I'm at work trying to re-assemble a PITA HP computer. Everything (and i triple checked plus doubled up with another technician) appears to be hooked up correctly, nothing is missing a power connector. However, when I start it up I get a Disk Read Error (press CTRL ALT DELETE to restart). I'm somewhat confused. What we swapped out was a power supply, and we did not replace it with a proprietary model but with an ANTEC 480 watt power supply (which is why this is a huge PITA, proprietary power supplies give at least a little cable clearance. What could the problem be!? I am at a loss.
That normally happens to me when the hard drive doesn't have an OS on it or it can't find the OS for whatever reason. Is the disk in good shape? Try booting to a Linux live disk and see if you can get to the drive through that. If you can and it looks in order, we'll have to go from there.
The problem is that it was apparently working fine before we swapped out the power supply. I'm going to try switching the IDE cables out real quick. I didn't pay enough attention when disassembling it... they're mixing fiberglass with no ventilation next door and it's leaking all over the store (from our car installation/mod place section). I feel so screwy I dont even think I could properly run checkdisk None of them are wearing respirators over there and I was over there trying to get zip ties. I feel dizzy. D:
have you tried the hd in another pc and see if the os is in there... it looks as its a problem with the boot sector, if that is so you are pretty much screwed. I would recomend running ghost on that machine to retrieve as much as you can, swap the hd and keep an eye on the one thats having the issues as it may pop anytime soon
make sure that the IDE cables and jumper settings havent changed, ie if the drive was at the end of the cable then make sure its plugged in identically. The HP may be a bit on the sensitive side. Also is this the only drive on the IDE ribbon? try another molex, or swap it with the DVD/CD drive, there may be a problem with the PSU (like a dodgy cable) also you need to varify that its being detected in the BIOS, this is key as if its not found then things are looking grim, if this is the case, then you can either try it in another PC or have a go with the manufacturers diagnostic disk. if all else fails, try the old PSU again (unless its dead) just to rule this out
If it's XP, you can boot off the install cd and go to the recovery console (got to by choosing the first R for repair option. From there, you've got two disk-fixing utilities. One's fixdisk and the other's fixmbr. Both have options (given when you type fixdisk /? or fixmbr /?) Fixdisk attempts to fix problems with the disk and fixmbr resets the Master Boot Record (mostly used for resetting dualboot 'issues', but could be used in this instance). I can't see either doing any harm.
