So my entire story I've been writing is on my laptop. My trustworthy, old laptop that has never given me any problems

Up until; today.

it loads up to a blue screen that reads the following

A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer

UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME

If this is the first time you've seen this Stop error screen, restart your computer. if this screen appears again follow these steps.

Check to make sure any new hardware or software is properly installed if this is a new installation, ask your hardware or software manufacturer for any windows updates you might need.

If problem continues, disable or remove any newly installed hardware or software. Disable BIOS memory options such as caching or shadowing. If you need to use Safe Mode to remove or disable components, restart your computer, press F8 to select Advanced Startup options, and then select Safe mode.

Techincal Information:

*** STOP: 0x000000ED (0x82349900, 0xc0000006, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)

I've tried to restart in Safe mode but it just takes me back to the blue screen. Any ideas? I know what program it's probably bitching about. Anythign I an do?

Literally about 10 pages of my work are on this laptop and I have them saved nowhere else.

****. My. Life.

You tried safe mode and that didn't work. How about using "Last known good configuration?" You can do this by hammering the F8 key when you start the computer and keep doing that until you get a screen with a bunch of options and select that one.

More info here: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Using-Last-Known-Good-Configuration

Yeah I've tried both and neither are getting me past this blue screen

give me a second and I'll try and google the problem a little bit.

two questions, what operating system are you using and do you happen to have the installation cd for windows?

One more thing, what brand/model of laptop is this?

It has windows xp

and it's a dell latitude. it's an Old laptop like 5+ years

and no, no disks

All I want to d is try and recover my word document, it has a lot of work in it

Can you give me the specific model number of the laptop? If you don't have a windows cd your best hope is that dell may have some sort of recovery or diognostic partition on your system that may fix this.

I tried every possible option I could think of vai the internet

not matter what rotue I take I wind up at that same blue screen

I KNOW what program it's throwing a ***** fit about but I can't remove it

this was about the best i could find for your case...

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dsn/en/document?c=us&cs=04&dl=false&l=en&s=bsd&docid=35F157CB59994ED7E040A68F5B2813E3&doclang=en

run through the step in that article called "Run the PSA Diagnostics and Obtain the PSA Error Code" and see if any errors occur. If any do, then more than likely your hard drive is dying or has died.

if the test passes then it is a software issue that can be solved via the numerous amount of articles a Google search returns, but that would require the CD. I have a copy of Windows XP Professional but i don't know if that CD will work. You could also see if anyone else here has a disc that they can send you.

If all else fails, the hard drive may or may not be able to be hooked up as a slave. If that succeeds then we may be able to get the files of the hard drive if they are still intact.

Unfortunately there does not seem to be an easy solution to the problem, but maybe Dat or Rincon could shed some light on this. We can try to help you out as much as we can and hope you can get the stuff back.

Did you try and mount an ISO?

Did you try and mount an ISO?

ISO?

It's usually an image of an entire CD or DVD. People share their games and other things that way.

If Rincon doesnt get it fixed before I get home I'll shoot some suggestions your way. Sounds fixable, but justin case the HD is going out, only boot it when attempting a fix.

Same thing happened when my dell 1545's hard drive gave out. There are a few ways to recover data, but to my knowledge without the proper knowledge or equipment, their not cheap. On a laptop hard drive you could pull it out and install it in an external enclosure, then slave it to another computer. Since the error was in the boot sector, you should be able to recover your data, but like i said... if you can't do this most places charge a lot to do this service for you. The only advice i can give is after this happened to me and i lost one of my best short story's I started sending all my writing to myself in emails. From myself to myself in the same account, that way I never lose anymore work, and I can access it anywhere.

Hi Avahra, looks like the main boot file is damaged. In order to try and fix this you'll need to have the CD with windows XP on it and boot with it on the lappy. And run the chkdsk /r command. Or the fixboot command either one of these must be done via the windows xp cd. If you don't have one let me know and we'll see how we can help you out getting one ok?

EDIT: One question. did this happen after you installed any updates to the lappy?

Same thing happened when my dell 1545's hard drive gave out. There are a few ways to recover data, but to my knowledge without the proper knowledge or equipment, their not cheap. On a laptop hard drive you could pull it out and install it in an external enclosure, then slave it to another computer. Since the error was in the boot sector, you should be able to recover your data, but like i said... if you can't do this most places charge a lot to do this service for you. The only advice i can give is after this happened to me and i lost one of my best short story's I started sending all my writing to myself in emails. From myself to myself in the same account, that way I never lose anymore work, and I can access it anywhere.

I think my roommates are going to tryand get me a XP disk from the uni. They're gonna take it in to their technical support and see if they can't salvage it. I only downloaded microsoft word and it was working fine for several day after.

It's never given me problems up until yesterday, but both hard drives on both my computers are giving me insane problems for osme reason,.

I would LITERALLY have a nervous breakdown if my computer failed. Along with many other people, I might add.

I'd just pin it off as my just continous assault of bad luck. So far my desktop (although it warns me ever 10 minutes of imminent failure) has held up

I wouldn't worry too much. It's a very fixable problem with the right stuff to do it with. Worst case scenario you send it to one of us and we salvage the files and send it back.