Computer jammed/hung

L._Leslie

Friend having computer problem and has asked me to see if anyone can advise solution.

Computer starts normally,then on screen

Primary matter disc
Capability is disabled
Secondary slave disc
Capability is disabled
Boot from CD
Disc read error occurred
Press Control/Alt/Delete to restart

Nothing happens, so trying "boot from CD" instruction, my friend put in her original Windows XP disc,but same message appears,

Disc read error occurred etc., etc.

This is as accurate as I wrote down from a phone call, but if I have something slightly wrong perhaps someone will still be able to recognise what the problem is and perhaps suggest what she can do to restart her computer.

Thank you in advance.

esuhl

Unless the motherboard is fried or there are some loose connections somewhere, I can only think that the BIOS settings have become corrupt.

It might be worth going into the BIOS settings and seeing if there's an option to re-scan the hard disk (the BIOS does this to detmine how many sectors, cylinders, etc. each drive has).

If this resolves the problem, but the same thing happens after the PC has been switched off, you may need to replace the battery on the motherboard.

L._Leslie

esuhl wrote: »

Unless the motherboard is fried or there are some loose connections somewhere, I can only think that the BIOS settings have become corrupt.

It might be worth going into the BIOS settings and seeing if there's an option to re-scan the hard disk (the BIOS does this to detmine how many sectors, cylinders, etc. each drive has).

If this resolves the problem, but the same thing happens after the PC has been switched off, you may need to replace the battery on the motherboard.

Thanks--will pass on your advice

tomsolomon

Primary matter disc should be primary Master disc. If you can get into the bios to see if it detects any of your drives this would help. Sounds like possibly a missing or corrupt boot sector. Although hardware failiure is not totaly out of the question. Try downloading DOS and and run bootfix do a chkdsk aswell to see if there are any problems with the HD. Might need a bios upgrade...