Disk read error occurred laptop hard drive

[James T Kirk USS Enterprise]

Hello,
The laptop came with an windows operating system.
I switched the hard drive with another one from a second laptop that had linux installed on it.
I turned it on. now when it boots, multicolored blinking dots appear on a black screen and the message at the top is "A disk read error occurred CTRL + ALT + DEL to restart".
so i put the windows XP Pro in the CD Drive and turned it off. when it was turned on, it installed windows no problem.
but i wanted XP Home so that I can have Service Pack 2 to be able to install a much need program, so I formatted the hard drive.
after formating the drive, i still get this "disk read error" message when i turn it on. so i repeated the process and put the windows disk in and turned it off. i put the windows home disk into the cd drive. when i turned it back on, i'm not able to install windows as before. so this time i even tried the original windows xp pro disk again -- nothing.
I can't get to the dos prompt to be able to type anything. and when i restart, it gives me the same message. no matter how many times that i restart. do you think a driver or utility disk will help?

:Formatted Drive
:No Dos Prompt
:The F2 & F8 Boot Options are not available, for ["safe mode", "command prompt", and "boot from cd"]
:The only boot options that it does have instead is ["boot from Multibay", "boot from Hard Drive", or "boot from NIC"] (is NIC boot from the Network? if it is boot from the internet, since i have formated the drive and there is no operating system on it, and the network connection has not been set up yet, it seems like it would be impossible to boot from this option while the computer is in its current state)
:When i put a CD in the drive, whether it the Windows CD or Linux OS, nothing seems to boot from the CD or to give a message indicating that it is trying to boot from the cd
:Very Limited Bios (i can't tell whether there is a listing for the CD drive, as not even an empty space such as "none" shows up under its listing; however, the bios does list the hard drive and it detects it)

 

[James T Kirk USS Enterprise]

hello everyone , here is a more exact description about the problem, though a little longer. The above is more or less the abbreviated version.

In the beginning, I had Windows installed on the Compaq

I switched hard drives with another computer that had Linux installed on it. When I turned it on, I received the "A Disk Read Error Occurred CTRL+ALT+DEL to Restart" and a black screen with colored blinking lights on it. I put XP Pro into the CD drive and turned it off.

I turned it on. It said, "press any key to boot from the CD". I pressed a key and Windows setup completely and without any issues.

Then later, I realized that I needed XP Home with service pack 2 to be able to install a much needed program, and so I formatted the drive.

I turned it on. "A Disk Read Error Occurred CTRL+ALT+DEL to Restart" and a black screen with colored blinking lights on it. I turned it off.

I repeated this process many times with the same results.

I put the XP Home CD into the CD drive and turned it on. "A Disk Read Error Occurred CTRL+ALT+DEL to Restart" and a black screen with colored blinking lights on it. And no "press any key to boot from the CD" friendly message.

I repeated this process several times with the same results.

I put the XP Pro CD (the one that had installed before, just to see if maybe it only liked that disk and not the other one) into the CD drive. I turned it on. "A Disk Read Error Occurred CTRL+ALT+DEL to Restart" and a black screen with colored blinking lights on it. And no "press any key to boot from the CD". I turned it off.

So I took the CD out of the CD drive. I turned it on. "A Disk Read Error Occurred ".

I took out the CD drive and reseated back into the laptop. I put the XP Home CD in the CD drive.

The second computer is a Dell, with a working XP OS, and no issues. The Compaq is the problem laptop with the problem drive, now formatted. (Sorry, the previous blue screen entry last time was from a third laptop that I had borrowed from a friend to try to test it -- and those were the results) I put the hard drive from the Compaq into the Dell and installed XP Pro with no problems. On the Dell, the CD drive letter showed up and its contents could be seen and accessed.

I put the Dell's original Hard Drive back in and booted the laptop. Everything seemed just fine -- until I noticed that by having installed another operating system on the Dell in an attempt to get the Compaq up and running, it has completely disabled my CD drive. And when I went to system information, my Samsung CD drive showed up under the problem devices catagory.

So I put the Compaq drive (with newly installed XP Pro) back in the Dell and booted it. Windows XP Pro ran just swell, a fresh install -- and guess what, mysteriously the CD drive letter showed up and worked just fine. I still had a CD drive, but only with the Compaq drive in the Dell (this is somewhat discombobulating because I need a CD drive AND XP Home service pack 2, and I no longer have all of my files on the hard drive since they are on the Dell hard drive).

I put the newly installed XP Pro hard drive back in the Compaq, hoping that that would solve the problem. I turned on the Compaq. "A Disk Read Error Occurred CTRL+ALT+DEL to Restart" and a black screen with colored blinking lights on it. And no "press any key to boot from the CD". I turned it off.

Obviously that didn't work, so I thought that there must be another way to do this. I just want to get XP Home with service pack 2 installed on this computer. Somethings got to work.

So I formatted the hard drive again in hopes that it would give me that prize winning "press any key to boot from the CD" message when I tried it again.

I turned on the Compaq. "A Disk Read Error Occurred CTRL+ALT+DEL to Restart" and a black screen with colored blinking lights on it.

But something interesting "did" happen though. When I put the hard drive into a third laptop, this time I got the "NTLDR is Missing CTRL+ALT+DEL to Restart" error message.

I set the Bios to default settings. I rebooted the Compaq. "A Disk Read Error Occurred CTRL+ALT+DEL to Restart" and a black screen with colored blinking lights on it.

I went into the Bios again and changed the Boot Sequence to boot from the CD first and then from the hard drive second. I turned on the Compaq. "A Disk Read Error Occurred CTRL+ALT+DEL to Restart" and a black screen with colored blinking lights on it.

The USB data cable connecting the external drive to the Dell (problem drive, formatted) is brand new.

I put the hard drive into an External Hard Drive case and connected it with a USB to the Dell. Another drive letter appears, drive D. Now I have two drives connected to the Dell (working Laptop), with an internal and USB External drive. I went to the Dos prompt, switched to the D Drive, D:, and ran check disk. No problems.

While in Dos still, I typed in the "FixBoot" command. An error. I typed in "FixMBR". And again, the same message: "This is not a recognized internal or external command"

Then I found out that you can only use these commands if you insert the windows CD into the CD drive and then type them in. But now my CD drive is disabled in the Dell, and so I can't do these, though I don't know if it would help any anyways.

Man, I'm stuck. I've tried everything. What do you think I can do from here?

-- James T Kirk USS Enterprise

 

[fzabkar]

Are your HDD and optical drive both IDE drives? If so, how have you configured the master / slave / cable select jumpers?

(I didn't see any reference to a model number in the captain's log, so I'm sorry if my question is inappropriate)

 

[James T Kirk USS Enterprise]

Best answer selected by James T Kirk USS Enterprise.

 

[James T Kirk USS Enterprise]

Thanks for the reply fzabkar. You were the only one that replied.
No, the model number didn't appear in the Captain's log. I don't see how this could help.

Solved: Bad OS Disk

 

[James T Kirk USS Enterprise]

Captain's Log Stardate 3117,

The computer's mainframe terminal has been fixed. The problem has been solved and the system is back on line. Solved: It was a bad OS Disk.
The hyperdrive has been reactivated and we're now preparing to warp speed.

Beam me up Scotty,
Over and out,

Captain Kirk