unable to mount device when trying to access hard drive.

Yesterday afternoon my computer screen, in the middle of just having mozilla firefox open(not downloading anYthing), turned blue and had the following error message:

A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computerif 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 be sure you have adequate disk space. if a driver is identified in the stop mesage, disable the driver or check with the manufacturer for driver updates.try changing video adapters.
check with your hardware vendor for any BIOS updates. Disable BIOS memory options such as caching or shadowing. If you need to use safe mode to remove or disablecomponents, restart your computer, press f8 to select advanced startup options, and then select safe mode.
technical information:
stop : 0x0000007E (0xC0000005, 0x8AC6B367, 0xBA4CABA4, 0xBA4CA8A0)

after multiple attempts at trying to startup in various settings, including safe mode, my friend recommend I try knoppix because he successfully retrieved files this way. So on a second laptop we burnt knoppix to dvd and ran on my laptop (dell precision m6300 ) and everything showed up fine, including a newly attached external hd, but when I went to click my own hd, the following message came up:

Unable to mount device
error: org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume.UnknownFailure

Any advice on further steps to take to access my hard drive would be appreciated. I have no idea how this happened in the first place, I was not running any updates or installs or anything.

Thank you so much!

Windows often trashes its own drives, and many of the people who come here come for just that reason. Sometimes Knoppix can read the files even when Windows can't, but sometims Windows does such a good job of trashing the drive that even Knoppix can't read the files.

Here are a couple of suggestions for you:

• 1. Test your memory. Put the knoppix disc in the drive, boot it, and enter memtest at the boot prompt (not "knoppix memtest). Let memtest86 run for at least a pass through all of it's tests. I really don't expect that you have a memory failure but occasionally people who come here do and you would be foolish not to test for this first, particularly since you have the memory test right on the Knoppix disc.
  
  2. If the memory is good then it likely is a disc problem. If you can see drive icons for that disk in Knoppix then the hard drive must at least be spinning and the talking to the computer. Unfortunately, if Knoppix can't mount the partition then ithe data may be so corrupted that Knoppix can't read it. However, there is a chance that just the partition table in the master boot record (MBR) is corrupted and, if that is the case, Knoppix can rebuild a correct partition table and restore access to the data. Two tools that can do this are gpart and testdisk. I like gpart more and suggest that you use it. It will require that you read the man page for it (type man gpart at a shell prompt or finf the man page on-line with a Google search) and will require that you use some command line prompts. With gpart you can run a scan of the entitr drive and the program will try to see if it can determine what partition or partitions are out there. If you like what you see you use other command parameters to tell it to actuall write to the disk and repair the MBR. If the damage was only to the partition table, this will recover the disk for you and Knoppix will now be able to mount the partitions. Testdisk can also try to recover the MBR for you. It's more of a "for dummies" tool, and gives you much less control. If ypu are too lazy to read the gpart man page and learn to use a few command switches, the read the man page for testdisk and take a chance on going that route.

Thank you for your input, I will run the memtest and following that will try the other tools you suggested. Thanks again, I will report how it goes.

Kasey,
I have found that Knoppix is unable to mount my Vista volume. Same error you encountered (Unable to mount device
error: org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume.UnknownFailure )

I am in the process of recovering my user files using an alternative bootable cd which is windows based. http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/download.html


HTH

Thank you I will give that a try and see how it goes,
fingers crossed!

I've had the same Vista HD crash and knoppix live error as you. Have you managed to recover any files with the Ultimate Boot CD? I've created the CD, but haven't found any idiot-proof tutorials on what to do with it now that I have it. Please post any wisdom you've gained!
Thanks,
Bridget

Assuming your computer boot sequence is cd first (if not you need to set it in the BIOS) then power up your computer place the UBCD into the drive, reboot (if you need to, you can force power down by pressing and holding the power button for approx 7 seconds) ,,

The system will boot to UBCD whereupon you can navigate through the files on your hard drive.

You now need to spend some time copying your important files to a flash drive or external hard drive (connected via USB)

By the way I actually did all this but then found a solution to my Vista problem .. (I could not get into the drive due to a failed windows update --- all I had to do was delete a file relating to windows update with the aid of UBCD -- I was then able to use Vista normally)

Edit: I deleted this file: C:\WindowsWinSxS\pending.xml
My problem had been: "Vista Infinite Reboot Loop "Configuring Updates Stage 3 ..."
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Get-V...P1-78933.shtml