ive got compaq presario 900 When I restarted I encountered a horrifying blue screen!

<blue screen start>
A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.

UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME

If 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 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 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 (0x86781930, 0xC0000185, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)
<blue screen end>

i havent got Windows startup disks so i cant start from the CD-ROM drive.

You may need to contact Compaq and purchase your Recovery Disks.

http://wwemail.support.hp.com/fd2/Em...&lang=en&cc=us

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/p...&product=95666

That being said you could try the MS 6 floppy boot disks to perhaps gain access to the Recovery Console:

You can boot to the XP cd and when you see the Welcome to setup press the letter R
You will get a dos prompt
Then type "chkdsk /p" without the quotes and hit enter
When that is done type "fixboot" and hit enter
"Y" and enter at the prompt
Then type "exit" and hit enter
The system will now reboot into Windows

If for some reason that don't work for you, you can boot to the recovery console like above and...
Type "chkdsk /r" then enter
When done type "exit" and hit enter.
This will take longer, but the system should boot back into Windows.

How to obtain Windows XP Setup boot disks


If these disks work and CHKDSK doesn't help try the FIXBOOT command.