unmountable boot device

[Abbadon]

I'm putting it here, since I think it's a hard drive issue. At startup the pc proceeds normaly, untill right before it starts loading windows. Then a blue screen appears with an error: "unmountable boot device, shut down pc in order to prevent damage"

The pc has two physical hard drives (one master, one slave)

Cables have been checked and are secure.

Anyone experienced this before?

thx in advance

Abbadon

[ski]

It could be caused by a bad IDE cable, wrong type of IDE cable(40 wire vs. 80 wire), faulty power cable, or a faulty HD.

Was any drive hardware recently installed or reconfigured?
Is the HD configured as a boot device before the FD or CD-ROM drive in BIOS?
If the Slave HD is bootable, did you try booting from it?

[Abbadon]

thx for the reply.

It's the correct kind of cable, but they have to stretch quite a distance so it could be they have become damaged somehow. (not loosened, I checked that)

The slave is bootable indeed, and we have been able to boot from it.

No hardware changes in recent past but we're at a lan and there is some serious downloading going on. A lot of files (large ones) going back and forth. They're stored on the same physical drive, but in another partition. (maybe that can be a factor?)

Boot sequence is: optical disk --> hard disk (no FD)

About the power-cable: that one seems to be fine (doesn't have to stretch) but the psu is only 235W (brand= JNC). System is an amd TBIRD 900 with 2 hdd's and 2 opticals. System (and psu) is about 3 years old. Could psu-degradation cause this kind of thing?

Any insights much appreciated

Abbadon

[ski]

If nothing other than the primary HD is connected to the primary controller, then make sure that controller is enabled in BIOS.

If that's ok or is N/A, then try a different IDE cable, even if the Slave HD is connected to the same cable as the Master HD.

If that does not work, then connect a different power cable to the primary HD.

If still no luck and nothing other than the primary HD is connected to the primary controller, then connect the Slave to the primary controller, and try booting from it.
If it fails to boot, then suspect a bad controller.

If a new IDE/power cable does not fix things and the Slave HD boots from the primary controller or is already connected to it, then the PS is probably not a factor.
Suspect a bad primary HD.

[Abbadon]

kewl, gonna try those out. Will keep you posted