I had left my laptop for a few minutes while I checked on dinner last night. When I came back instead of my login screen (5 minutes before it locks out the screensaver) I saw a BSOD with the wonderful message:

unmountable_boot_volume
Stop: 0x000000ED (0X8A730590,0XC000000E,0X00000000,0X00000000)

Message said to try rebooting, then if that didn't work to try uninstalling my new software/hardware in Safe mode (none). Reboot got as far as the Windows XP splash screen before the same message. I tried to load in safe mode, a bunch of files started loading, it got as far as showing "mup.sys" on the screen where it hung for about 30 seconds before giving me the same BSOD.

I pulled the hard drive and reseated it.Did not help. After a Google search on my desktop I tried loading and booting from my XP CD, and hit R for Recovery Console. It got as far as going to the c: drive with the following message:

c:\The specified drive is not valid or there is no disk in the drive

Typing chkdsk of any flavor does no good.

I then installed the hard drive in a sata to usb enclosure and tried plugging it into my desktop. After a while the USB setup completed and it came back with a message that the drive was not working (which makes no sense, when I tried to boot the laptop into safe mode the drive was being read- it loaded a bunch of files before the BSOD popped up).

I hit the "remove usb drive safely" in the system tray and unplugged the drive. Immediately I got a BSOD on my desktop with the same "unmountable_boot_volume" message!

I don't believe in coincidences, so I restarted my desktop, all seemed ok, updated and ran Avast and Malwarebytes Anti-Malware. Avast found nothing, Malwarebytes found some Popcap Adware and a trojan agent registry key but no files. I ran RootRepeal to see if any rootkits were installed and it found nothing.

Laptop is a Dell Vostro 1500, Windows XP Home Service pack 3 all updated patches and security stuff as of last week. Running Avast Antivirus with latest definitions. Also run Zonealarm Pro.

My home business is run from that laptop. I have backups but nothing recent. I am having a hard time understanding why the hard drive would die completely, with no warning whatsoever.

I could really use some good news.