On laptop a blue screen appears on restart

[fabemmy]

Can anyone tell me what's wrong with my laptop,
When I start up my laptop a blue screen appears with a error code that says UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME and there is other writing on but the blue screen only comes up for about 5 seconds and then restarts again and again.

Do I need to take it away to get it repaired.

[VHG]

This is quite serious.

When your computer starts up it looks on your hard disk for certain important Windows files so it can start Windows.

The message youre getting is indicating that one or more of these important files is either missing or corrupt so it cant start Windows.

If you have a "proper" Windows disk you may be able to do a repair but if you dont know much about computers, or if you dont have a Windows disk you are stuck.

If you have a friend or relative who knows about computers they may be able to help, but if not it will need to be repaired.

Problem is the person who repairs it may decide to just re-install Windows and you may lose all your personal files that are currently on the disk.

[smith134]

This is probably because your boot.ini file is messed up. Here is a possible remedy:
1.Start Windows XP with the Windows XP CD in your CD/DVD drive.
2. Once you see the "Welcome to setup" message, press the letter 'R' on your keyboard to enter the Recovery Console.
3.Select the Windows installation to be repaired (you will need to know the administrator password.
4.You will then get a DOS prompt. from here, type: chkdsk /p [Enter]
5.When that is done type: fixboot [Enter]
6.Type: Y at the next prompt [Enter]
7.Then type: exit [Enter]
8.The system will now reboot into Windows.

If for some reason that didn't work, you can boot to the recovery console (example above).

Type: "chkdsk /r" [Enter]

When done type: exit [Enter].

This takes a bit longer, but the system should boot back into Windows.