PC Help!

[Benny]

I have a Gateway computer, its about 4 years old, and yesterday, I tried to turn it on from sleep mode, and it came to a black and white screen saying that windows had some error and it have me 4 options for restart. I tried to restart it in the regular bootup but it just went back to the screen witht the 4 options, I tried to restart in safe mode (Option 2/4) and it went back to the same screen, I tried the other 2 and on option 3 did the same thing, and option 4 took it to a screen that said "disk read error CRTL ALT Delete for restart, and when I tried that it went back to the disk read error screen, everytime, and that is the only screen it goes to now when I turn it off and restart it. Im takin it to a really good computer fixer store today, but what do you guys think is wrong. Its Windows XP home BTW.

[penguinrusty]

put in the windows XP disk, let it boot up, and then start in safe mode, and if that works, then restart w/ the disk in and boot in normal mode. Otherwise, put in the windows disk, boot into repair mode when prompted, and then type in "fixmbr" in the repaid console.

[offroadin'101]

How did you post that if it couldn't boot up?

[penguinrusty]

probably has another computer...

[offroadin'101]

Ya, he used his sisters apperently. The man he took it to said the start up system must have failed or the hard drive took a dump. I'm thinking hard drive...

[penguinrusty]

Or he could just write a new boot sector using the method i described, but if it's a virus then a reformat is in order.