[joe_it]

Hello All,

I am working on a friends hard drive that crashed over the weekend. When I attempt to boot the computer, I get an error stating "A disk read error occurred" and I can't boot to Windows XP.

I booted from the XP install disk, changed the Administrator password so I could access the C: drive and ran FIXBOOT and FIXMBR but I am still getting the same error. This is a INET brand Laptop that came with Windows XP Pro for system builders.

Any suggestions as to how I can go about fixing the Windows Installation? It appears as if my friend was removing spyware when this happened. Thanks for the help.

Joe

[Mumbodog]

It could be a bios misconfiguration, enter the bios and set the hard drive as first boot device.

[joe_it]

I tried your suggestion and I am still getting the same disk error. Any suggestions?

Joe

[Mumbodog]

If you can figure out what make of hard drive it is, go to the manufacturers website and download their hard drive diagnostics software and run it on that system. This will determine if it is a hard drive problem or not.


Do a chkdsk as described in this article
http://kb.wisc.edu/helpdesk/page.php?id=5097

[joe_it]

The hard drive checks out ok. I think this is a Windows issue.