Hey. When I start up my other computer, it just comes to the black screen where it usually has the underlines and then it'll come up with the windows XP blah blah stuff, loading. But it gets to the black screen and shoves a Disk Read Error press Cntrl+Alt+Del to restart. and I do and it does nothing. It comes back to that same thing saying that it has the error yet again. I've tried booting in safe mode, cant get it that far. and I dont exactly want to reformat yet. I'm wondering if there is a way to get by this? Thanks.

Hi Mag,

You can attempt to fix any errors on the disk, but could be a sign that the disk is starting to fail.

You'll need to startup using your Windows XP installation/recovery CD.

At the beggining of the setup, you will have the option to enter the Windows Recovery console, press R.

Once you reach the c: prompt, type chkdsk /f

Hi Magistical

This could be a number of things from a bad hdd to a loose IDE cable, also your MBR may be corrupt.

Have you tried booting with the XP disk?

I would use the disk, although they never gave me one because it came already installed when I bought it. They didnt give me a Windows XP cd when I got it. I can do F10 at startup and F1 for Setup and Esc for boot menu. Is there another way to get to the chckdisk?

Also, I will try to mess around with my HD SATA cable and such to see if that might be a problem.

Edit: I tried blowing them out with a dust remover and such along with my pc and no hope, didnt work. :\

you can run chkdsk /f by going to start > run > cmd > type in chkdsk /f and select yes for run after reboot. then reboot and run it.

It wont load windows up. I can't get into windows at all to get on my PC. Im on my other one right now trying to fix the broken one :|

They gave you nothing? Any lagit PC should be supplied with a windows installation or recovery CD of some kind. If they haven't supplied you this, I would complain, because you are entitled to it.

Do you have one you could borrow from a friend, just to access the recovery console?

Most Windows PC's these days come pre-formated with NT File System, which cannot be accessed via a simple startup disk. A recovery CD is the only option to be honest.