techie advice please!

loobylou36

I am writing this on behalf of a friend who has been having trouble with his computer, when it is switched on a black screen appears with the message:

Disk read error
please press Ctrl-Alt-Delete to restart

when he presses these buttons nothing happens

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, Thanks

nads

Doesn't look like the simplest of thigns to resolve, try one of the following suggestions?

http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/19004/

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Hardware/Q_21012094.html

http://help.lockergnome.com/lofiversion/index.php/t19237.html


Try goign into Bios (normally keep pressing F8 soon as the PC powers up), and see if the hard drive can be detected. if it is then the Master Boot Record is not liekly to be the prob (but it still could?) and that way you know the hd is still alive and is "repairable".

loobylou36

Thanks for the advice, I will pass him on the info.
Too be honest it is a very old computer and don't think it is worth messing with but will check in the Bios for him and see if the hd is still alive