A disk read error has occurred; press Ctrl-Alt-Del to restart

hi everyone, how we all doing? better than myself i hope

I am running an HP Compaq Presario V6000 Notebook with a Windows Vista
Home edition i belive
When i try to turn my computer on i am getting teh
A disk read error has occurred; press Ctrl-Alt-Del to restart
error.

The system has been acting strange teh past couple of days, freezing
up, blue screen of death, an di noticed it started after I had borrowed
a friends camera and plugged in the USB to retrieve the pictures, it was
after that my system started spitting out the BSOF and freezing up on
me.

Last night i was talking to my son on msn, it froze, i shut it down and
walked away, this morning i woke up, ready to work, turned on the system
and got the error message

My system is my bread and butter, it is how i conduct work and make my
money. I have been down 2 days now and have a few unhappy clients :(

I am hoping someone can help me figure out the problem, At this point,
I dont care if i lose files, i just want my system back. Keeping my
files would be lovely, but, i will settle for losing them if need be

Oh...
When i hit f12 while booting...i get this error....

PXE E61 Media Test Failure, Check Cable
PXE MOF Exiting Nvidia Boot agent

(the sometimes, under the above it will show Operating system not
found)

again though, the operating system not found error doesnt always show
up

so..if i dont hit anything and just turn on the computer, i get the
A disk read error has occurred; press Ctrl-Alt-Del to restart

errror

if i hit f12 while booting. i get the

PXE E61 Media Test Failure, Check Cable
PXE MOF Exiting Nvidia Boot agent

error, with the operating system error once in a while

thank you all so much for reading my post, i do hope this problem can
be solved..

no, i do not have recovery disk

Your hard drive has died. Contact HP for repair/replacement. When you speak
to them, order a recovery disk set, too.

Hard drives are mechanical devices. Mechanical devices die. You were not
responsible for the hard drive dying (unless you dropped the computer or
otherwise treated roughly). Call HP and order the restore disks for your
model computer. That will cost around $20. Then go out and buy a
replacement hard drive and use the restore disks to get your system back up
and running.

I was so hoping not to get that as a reply :(

My system is reburbished, i tried contacting HP this morning but they
were hopeless, told me they could not help me because my system was not
purchased directly from them.
I tried contacting the company it was bought from and they just keep
giving me the support phone number for HP

what would cause the HD to die any ideas? would it have been that
camera?

the sytem came on for me today for about 5 minutes, lagged like an SOB
though, then, went back to the error i posted here.

akk.....and they say technology should make our life easier ;)

thank you so much for your reply, i think i have aged about 5 years in
these past 2 days

Just replace the drive. You didn't do anything to it by just using it.

you need a copy of windows vista anytime upgrage disc.. pop mopen the cd
tray with a pin because you wont be able if you cant get the computerto
boot.. install cd close tray start computer it will say click any button
to install... install windows.. it will ask 4 product key its on the
bottom of your laptop insert code key and and it will ask to repair or
to reinstall push install. it wil ask to format disc that will be yopu
only option i know bwcause i tried then all sorry:mad: but i lost
everything too it will take about one hour to install so walk away from
it and let it do its thing... when its done it will restart on it own..
once it does you will have to redo password and computer name and then
it will check preformance that will take about 10 to 15 minutes then it
will start desktop once it has finished go to start right click on
computer go click on properties scroll to bottom and it should tell u
that your windows is active and genuine...:party: at this point you
should be smiling.. if not you will have to call microsoft and a tec
will get it working as long as you are the buyer of this computer
1-877-426-6010 if you need a copy of windows vista contact me by a PM good luck my
friend and dont worry your computer is not broke you connected a drive
possibaly a network connecion that has created this problem

[posunder]

Malke, I have come across the same problem, and I tried using a UBCD4Win cd to run some tests and see if I could recover some data, and that didn't even boot. Would you still say that the harddrive is dead concidering I was trying to boot off a cd. And the cd has worked several times before.

Hey, i'm 15 years old, and I have the exact same problem. When I start my Toshiba laptop, it says "A disk read error has occured; ctrl+alt+delete to restart"

Now, I tried to put in the "Windows Vista Upgrade Anytime" CD, and I pressed f12 and booted the computer from CD/DVD.

It came to the menu to install it, I clicked next after saying I was English language and so forth.

Then it came to this menu and at the bottom there was an option that said "Repair my computer"

So I clicked it and a bunch of options popped up, one of them was "Startup Problems" or w/e, can't remember right words.

So I clicked it and now it's running a fix that repairs all disk errors it says, hopefully it works.

Does anyone think this will help?

If you used a hard drive diagnostic from outside of Windows and the
diagnostic couldn't run, then probably your hard drive has died. Pull the
drive and either slave it in a working machine or put it into a USB
external enclosure and attach it to the working machine. If the drive can't
be seen there and a drive diagnostic utility freezes or shows physical
failures, replace the hard drive.

[rstthomas]

try it as a slave drive on another system before declaring it dead.

[philip.willemse]

Hi There,

please do not format your hard drive before checking if your data is still in tact, if you have done this already congratulations you are a complete idiot. for everyone else that needs help still try the following:

- Remove HDD
- Plug into another PC
- See if you can recover all your data
- Backup everything and then format

If you do a new installation and it does not want to "see" your hard drive then the connection that goes from your motherboard to the point where you plug your laptop in has failed. Unfortunately the only thing you can do then is replace your motherboard.

However if your laptop can "see" your hdd fine in Bios it is picking up the hdd fine and it's most probably only the hard drives mbr thats missing or corrupt.

Please let me know if any of this information helps.