Boot failure: Disk Read Error

[Kim]

When Booting my Win XP Pro it suddenly decided to halt just after
accessing the harddrive and in a line on the screen saying "Disk Read
Error, press CTRL+ALT+DEL to continue".
I have tried installing an old harddrive and booting from this, without
problems. I then attached the drive with problems as a Slave and were
able to get to the data on it. So in my view the disk is mainly ok, its
the Windows on it that fails. After this I tried to remove the new boot
drive and boot from the installation cd. Then I used the Recovery option
and did a chkdsk /R on the failing drive; It seems that chkdsk repaired
some files. After this the hard drive started up claiming that
windows/system32/hal.dll was missing or corrupted. I replaced this with
a similar file from a healthy pc running the same OS, but after this the
file ntoskrnl.exe was claimed to be corrupt.
Here I stopped because I thought that maybe a lot more files in my
windows installation were corrupt.
My question is now: Can I in any way reinstall/repair windows without
having to reinstall all my applications?
Regards, Kim

 

[Will Denny]

Hi

Have a look at the following article by Michael Stevens regarding a 'Repair'
install of XP:

"How to Perform a Windows XP Repair Install"
http://michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

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Will Denny
MS-MVP Windows Shell/User
Please reply to the News Groups

 

[Kim]

Hi

Have a look at the following article by Michael Stevens regarding a 'Repair'
install of XP:

"How to Perform a Windows XP Repair Install"
http://michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

Thanks, Will.

 

[Kim]

When Booting my Win XP Pro it suddenly decided to halt just after
accessing the harddrive and in a line on the screen saying "Disk Read
Error, press CTRL+ALT+DEL to continue"....

Will,
By the way, do you think I should replace the harddrive after I get
windows up again, and can you offer an explanation why this system file
corruption can have happened?
Regards, Kim

 

[Will Denny]

Will,
By the way, do you think I should replace the harddrive after I get
windows up again, and can you offer an explanation why this system file
corruption can have happened?
Regards, Kim

Nah - don't replace the HD unless you are having major problems, that might
suggest a replacement. Files can become corrupted for various reasons - no
one in particular.


--


Will Denny
MS-MVP Windows Shell/User
Please reply to the News Groups