Panic mode- disc read error

My HP Pavillion 733n which is about 6-7 years old started making some weird noises this morning and then shut down and then an error message appeared that said "A disc read error occurred press control, Alt, Delete to restart. I have Windows XP home edition.

When I do this it brings me back to the same screen. i have tried tapping f8 and that doesn't work.

I can tap f1 and a screen comes up, but I don't know what to do.

I have photos I need on this computer so I hope I can do something.

Any help greatly appreciated.

 

It certainly sounds like your HD has thrown in the towel. When you press the F1 key on your PC I assume you get to the BIOS screen. You need to find the screen which would show the HD information and what it is recognized as.

Will your PC boot from your XP CD?

 

Yeah... if possible, boot to your XP disc. Let it do it's thing until you see a screen where oe of your choices is "Press 'R' for the recovery console". Press R. A few questions will pop up, answer them appropriately. One of the questions will say something like "if you have a non standard keyboard, press this key". At that question PRESS NOTHING! (unless you have a non standard US keyboard). You will also have a question asking you to enter the administrator passowrd; if you have no password, press Enter. Eventually you'll be at what looks like an old DOS prompt. Type chkdsk C: /r and press Enter. This can take a long time to run, like over 4 or 6 hours, so be patient. If you notice the percantage counter go backward, don't worry, it does that sometimes; it may also appear to freeze... it hasn't. Just be patient and let it run. When it's finished, type exit to restart the PC. Remove the XP disc and see if it boots into Windows. If it does, start saving your data right away to CDs or an external hard drive. If it doesn't boot to Windows, let us know and we'll try to save your data. You may also want to visit the drive maker's web site and download and run their diagnostic tools.

Good luck! Keep us posted....

(BTW- there's a space before and after the C: in the command above)