[.excel]

Ok, here's what happened: I had my computer on overnight, nothing out of the ordinary... I turn on my screen and the morning and I'm welcomed by the message, "A disk read error occured. Press ctrl+alt+del to restart."

I've ran a check of my hard drive from Western Digital's website, and no errors were found. I've reset my CMOS with the jumpers on the mobo... no dice.

I'm in the process of getting a boot disc, should have it by this weekend, but I was wondering if there was anything else I could do to try and resolve this problem.

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Are the partitions in tact? Can you get into the recovery console?

[anzenketh]

Are the partitions in tact? Can you get into the recovery console?

[.excel]

If you'll explain what the partitions are and how to check and see if they are intact, I will.

And no, I haven't been able to get to the recovery console yet, but I will as soon as I get my XP boot disc back.

[anzenketh]

Both of those action require you have your XP CD. Go ahead and post back if you are able to get into the recovery console.

Edit: when you get your cds.

Edited by tuxmaster, 23 May 2007 - 10:26 PM.

[.excel]

Kk, I will. So there's nothing else I can do at this point? I read somewhere that problems like this point to some type of hardware failure. I checked my HD and it's working fine... are there any utilities to check the motherboard?

[anzenketh]

A lot of times yes problems like this are hardware related. Not all the time though there have been a few instances to where I have seen it be software related.

[.excel]

Right. I'm thinking it's most likely the mobo, because the HD is fine, the RAM is pretty good quality (G.Skill, not value ram), and the mobo is an ECS nForce4M-A, which I heard after I bought it to be a pretty cheap motherboard. So yeah... that's my guess, but I'd like to find out for sure before I go tearing everything out and getting a new mobo.

[zbd]

Have you tried the chkdsk /r ?

http://www.deltatran....com/chkdsk.htm

or use:

start/my computer/right click on local disk (c:)/properties/tools/under error checking click "check now"/

Edited by zbd, 26 May 2007 - 02:00 AM.

[happyrock]

you could also get puppy linux...download it and burn it to cd ...if you don't have a burning program that will burn .ISO files go here and get a small FAST no frills iso burning program...make sure in the bios the cd drive is the first boot device....put the cd in the cd drive..boot your computer....puppy will boot and run totally in ram...if your hardware is is good working order you will know...you can also use it to burn (backup)your data to cd/dvd's

Edited by happyrck, 26 May 2007 - 05:32 PM.

[.excel]

K, I'll try PuppyLinux next.

I did manage to get ahold of a recovery disk. I ran the recovery console, and this is what I found: when we tried to access the HD partitions and reformat the disk, Windows would not even recognize the partition type. It didn't list NFTS or FAT32 or anything. I'm told all this by my friend who is pretty good with computers, so he tells me that this is pretty bad... is the HD just plain crashed? Is there any way to recover my old files if so, and will they be corrupted if I do recover them?

[anzenketh]

Yes that is pretty bad does not mean that the hard drive is gone but it is something we want to check before we reinstall again. Basically that is all I can think we can do here Plug the drive into a computer externally or as a slave copy data over and reinstall and I am telling you I do not say that often. If anyone wants to challenge me on that by all means I will sit and watch. What is the manufacture of the hard drive?

[happyrock]

if you have a recovery disk and try to reinstall windows..it will wipe the drive back to the way it left the manufacture ...if you have all your data backed up already or just don't care about the data...just do a fresh clean install...windows will format and partition the drive for you..no need for the recovery console at all...if windows can't format the drive it will tell you and you will know the hard drive died..