disk read error

Alright so this might be a tough one considering the person I'm trying to help is in Italy right now, but all of a sudden her computer came up with a black screen with the message "Disk read error, press CTRL ALT DEL to restart". After reboot it only comes up with the same thing. I know she's got an HP with Vista and the thing has only got to be like 4 months old. I told her to try hitting the F10 to get into BIOS, and from there I directed her into the Diagnostics tool to run a scan, which apparently failed. Is there any hope or am I looking at the dreaded hard drive failure? Like I said, she's in another country for the semester so she doesn't have any restore disc with her at the time. Any ideas of something I could have her try?

 

Without recovery discs, there isn't alot she can do unless she goes to a PC shop and asks them to do it. If she can get online, she can download a bootable diagnostic/repair tool from her hard drive manufacturer. She could then boot to it and hope that it will repair the drive. Not all of the drive makers include a repair option with their diagnostic tools. If she has an external drive, she could boot to the UBCD4Win and at least recover her data (documents, pictures, music; programs generally cannot be recovered to a usable state). The UBCD4Win would also enable her to at least use the computer with limited functionality, but in order to make the UBCD4Win, she needs web access to download the files, an XP disc, and a PC with a CD burner. A Knoppix CD that runs a bootable Linux is an option too, but I haven't had much personal experience with Knoppix so I can't help much with that; again a PC with web access and a CD burner would be required.
I wish the both of you the best of luck!

:major
[dlb]