Fixing UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_DEVICE

I have two clients that I’ve grandfathered in working on their PCs. Everyone else I told — in much prettier language — to get a Mac or go to hell. One of those clients experienced a nice little BSOD stating: “UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_DEVICE … Stop: 0x000000ED (89d28900, c000009c, 00000000, 00000000)”.

Ugh, with windows crap like this, I could care less about what caused it and why. Let’s just cut to the part where I found the solution to this problem. I found the answer on how to fix this at MSGOODIES. I wanted to dupe their info here in case that page goes away. All credit goes to this post on MSGOODIES!

  1. Boot off of a XP CD
  2. Type “r” to go into recovery console
  3. Run these commands:
    chkdsk c: /r /p
    fixmbr
    exit
    (which reboots)
  4. Done.

That fixed the issue for me. Hope it does for some other poor windows souls. Thanks guys!

I’ll just preemptively ask that you don’t post comments asking for assistance. The above information is all I know or care to know. Like I said before … Windows can go to hell! 😉