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    Unmountable Boot Volume Error After Wiping Hard Disc

    Discussion in 'Dell XPS and Studio XPS' started by Carbo, Aug 13, 2015.

  1. Carbo

    Carbo Notebook Consultant

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    Dell XPS 15, (L502X), with a WD 750GB Black hard disc. Decided to do a clean install of the OS after upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 10. I wanted to go back to 7 and start with a clean drive and used Western Digital's Data Lifeguard Diagnostics for DOS.
    Wrote zeros to the drive, and then booted to my retail version of Windows 7 Pro 64 bit, only to receive an unmountable boot volume error. Ran a quick test on the disc and it came back error free. Now running the full test but it takes about 90 minutes.
    In the meantime, any suggestions on what is wrong and how to correct it? Thank you.
     
    Carbo, Aug 13, 2015
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  2. kent1146

    kent1146 Notebook Prophet

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    What do you mean you booted to Windows 7 64 bit? Did you boot into Windows setup? Did you use a DVD disc or USB drive?

    It's also very possible that Windows 7 is so old, that it doesn't contain chipset drivers to access your drive (since your laptop was manufactured well later than 2008).

    As for Windows 7... There was a rolback feature to undo Windows 10 changes, that would've saved you a lot of headache.

    Also, you can stop doing hard drive scans, zeroing it out, etc. Zeroing out a personal hard drive is only for super-paranoid people after they give that drive to someone else (for sale or disposal). Also, doing hard drive scans won't help either. This is a problem where your hard drive isn't detected by Windows, or isn't recognized properly by whatever 'boot into windows' method you used. Scanning a drive is only for drives that ARE properly detected, but have some kind of data read / write error.
     
    kent1146, Aug 14, 2015
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