Unmountable boot volume Windows 10

[Nero97]

Hello community. I am now trying to help fix my friend's laptop which is an asus one. He told me he had waited for 30 minutes for the start screen to start but unfortunately greeted with a friendly "Unmountable boot volume" message. Could this be the effect of a hard disk failure? or in any other case a software failure? I've tried to do a usb boot recovery, watch fixes on youtube and read tutorials on how to fix the exact thing and still black screen till the end. And since its windows 10 it supposed to go to advanced boot option a.k.a the place we troubleshoot i guess, but nope. Black black black screen. 

[limegorilla]

7 minutes ago, Nero97 said:

Hello community. I am now trying to help fix my friend's laptop which is an asus one. He told me he had waited for 30 minutes for the start screen to start but unfortunately greeted with a friendly "Unmountable boot volume" message. Could this be the effect of a hard disk failure? or in any other case a software failure? I've tried to do a usb boot recovery, watch fixes on youtube and read tutorials on how to fix the exact thing and still black screen till the end. And since its windows 10 it supposed to go to advanced boot option a.k.a the place we troubleshoot i guess, but nope. Black black black screen. 

if the options avalible to you could you but the drive into a diffrent pc and boot from it?

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

Looks like you have either a dead/dying hard drive or corrupted/missing critical Windows files. What you could do is get a Windows 10 install media and boot off of it. Once you're at the welcome screen, instead of clicking install now, you should have the option to "Repair your Computer". Click that for troubleshooting options.

[Nero97]

4 minutes ago, liamdoyle27 said:

if the options avalible to you could you but the drive into a diffrent pc and boot from it?

for now i dont have a test pc to test the drive. i may try hooking it via usb and check the health if it.

[Nero97]

2 minutes ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

Looks like you have either a dead/dying hard drive or a corrupted Windows installation. What you could do is get a Windows 10 install media and boot off of it. Once you're at the welcome screen, instead of clicking install now, you should have the option to "Repair your Computer". Click that for troubleshooting options.

that what i tried to do. but not even trying to get there. 

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

1 minute ago, Nero97 said:

that what i tried to do. but not even trying to get there. 

So it can't detect the Windows install?

[limegorilla]

2 minutes ago, Nero97 said:

for now i dont have a test pc to test the drive. i may try hooking it via usb and check the health if it.

what about the pc youre on?

 

[Nero97]

3 minutes ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

So it can't detect the Windows install?

yupp.

[Nero97]

3 minutes ago, liamdoyle27 said:

what about the pc youre on?

 

a bit risky i guess. i will update the condition of the drive after this.

 

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

1 minute ago, Nero97 said:

yupp.

Then at this point, it's not worth your time trying to troubleshoot the problem then. The easiest thing to do it to just format the drive and re-install Windows. Don't worry about the license stuff, if your friend still have his key, he can just enter it again and it'll activate provided that it's the same system. That being said, before you format, plug the drive directly into another system using SATA or a SATA to USB adapter to pull the data off that drive. You don't need to boot it off another system, just treat it like a secondary or external drive.

[Nero97]

13 minutes ago, liamdoyle27 said:

what about the pc youre on?

 

Update. The hard disk is healthy.

[Nero97]

7 minutes ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

Then at this point, it's not worth your time trying to troubleshoot the problem then. The easiest thing to do it to just format the drive and re-install Windows. Don't worry about the license stuff, if your friend still have his key, he can just enter it again and it'll activate provided that it's the same system. That being said, before you format, plug the drive directly into another system using SATA or a SATA to USB adapter to pull the data off that drive. You don't need to boot it off another system, just treat it like a secondary or external drive.

i will try. i did hook up the drive via usb and still looks okay. maybe os related i guess. Or could the motherboard has any to do with this problem?

[dotchetter]

My guesses are that if it is hardware related, certain sectors could've gotten rendered bad making the volume unbootable. But you said the drive is indeed fine.. so ruling that out;

 

If you mounted the drive on another system, there are a few things you can try. Hook it up to the system again, and find out what drive letter a.k.a. Mount Point it is given. Usually it's D but it varies.

 

Open a Command Prompt as Administrator (Windowskey + X , M) and paste the following command where you replace MOUNTPOINT with the driveletter for the bad drive. (most likely " D:\ " )

 

dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth /source:MOUNTPOINT:\

After that, you can also run this command to create new bootfiles for the installation. Again, replace MOUNTPOINT like you did above.

 

bcdboot MOUNTPOINT:\Windows /s MOUNTPOINT: /f all

 

This command creates new bootfiles for both efi and legacy partitions, and a case of excessive ones means no harm.

[Nero97]

5 hours ago, dotchetter said:

My guesses are that if it is hardware related, certain sectors could've gotten rendered bad making the volume unbootable. But you said the drive is indeed fine.. so ruling that out;

 

If you mounted the drive on another system, there are a few things you can try. Hook it up to the system again, and find out what drive letter a.k.a. Mount Point it is given. Usually it's D but it varies.

 

Open a Command Prompt as Administrator (Windowskey + X , M) and paste the following command where you replace MOUNTPOINT with the driveletter for the bad drive. (most likely " D:\ " )

 

dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth /source:MOUNTPOINT:\

After that, you can also run this command to create new bootfiles for the installation. Again, replace MOUNTPOINT like you did above.

 

bcdboot MOUNTPOINT:\Windows /s MOUNTPOINT: /f all

 

This command creates new bootfiles for both efi and legacy partitions, and a case of excessive ones means no harm.

would this cause me to loss the key from the drive? i am actually now trying to obtain the oem key as there are none on his laptop.

[dotchetter]

14 hours ago, Nero97 said:

would this cause me to loss the key from the drive? i am actually now trying to obtain the oem key as there are none on his laptop.

No, it will not alter the system installed in that way. Extracting OEM keys from computers nowadays, especially laptops is often useless. The key is stored in the UEFI, and it can be seen from there, or at least a part of it; if it is indeed a part of the UEFI. That way, no matter if you reinstall Windows, it will find the key and auto activate if it is Windows 10. But do check first to see if it's in the UEFI. This applies to laptops sold within the last 2 years I'd say with some certainty but I won't promise anything. There's a VBS you can run to retrieve the key from the registry... but I'm not sure about the legal part behind doing so.