I got the kinda scary 'unrecoverable problem' message. I don't really know what else to do.

yes, I do agree with you, not likely UDMA problem...
here is something else I've found in the meantime that might be relevant to your problem...you can read through and if you want you can do an xp update...see if that helps

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;q315403

HTH

[edit] P.S. beefheart, as in captain beefheart ?

Yeah, as in Captain Beefheart.

This may be a stupid question, as I really don't know anything about the recovery console, but how would I do an XP update on the messed up computer?