Help with PC not booting by Windows CD

Sister's computer came up with an error on boot saying "error reading disk, press alt+ctrl+delete to restart"

My understanding is possibly repairing the MBR. Problem is CD-ROM drive is detected and will show the first text screen when booting to the XP CD. Afterwards nothing just blank.

Replaced the CD-ROM drive and still the same. I thought the CD was bad, but I tried it in my other machine and it's working fine.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

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Comments

Daniel333

If you pop another HDD drive in, does it work?

Anyhow, run your basics. DFT and Mem86 both on extended scans and let us know the results.

Mmartin_47

Daniel333 wrote:

If you pop another HDD drive in, does it work?

Anyhow, run your basics. DFT and Mem86 both on extended scans and let us know the results.

It is the hard drive. Forgot to do that step. Doubt there's anyway to recover the data besides sending it out?

JDMurray

If you move the hard drive to another computer do you still get the same problem? If so, something sure clobbered the hard drive. I would make the drive a slave on another computer and run the Windows XP Recovery Console on it. Be sure to select the second Windows OS it will (hopefully) find on the secondary drive. You might get lucky with just a CHKDSK /P /R and a FIXBOOT or FIXMBR.

What was your sister doing with the computer prior to this error occurring? You might want to run a Malware scan on it before you try booting off it again. If the drive is very old, consider replacing it or running Spinrite on it to reinforce the magnetic encoding.

Mmartin_47

Forgot to mention, yeah same problem. Replaced the HD already. Problem solved. Thanks!