Unmountable_Boot_Volume

User came in today for simple corporate issue, but also mentioned that his personal computer wasn't running. He'd taken it to "a big box store" and had been informed that he would have to buy a new Hard Drive and to reinstall everything ($280).

I volunteered to fix it ;) Mainly because I wanted to see if I could and somewhat because I'm a nice guy ;)

BSOD Unmountable_Boot_Volume 0x000000ED with second paramater of (0xC0000032).

Right off... according to MS this is a file system damaged error NOT a bad hard drive necessarily. I ran a utility that checks the disk and it came back that the disk is fine, just needs some tlc.

After running through chkdsk /r and fixboot and not getting any good results I fixed it by doing the following (note typing DIR also resulted in an error that I forgot to write down)

1. Boot to Windows XP install disk
2. Choose Repair (R)
3. type fixmbr
4. type y for yes to the warnings
5. type fixboot
6. type chkdsk /r (took a long time to run, but didn't fail like it previously had prior to running fixmbr)
7. Reboot
8. Hand back the computer saving the user $280 and the overall nuisance of the process.