"Disk Read Error" AND "Error Reading Operating System"

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quiq

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I use Windows XP. I boot from my 40gig HD and have an 80gig slave drive. My computer's worked great untill 2 days ago. Now whenever I boot up, it does the usual cd rom and floppy drive noises then it shows a black screen that says "A Disk Read Error Occured. Press CTRL ALT DELETE"

So I CTRL ALT DELETE it and then it tries to boot up and says "Error Reading Operating System". It alternates between these two messages when I reboot

Here's the thing though, After about about 20 minutes messing with the computer (turning it off and on and restarting multiple times), it will finally load windows and work just fine. All my data is on my hard drive and everthing runs smooth. But then it will give me the same errors when I try to boot up the next time.

What can I do?
 
I really think its the data cable problem... remove the data cable from the hard drive and then connect it in its correct position if the problem occurs again get a new cable and make sure its and ATA-100.
 
Catbert said:
Hence why I said to try the OS repair option ;)

the os repair option sumtimes does not repair drivers n stuff so i think going to the exact point it may b a driver fault...!!
 
Sounds like you either have some file corruption or bad sectors on the drive.
Try booting from a XP boot disk & running scandisk. If this comes up clean, run it again with & let it do a surface scan.
 
What's your 40 Gig Master?? A Seagate? I had the same type of drive, except it was a 10GB that failed on me
 
I dont know how to repair drivers. I put it my XP CD and it boots up to a menu from there where I can either install windows again or use the repair feature. I try repair feature and it just sends me to dos and asks "which windows installation would I like to enter? 1: Windows...

So I type 1 and it says below "C:\Windows>
and thats it

When I was able to get it to go into windows yesterday by fiddling around, my master hard drive and slave (for media storage) worked fine... But how can I use scandisk from dos?

Also, could I install windows onto my slave drive somehow without having to format my 40 gig master? Then start the computer up from my slave? I'm guessin there's a hardware issue with just my master drive right? I opened the computer up and made sure all the wires were in snug and they were

I dont want to lose the data thats on my 40 gig if possible!
 
To run scandisk from MS-DOS, press F8 (Or whicherev button) to enter DOS mode during boot. Once in DOS mode type the following:

PHP:
cd/
chkdsk /f

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You could install your OS on your slave, thing is it may ask you to format the drive first if you don't already have an OS installed on it.

By formatting, along with producing the sectors on the disk for the OS to be installed on and use, it will wipe your data.

Perhaps you could buy a new HDD ?
 
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