Laptop failed to boot

[uselbi]

I have a Toshiba Satellite P4 laptop with XP in it. A couple of days ago I changed the battery because the old battery was dead and every thing was working find, but now when I try to boot up I get this message: “ a disk read error occurred. Press ctrl+alt+del to restart” I’ve gone into the setup and it’s set to boot from the hard drive (#1). I can not get into the safe mode it just keep going back the message. Need some help…Jimconfused

[studiot]

Perhaps your hard drive expired just after the battery?
Is it recognised in setup?

Studio T

[uselbi]

studiot,
Yes, setup sees the Hard Drive. Jim

[studiot]

You have a corrupt boot sector.
Boot from a winxp cd (set boot from cd first in bios), I'm not sure if the Toshiba recovery disk contains the recovery console, some OEMs don't.
Don't forget to hit a key when requested or the system will go on and try to boot from HDD
At the first choice choose recovery console (press R)
enter the administrator password at prompt
execute 'fixboot' command at the prompt
Restart the computer.


Studio T

[uselbi]

Studiot,

I decided to start over with a new HD, but thanks for all your help...Jim