A Disk Read Error Occured ~ Windows XP Home Edition

I am at my wits~end! My pc shutdown (crashed) a week or 2 ago. I keep getting "A disk read error occured"
"Press ctrl&alt&del to restart"
And I do that and it keeps doing the same thing. I have 3 harddrives in the computer and have tried changing them around, booting from cd, this and that and the other thing....I am so frustrated right now! This is the second time the computer crashed on me.

The last time was over a month ago and I was able to re-install Windows XP home edition. I have the cd but I cannot boot from it ( I have tried changing the bios to have it boot from cd and also changed around the hard drives)

There is one hard drive that has Windows 98 on it but it won't start up. Getting the error that a file is missing Win.com something or other.

I have another hard drive that was not on my computer that I was hoping to format and reinstall windows xp but I can't even do that. It says that there was a "failure" when trying to boot from the cd. This particular hd has windows 95 and I got the pc to at least load attempt to load windows 95 up but it sits at the windows 95 logo saying it's loading it and I swear that it would just sit there like that for a year if I let it!!!!!

Is there someone out here than can help me....my next step is to bring it to the little computer shop downtown but money is an issue and they start off at $35.00 just to bring it in.

Please, help me!!

If there is any other information I can provide, please ask and I will gladly let you know.

Thank you,
Gail
cathecttattoos@juno.com

Try some of the fixes listed here:
http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/cont...ic/19004/?o=60

I will try....thankyou

Gail

I tried changing the bios and I still can not get by the read disk error.

Cannot even start up in safe mode.

Sorry to break this to you, it's your hard drive, basically it died lol

I had this same problem, and had to buy a new one, there is a way of repairing this, you must get a genuine XP disk and change the bois to CD drive, and insert the XP disk.
Then you need to pick from 1 - 10 i think, there should be one with a restore lost files, or something like that, i haven't done this before, so i do not know properly, because i don't have an XP disk.

If you don't have the XP disk, ask friends if they have one, or you can buy them out most computer stores, i think
or buy a new hard drive.
All i know, it that it's deffinatly the hard drive and you can fix from the XP disk. [By the way, the XP disk is not your reboot disk, just a warning lol !]

Good luck mate, i hope this helps

Mattio

Thank you for your response Mattio...

I ended up having to have the hard drive re-formatted (erasing everything that was on it) and re-installing the windows xp. It's working fine for now.... but you are right, I think that I will have to get a new hard drive. I don't want to keep having this happen to me!!

Thanks again!

Gail
xoxo

No problem GoldenInga.
Thats what i'm here to do lol
Best to get a new harddrive, because if it happens again and you have important photo's or work, you may lose it.

Good luck with it

Mattio

I am uploading all new pictures that I put on the pc to Photobucket just in case! I was running 3 hard drives and the latter two have years and years of pictures on them...so I'm not hooking them up until I have a stable hardrive for the master. I don't want to loose the pics...they are the most important thing to me.


Gail
xoxo

Wow, Oh my lord.

Well heres something you may not know about hard drives or any type of storage device like flash pens.

If you delete something perminatly, theres ways of getting them back, so if your hard drive corrupt and you think you loose your photos, take it into a place like Pc World, or a well known pc store that do repairs, they can recover anything on there. but i don't know whether it costs. but i know they can do it.
Photobucket a very good idea, because you cannot loose them, nor if you make a backup onto a memory stick.

I really hope you get your old photos back, they are worth more than anything you could get.

Mattio