Boot issue with XP (long)

[travathian]

System gave me a "a disk read error has occurred". Determined there was
something wrong with the MBR, but repeated attempts to repair it using the
repair console failed. Ended up tossing a spare drive in the system and doing
a clean WinXP install, and it installed and worked fine. I then installed the
problem drive beside it and booted to a live linux cd, used the dd command to
copy the mbr from the new drive to the problem drive. Booted to the recovery
console again and did a fixboot and fixmbr, rebooted, and it started! Kind
of. It showed the Windows splash screen for a few seconds, then rebooted,
repeat, repeat, repeat. Back to the recovery console, boot.ini looks fine,
fixboot and fixmbr again, no luck. Did a second install of WinXP on the
trouble drive, but to a folder called Windows2. Now when it boots I get the
OS selection screen, I see the new install and the old install. New install
boots to the vanilla WinXP install just fine, but if I chose the original
WinXP install I just get a black screen and the system is hard locked.
ctrl-alt-del won't even reboot it. I tried booting to the cd and doing a
repair, but only the new WinXP install is displayed under repairable
installations. *sigh* If I boot the new install, the only restore point
available is the one when it was installed just now, can't find any available
for the original installation. The drive works fine, I can access all the
files and folders on the drive and in the original WinXP install just fine.

I'm just at a loss at this point.

 

[philo]

System gave me a "a disk read error has occurred".

Stop right there. A pretty good indication the drive is failing.

Back it up and don't use it.

Run the mfg's diagnostic if you want to...
but I'd not use that drive once you'd got all your data backed up


Determined there was

 

[travathian]

The drive already passed WD full diagnostics. It reads and writes without
error, and it no longer gives that error. But thanks for the suggestion.

 

[neil]

Have you tried booting to the recovery console and running chkdsk.?
Neil

 

[travathian]

I have yes, no change.

 

[neil]

I think you should copy all the important stuff off the drive while you can
access it and format the drive.
Can you access the problem install in safemode.? If not then a format drive
I don't think you just have an option.

Just a note about system restore, there will only be restore points for the
"windows2" created by "windows2" then two installs are not linked.

Neil