My fathers computer is having troubles.
I installed XP professional on his computer and everything was okay far a few days, then the computer would stop booting up and report that “A disk read error has occurred Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart”. I restarted and the same error occurred. I tried re-installing XP but that did not work (and I don’t know what I am supposed to do in the repair console.) I rebuilt the MBR but that did not work either. Finally I did a complete reformat of the drive and installed XP which seemed to work. However, it is now a few days later and the problem seems to have occurred again. I do not think that it was a mechanical error because I was still able to access and read the drive using a Norton utility.
Does anyone have any idea what is going on and how I can fix it without wiping the disk?
My advice would be to determine the make and model of the drive (either by opening the case and taking a look, or by interrogating the Windows Device Manager), then head off to the manufacturer’s website to see if they have a diagnostic tool. The tendency is for modern hard drives to fail progressively, starting with obscure and intermittent problems just such as this - it could be your early warning sign. Back up anything important as soon as possible.
Another professional tech support guy chiming in.
Back up first.
Diagnose the drive per mangetout’s directions. Run the “long” version of the diagnostic test.
Even if the drive passes, if downtime is expensive and money is not tight, I’d replace it anyway. Of course I work on mission-critical servers that have hardware support contracts, so I replace any hardware that looks at me funny.