Hi, I am stuck completely unable to startup. I get the windows logo with dancing squares, then abblue screen with with writing that blinks once, then to the black and white screen with different startup options - none of which work. It tries to startup then hangs and tries again and again. I tried to startup with from C drive with Norton antivirus but just get a beeping sound. Help! Thanks!

I have also tried to startup from F8 and tried safe mode...none work. It justs starts to spin the HD then quits and restarts..HELP!

Try with the 6 Floppy disks, that seems to always work.

I've had this exact problem myself... turns out that it was a faulty SATA plug on my motherboard... try switching controllers and/or HDD cables. Also, try booting from the Windows XP disk and use its windows repair wizard to repair your installation of Windows without wiping your HDD. Keep trying safe mode. Make sure your VERY FIRST BOOT within a couple of hours is into safe mode. And if you get in, open a command prompt and type "sfc /scannow" which will do a comparison of every critical Windows file and replace any anomalies. If all else fails, you'll most likely need to reformat your HD and start from the very beginning.

I can't start either. All I get is a black and white screen which says "a disk read error occurred Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart" F8 doesn't get me anywhere. suggestions?

FUBAR'ed by Windows! Do your drives show up correctly in BIOS/Setup? What happened prior to this? You can avoid many of these Windows problems with Linux. Linspire eases the transition for new users

I can't get beyond this "disk read error occurred" screen. I never see any other screen. I've tried all restart and powering off I know, and it goes from off to compaq image (w f10 option) to this "disk read error occurred" screen. f10 at startup gets me to a set up screen, but I'm hesitent to restore defaults since I don't know if it's in safe mode. Will I lose everything on the hard drive?