Help-A disk read error occured-press cntrl alt del to restart

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G

Guest

the above message appeared when I rebotted win xp. Where do I begin to
correct it? I cannot boot up the computer HP Pavilion 160 Gig, 512 Ram

I appreciate any help or advice. Thanks
Jim
 
Hi Jim,

First make sure there are no floppy disks or CD in their respective drives.

Power the system off and unplug it, then open the case and check for loose
cabling. If all appears to be well seated, retry the boot. If it still
fails, check to see if the BIOS is correctly recognizing the drive. If not,
you may have experienced a hard drive failure. You could also try a software
diagnostic tool from the drive manufacturer, it will tell you the state of
the drive and whether it is a candidate for replacement.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
 
Thanks!

It is a fairly new hardrive. I ended up doing a full system recovery which
appears to have resolved the problem. I am still in the process of
reinstalling all the added software. Now that's a pain. But it reinforces
the need to backup, backup, backup. Thanks again.
Jim
 
Hi Jim,

Even new hard drives can fail. I would strongly suggest that you run the
software diagnostics to make sure it isn't going to crap out on you again.
There is also the possibility that you had a file system failure. Sometimes
running chkdsk c: /r can fix this, but more often than not it won't, thus
requiring you to start from scratch (which is what your recovery disk does).

Backups are always critical, no matter how stable things seem.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
 
The same thing has happened to me.
WD 160g on SONY rx550 512mb
Maybe the new updates from MS are causing this.
 
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