[willisbro]

My original problem started with lap top programs freezing up, blue screen flashing and pc rebooting. I finally got in safe mode and ran trojan hunter. 16 trojans removed. Then I restarted and it went to a black screen that says "a Disk Read error occured Press cntrl alt del to Restart" Every restart does the same thing. I tried my factory restore disk but it wouldn't boot. I then took my xp disk from my desktop computer and was able to boot to the cd and got into the recovery console. When I ran a dir it says "an error occured during directory innumeration" I then ran fixboot and fixmbr. Same issue at restart. Someone told me to download and run a program called Testdisk. I downloaded it to my PC but have no idea if I need to make a bootable cd and if so how.

I think I have made a mess so far. Hope you can help. Whatever I do has to be downloaded to a cd and then try to get to laptop. Is there any hope ?

Oh also when I ran the xp cd from my desktop, I was going to try and do a partial install hoping to keep my data but it doesn't give me any option except that it needs to reformat due to lack of partition space or something to that effect. Is my hard drive fried? I have a few files I need since my last backup.

Thanks for your help
Willis

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If the factory recovery CD wouldn't boot but the Microsoft XP CD would, that suggests you may not be doing something properly. Obviously the laptop is set up to boot from a CD, and is able to do so, so nothing wrong there. On my toshiba laptop you have to press the 'C' key as soon as you boot up with the Recovery CD inserted, otherwise it just ignores the CD and boots from the hard drive as normal. Maybe you need to do something like that on your laptop?

[pip22]

If the factory recovery CD wouldn't boot but the Microsoft XP CD would, that suggests you may not be doing something properly. Obviously the laptop is set up to boot from a CD, and is able to do so, so nothing wrong there. On my toshiba laptop you have to press the 'C' key as soon as you boot up with the Recovery CD inserted, otherwise it just ignores the CD and boots from the hard drive as normal. Maybe you need to do something like that on your laptop?

[willisbro]

Thanks pip22 for the response. One thing I guess I forgot to mention. When I try to boot from the recovery disk it tells me to press r for recovery console. But then instead of going to the recovery console it comes up with the disk read error again. While I agree that it seems it should work, there is sommething that allows only my windows xp disk to work. The recovery disk is a manufacturer disk that says applications and operating system.

The ither thing that puzzles me is the fact that I can not get the xp cd to allow me to just create a partition in the unused space or even in another directory. I do not have a clue. I do know that I cleaned some files out with trojan hunter that had something to do with the registry. But at any rate if I can't get in to look I can't fix.

Have you ever heard of the disktest recovery program. Is it worth a try? If so can you give me some over simplified instructions on how to make a cd bootable? Would like to hear your thoughts.
Thanks a bunch

[The Skeptic]

In recovery console type chkdsk /r. Let the process run to the end.

[willisbro]

when I run any chkdsk command I get "the volume appears to contain one or more unrecoverable problems.

[The Skeptic]

If you know the make of the HD download a dos bootable diagnostic program from the manufacturer's site. If you don't know download Seagate/Maxtor's from this site. Burn an iso image to a cd. Insert the cd into the cd drive of your laptop and bootup. your laptop. Run the complete test of your HD.