Disk error on startup

[BrenOS]

After the bios and just as the boot sector is being read...

Disk error detected, press ctrl alt del to restart.

What can I try? This hard drive won't boot at all.

Can I re-install just the boot sector? How?

Does an fdisk and format generally fix this?

 

[BrenOS]

If you have a secondary computer - you could put it in as a secondary hard drive on that then run "chkdsk /f" on it - that should fix it.

If not im not sure srry

Unable to do this for the moment. On my laptop currently.

It could be just the master boot record that is corrupt, but you need a bootable XP disk to repair it. Boot from the CD, go into repair console, and there are 2 commands you can try... 'fixboot' and 'fixmbr'. The first command will write a new partition boot sector, the second repairs the master boot record. One or other should sort the problem...

I can try this. Which is the least destructive? ie Which should I try first?

Obviously I'd like to avoid having to fdisk and format. Worst comes to the worst it'll be going in a friends machine to recover the data. But if I can get it booted up I can do this myself to my external hard drive.

Thanks again