Disc read error occurred???

sylvia9121

Hello,
Our PC upstairs hasnt been working for a while and i was just wondering if anyone has a clue as to what it might be.
We went to turn it on and there was a sort of clicking noise coming from the tower,
then after about 5 mins a message came up "disc read error occured press CTRL ALT DEL to restart. This keeps happening everytime I press CTRL ALT DEL it gives me the same message.
Any clues?
Thanks
Sylvia

CHR15

Clicking noise is almost certainly a failed hard drive.

Browntoa

2nd vote for hard disk fail

PaulK_3

If you are running XP then you can take a look in control panel, administrative tools, event viewer for errors but it does seem to be pointing to a terminal drive, better start backing up if needed.

sylvia9121

sory to be thick, i dont really know the tech stuff with computers, Is that fatal then? will we need to dump? I wouldnt know the first thing about backing up.
thanks
Sylvia

Browntoa

yes, it's terminal and if the Pc is that old then it's not worth the money to replace the HDD

you can get these

http://www.morgancomputers.co.uk/shop/detail.asp?ProductID=3858&CategoryID=142&SubCategoryID=

for £165, cost you that for a hard disk and the labour to re-install XP

sylvia9121

Ok thanks,
Any photos and files stored, are they lost now then, or would I (or someone else) be able to retrieve the information?

Browntoa

possibly get them off, again if it's failed you are looking at £100 plus to get the data

sylvia9121

ok well thats that sorted, lol.. just out of interest if we were to give it away (somewhere like freecycle, would they be able to retrieve our information if they got it working, I couldnt think of anything worse then someone having access to photos etc, or how should we dispose of this.
Thanks
Sylvia

ellybelly89

take the hdd out and they won't be able to retrieve your data.

PaulK_3

If you can get a drive into the case to act as the new boot disk there is a very very very slim chance you can get to your data but I would seriously doubt that you will be able to recover your phots Not the best time to be reminded that backing up important data/photos/files is the only true way to recover them in emergency.