Hey, something went horribly wrong with my PC today, and I've been asking all over the place for help with the problem, and just thought that any computer savvy people here could impart their wisdom and help me with this problem.
Anywho, whenever I boot up my PC (Dell desktop, runs windows XP) I get a blue screen and an error message that displays this:


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

UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME

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 the problems continue, 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.

Technical Information:
***STOP: 0x000000ED (0x8A8B59E0, 0x0000006, 0x000000, 0x000000)



Now, this would have been helpful if Safe mode would actually WORK, but every time I try to start my computer in ANY mode, it just takes me back to that blue screen, preventing me from doing anything. (Note: When I do try to boot in safe mode, before it takes me to the blue screen with the message it runs several lines of...something that all begin with "Multi(0)Disk(0)System32/etc., dunno what that means....)
Right before this happened I was installing a digital copy of Jade Empire a family member had gifted me through Steam, however I download things through my Steam client all the time and nothing has ever wrecked my computer, and it's not like anyone can hack into the Steam network and plant a virus in anything.

If anyone could help or point me to a place or person that can help, it would be much appreciated!

Well without much experience, I would say that something is messed up with your partitions or something, and the quicket solution would likely be grabbing what you can off the drive with some sort of linux live disc and reinstalling windows.

Those wiser than me can probably pin it down further, possibly to the point of fixing it without reinstalling.

what else did you do last time?
was there a odd shutdown/startup time?

Stop codes aren't very useful to people who can't debug the operating system. Please explain to us--in as detailed as possible--what you did the last time the machine was running properly.

What I mean is: Think of the last time you turned the computer on before it crashed. Tell us exactly what you did and in what order?

Hmm, well, I checked my gmail account and chatted with a friend about a website we're trying to put together... I think I browsed the mods section here... visited youtube briefly, then opened notepad and began working on a script. After that I put the computer into standby mode and went to work, went to bed afterwards and woke the computer (today) and decided to install Jade Empire from my Steam games list (Cousin bought it for me for Xmas) that was taking awhile to install, so I worked on the script again, then left to go draw for a class project, came back, Jade Empire was still downloading, so I ran my copy of Oblivion and messed around with that for about an hour when suddenly the game froze, tried to ctr-alt-delete out of it and that didn't work, so I did a hard reset and that's when the problem with the blue screen began.

That help?

The hard reset is what killed you. When you cut the power, the operating system had no opportunity to save its current state to disk. Trying to load the operating system once the power was cycled resulted in various errors because configuration settings were incorrect or didn't exist.

Your recovery methods consist of:
+ System restore: Not likely since you cannot access the operating system in any form. This might be doable if you purchased the machine in whole from a retailer (ie: OEM). If this is true, you should have some kind of recovery software on a disc and a recovery partition.

+ Slave disk recovery: Stop codes indicate a software, not a hardware, error. This means your data exists, but the computer cannot access an operating system to interpret the file system to display your yadda yadda technical stuff. Your data is there, but it must be accessed externally. You can solve this in many ways.

Duh102 mentioned LiveCDs. These are operating systems based in Linux that can be run purely out of memory. This means they do not require hard drives. This allows you to run an operating system within memory, access your hard drive fro m that memory, and copy files to a USB flash drive (not a USB external hard disk). Usually quick and painless, unless you lack basic computer operating ability.

The alternative method is possessing a second, clean or cleanable hard drive and installing your operating system to that disk. Boot the OS, and access the old drive from the new one, Shazaam, data recovered. Simpler in execution, but not in time investment.

+ The easiest method of them all: Format the drive and start from scratch. If you have no valuable data (family pictures or videos, unrecoverable music files, school or work assignments), it may be easier to just pop in an OS installation disk and start from scratch.

Whatever you choose, there is a lesson to be learned here: Invest in backup strategies. You can buy a simple 120GB external hard drive pretty cheap. Set them to backup on whatever schedule you like. There are also tons of web-enabled backup solutions that store your critical files off-site. There are pros and cons to each of these setups.

Damnation! I ordered my OS pre-installed when i bought this pile of junk, they didn't pack any of the installation CDs with my comp! >_<

Fudge it all to heck!

Well, at least I had the foresight to get an external hard drive and did back up most of my files... But it sounds like my PC is scrapped, without that installation CD I'm boned.

Thanks again for all the help and advice, looks like I'll have to return that WACOM and get a new comp... *sigh*

No worries, download the newest linux distribution of your choice, put that on a CD (or USB stick), and you may boot up off of that on your "broken" machine.
No scrapping in necessary.

From there, you can recover whatever files you need.