Wednesday, 28 March 2012

Unmountable boot volume....0x000000ED


PROBLEM: 
Customer is receiving the following error on boot:  UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME and a stop error code of 0x000000ED

DISCUSSION: 
For older technicians, familiar with Windows NT, 2000 and XP (Gold edition) this error code is more familiar.  The partition on the HDD is not readable and the system cannot boot.  On system prior to XP SP1, this error was fairly frequent and was generally resolved by running CHKDSK /R from recovery console.  The release of XP SP1, 2000 SP4 and NT SP6 generally stopped the software cause of these errors and they dropped from the daily items techs see frequently. 

I’ve noticed, that is the past 6 months or so, there has been an increase in this error message coming up in issues I deal with daily.  In almost all cases, the resolve has been a HDD replacement.  In the troubleshooting of this issue, diagnostics generally will not fail on this error without a surface test (Extended 32 bit HDD diagnostics).  The few resolves I’ve seen without a dispatch required the NON-DOS Debug Script to be run to remove all partitions from the drive.

RESOLUTION: 
1.  On systems displaying 0x000000ED, run PSA, 32 Bit Quick and 32 Bit Full Diagnostics on the HDD (Stopping any time you get a code requiring HDD replacement). 
2.  Attempt a CHKDSK /R from recovery console (I’ve never seen this work on XP SP1 or higher, but it might)
3.  If the drive passes diagnostics (Remember, passing diagnostics does not ensure the hardware is good, just not error found) run the following DEBUG Script:


Aside from the reference to downloading CDENAB.EXE in that article, DEBUG.EXE can also be found in the X:\CSD\TOOLS\WIN98 folder of many resource CDs.

4.  If all of the above fails, then replace the hard drive.

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