Hard Disk Error

[JimHa]

My hard drive keeps telling me this whenever I try to install windows XP home on it. I can get into the windows XP setup and then when it restarts it always tells me "Disk Read Error hit control alt and delete to restart"

How do I get my Hard drive to start working. This is a new hard drive and the same thing was happening on my old one. For those of you who don't know I had windows XP home running fine on my computer than I put SuSE linux on it. Now I want to re-install Windows XP but it won't let me. Sometimes in setup it keeps saying that The hard disk might have been damaged or formatted with the wrong system( FAT) and to consult my computers manual(which i dont have since i made mine)

Any ideas to get windows working ???

and by the way microsoft tech support has the be the worst kind there is. It's all outsourced... some indian guy who couldn't pronounce a word of english was helping me and it took 20 mins just for him to get my key number down. Then after that he told me he was gonna charge me 35 bucks for help. what bullshit

 

[Lord Kalthorn]

Normally Microsoft Tech Support is great. Have you tried Microsoft Support and just got them to send you another CD. If its not working on two Hard Drives and one is new then its the CD; and Microsoft will replace it.

 

[Gary Graefen]

Sounds like you need to repartician and do a full format of your hardrive. Sometimes a complete scandisk will help but it takes forever. Check your bios settings to make certain the drive is identified correctly. On several occasions I had to reset the bios because its data was corrupted.
Ive had to redo harddrives using a 98 boot cd or floppy because the "to automated" xp setup wouldn't work. After partitioning and a format the windows xp installed ok. You'll need either the windows 98 oem boot cd, a windows rescue floppy, or partician magic, or even a maxtor boot floppy can work to redo your drive.
This is when friends can come in handy.

 

[CoMpUtaFrEek]

Sounds like you need to repartician and do a full format of your hardrive. Sometimes a complete scandisk will help but it takes forever. Check your bios settings to make certain the drive is identified correctly. On several occasions I had to reset the bios because its data was corrupted.
Ive had to redo harddrives using a 98 boot cd or floppy because the "to automated" xp setup wouldn't work. After partitioning and a format the windows xp installed ok. You'll need either the windows 98 oem boot cd, a windows rescue floppy, or partician magic, or even a maxtor boot floppy can work to redo your drive.
This is when friends can come in handy.

Yeh this sounds good. You can get a windows 98 boot disk from www.bootdisk.com

Use commands C:\fdisk and C:\format or buy a DOS Manual, lol.

Could be the CD, the disk failing to be read from might not necessarily be the hard drive. Try cleaning the cd, or copying the cd onto a blank one using a friends CD writer.

 

[VLe]

I have the same problem. I just bought a new harddrive and installed win xp pro onto the harddrive from another computer. It runs fine on that computer but when i switch to my old computer it says "A disk read error ocurred Press ctrl alt del to restart". I do that and the same thing just happens. I don't really know what to do now please help me.

 

[~mr mixx~]

Well to answer both yer questions: 1st i would turn off the restart option...start/ right click my comp./options/ advanced/ where it says startup & recovery click settings/ right under the system failure , just un-tic the box that say's: auto-matic restart.

that should take care of the restart...

I would just do a system restore , by booting up with the CD that has the driver's on it, it should give you an option to do a system restore

make shure in bios, that the boot order is:
1st )CD drive
2nd)floppy
3rd) hhd

 

[VLe]

Well the problem is I can't set the boot order. The only option for the boot order is teh hard disk.