XP won't boot "A disk read error has occured"

[LeftSpin]

I have a Dell laptop. When booting my machine one day, I go the following
error after POST.

"A disk read error has occured, please press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart".

I put the laptop drive into an enclosure for a 3.5" hard drive using an
adapter, and booted from another drive in my laptop. The drive appeared to
be fine. I made an image of the drive using Ghost with verify after image
selected. The image was OK. I deleted the partition, and the other small
partition that Dell puts for diagnostic utlities so that the drive was
unallocated. Then I used Ghost to put the data back on the drive. I get the
same error when I try to boot from the drive.

Then I booted with my XP CD from Dell, with no drive in my laptop, and the
drive in the enclosure again via firewire. I ran chkdsk /r. The problem
persisted. Then I ran fixmbr, same problem. Then fixboot, same problem.

I read that the boot.ini could be corrupted. Here are the contents:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home
Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

I would like a solution to this problem that does not include the shotgun
approach of reinstall Windows XP. Something is corrupted in the files since
the problem happened after I restored the image to the hard drive. The
boot.ini file looks OK to me. Please give me a solution to this problem.

Thanks.

 

[LeftSpin]

I forgot to mention that I put a different drive image on this hard drive,
and that one booted fine. I don't believe it is a problem with the drive.
Some file is corrupted.

I've also tried Norton Disk Doctor, and that claimed there was no problem
with the drive.

 

[Guest]

I am having the same problem except mines a desktop...I can't even reinstall
windows xp...I hope some one replies to this post soon...it's only been
almost 2 months...