My older X1000 Compaq laptop froze last night so I turned it off, waited a minute, and turned it back on. The screen said "A disk read error has occurred, press ctrl-alt-del to restart" I did this and the startup page appeared for a second or two and it went back to the error message. I tried it again and hit F10 key and ran the HDD diagnostics. The loooong one. It showed no problem. I'm not sure what other things I should try from the F10 screen. HELP!

I'm running XP.

Try safe mode.

Just had the same thing with my Dell XPS, they said there is nothing they could do with it except replace it. mine wouldn't even go into safe mode, just straight to the error message.

Hi Phil,

Got a backup? You can try booting from the recovery cd. But even if you doin't have a backup you still might be able to salvage some data by removing the drive from that laptop and putting it into a usb enclosure and seeing if it's readable or not. (carefully).

-David

If you're lucky it's a problem with the cable. It's more likely the drive itself. If it's the cable clean the contacts and replace the cable if you have one around. If it's the drive copy the data onto a new drive and chuck the old one.

try this:


Insert your XP disk and boot from the disk
Select recovery console
follow the promts until you are in DOS
C:\windows
at the above prompts type FIXMBR

Once its finished type CHKDSK /r

then reboot and see if it boots properly.

It would be unlikely for a bad MBR to cause his error.

Here's what transpired:
-took the laptop to my fav. repair shop about 4 hrs. before my flt.
-they ran diagnostics and found my HD to be OK
-they tried to boot from a CD and couldn't
-they didn't know the exact error, probably software related
-suggested I remove HD & save all the data to my desktop & reload Windows XP
-reloaded Windows and now I can't "see" all the data I stored on my desktop (using My Network Places); could copy data to a CD & then load on laptop but would like to get MNP working

In the past I could swap files between computers using My Network Places but now I can't. Not sure what the issue is. Any good tutorials or advice? Please email or PM me if you're willing to help.

Thanks,
Phil

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Spinrite - grc.com. Will solve this.

This is a network configuration issue. You need to map the network drive and supply login information. If you tell it to restore the connection on boot you only have to do it once, although you'll get a warning that it can't map all drives if you boot it while disconnected from your network.

Thanks Loren but I'm still confused. Let me tell you what both computers show:

Newly rebooted laptop:

-My Network Places
-Entire Network
-MS Windows Network
-MSHome
-laptop (owner-1b1398977)
-Shared Docs (only thing in there are empty Music & Pictures files)

On my desktop:

-My Network Places
-Entire Network
---MS Windows Network (under this is "MSHome" and a picture of 3 computer screens linked together but MSHome is empty)
-SharedDocs on Desktop (Owner-1b1398977) --this folder contains all of the docs I saved from the laptop HD

When I double-click MS Windows Network on my laptop the "map network drive" option is grayed out.

Can you give me a step-by-step process? Does the mapping process occur on the laptop?Email me if you wish at philemer1 at yahoo dot com

Thanks much. Oh, I found these instructions on MS: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308582

Ok, that's different--you can't try to map the drive. I've never seen one that doesn't even let you think about mapping a drive. Based on your original description I figured a mapping was lost and it had simply done it's job before and you forgot about it.

I'm afraid I'm stumped.

on your laptop simply go to start, run then type "\\Computername\c$"

replace computername with either the computer name of you desktop or the IP address. It will probably ask you to authenticate with the username and password of your admin account on your desktop. Once you authenticate, it should allow you to access the C drive. from there you should be able to navigate to C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Desktop.

I think I now know part of the problem: my two computers have the same "name" (owner-1b1398977) I think I might have done this when I was trying to set up a network using the WIZARD. What's the easiest way to rename one of them? Thanks!!

right click my computer then go to properties. click the computer name tab, then click change. that should solve your problem.