Unmountable Boot Volume error

[sethmcc]

Ok, so I took the plunge, bought all my hardware, and am putting together a computer for the first time. I went through the steps on this website, but ran into a snag installing windows xp that I can't seem to get past. The install goes fine until the point where it is about to boot to Windows for the first time, then I get the BSOD with an Unmountable Boot Volume error.
Here are my specs:
Athlon 64 X2 5600+ processor
Mushkin DD2 800 2x1GB Ram
MSI K9N SLI Platinum mobo
Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB 7200rpm Sata 3.0Gb/s hard drive
Lite-On Dual Formal Double Layer DVD RW/CDRW
eVGA GeForce 8800 GTS
Windows XP w/out any service packs

Here is what I've tried:
- Putting the bios in fail-safe mode
- Messing with any bios settings I thought might make a difference
- Loading windows recovery and the hard drive SATA drivers with my floppy drive so that I could run CHKDSK /R, FIXBOOT, and FIXMBR one at a time
- Slipstreamed Service pack 2, nearly all hotfixes, and the SATA drivers into the windows install CD
- when that didn't work, just used my regular windows XP cd w/ my sata drivers on a floppy and installed windows that way
- tried a different SATA cable
- tried a different SATA slot on the modo
- loaded Data LifeGuard on a bootable CD and ran hard drive tests (everything was ok)
- did a full NTFS hard drive format during windows install

I've done a lot of looking around online to see what others with this problem did, and as you can see I've tried about everything I can think of. My best guess now is there is some hardware or bios setting I have wrong.

Here are some of my BIOS settings:
for my hard drive:
LBA/Large Mode on Auto
DMA Mode on Auto
S.M.A.R.T. disabled (also tried Auto)
for my DVD drive: DMA Mode on Auto
Quick Boot enabled
IOAPIC funcation Enabled
MPS Table version 1.4
The advanced chipset features about hyper transport MCP55 configuration are all on default settings since I know nothing about them.
PCI IDE BusMaster Enabled (DVD doesn't work if disabled)
On-Chip IDE Controller Enabled (ditto)
Serial ATA Devices set to Device 0/1/2 (hard drive currently connected to device 0 secondary)
nVidia Raid disabled
ACPI Function enabled
CPU and memory settings all look ok and I haven't changed any of them.

I didn't see any options to enable SATA or SATA DMA Transfer like on the MSI K8N instructions.

So, any ideas? I'm about out, and I've already spent a whole day on just this problem.

Thanks,
Seth

[The Wise Monkey]

Hmmmm, seems like you've tried most things I would suggest. :)

When you installed XP, did you do a quick format or a full format?

[sethmcc]

I did the full format. Last night I tried disabling every BIOS setting I didn't absolutely need just to get windows started. Still haven't gotten it to load, but when I disabled APIC (the power management functions), instead of giving me the unmountable boot volume error, I got a different BSOD. Can't remember the specifics of the message right now. It was pretty generic, but I'll write it down the next time I see it.

Last night I also ran the full 'write zeroes to drive' test with Data LifeGuard. It ran fine. I'm running memtest right now to make sure the ram is ok.

[sethmcc]

I finally got Windows XP to install. For anyone else who might run into a similar problem with the MSI K9N w/ a SATA hard drive, this is how I finally got it to work:
I tried yet another SATA port, and in addition to the SATA raid drivers provided by MSI, I also slipstreamed all the other motherboard drivers on MSI's website for my motherboard, so that they were all a part of the windows XP installation. I think it was the drivers that did the trick, not the other SATA port.

If anyone else needs to slipstrem service packs or drivers into their Windows XP install, SetupStudio works great for that.

- Seth

[The Wise Monkey]

Slipstreaming is very useful - used it to create a "universal" XP install for my workplace. :)

Anywho, glad to know you got it sorted.