Disk Read Error

For starters you may want to copy all important things to CD. This could be the start of harddrive failure.

Next, there are utilities that will give your harddrive a good going over. What model dell do you have? I use a Latitude D600.

 

Backup would definitely be a good idea. Defrag scan might turn up something (programs/accessories/system tools)

You might just boot up and as soon as it does a good boot, shut down and reboot. Try it two or three times without doing anything. My compaq started doing blue screens now and then and I did this and away it went. Been told XP has a certain ability to fix itself, but sounds more like disk problems.

Hope defrag finds something.

 

Here is the diagnostic for your puter http://support.dell.com/support/dow...=1&vercnt=1&formatcnt=3&libid=13&fileid=62822

The instructions are below. Do you have a floppy drive? If not post back and we can instruct how to run it without a floppy.

 

Sounds very much like your hard drive is about to go out.

Back up everything now!

Start looking for sales on hard drives because you will probably need one within a week or two.

I had a hard drive go out on me like that a few years ago. I waited around for about a week before I backed everything up, and almost as soon as I finished backing things up, the drive finally died. raying:

 

Back up . . .

In my old days - I found that laptops had an ability to have wires start to come loose - that could cause your error. Or, it can be a hard drive starting to go bad.

Keep your backup current.

Do you have a separate computer? If not you will need to be able to call dell support or someone else when you try anything.

God bless

 

Do you have a second computer or is this your one and only?

 

For cleaning up your hard rive, I suggest using CCleaner:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/CCleaner_Slim_No_Yahoo_Toolbar_English_d4191.html

Download and install. Run it, choose Cleaner. Uncheck anything you don't want it to erase, then hit Analyze (to see how much it will erase) or Run Cleaner and let it do its thing. You still have to click Run Cleaner after you Analyze.

After that, click Issues, Scan for Issues, then Fix selected issues... . Tell it to fix all, and let it go.

For defragmenting, use O&O Defrag. Here's the free version:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/O&O_Defrag_2000_Freeware_Edition_d4545.html
It leaves Window's built-in defragmenter in the dust. Can you say 0% fragmentation? I knew you could.

The Pro version has a 30-day free trial, and then costs $44.90. Basically a newer version of the free version, it is still worth the money (I use it):
http://www.majorgeeks.com/O&O_Defrag_Professional_Edition_d809.html

Be sure to set either one you try as the default defragmenter, and set it to do its thing on its own (I forget what it is called).

I have to agree with the others... a failing disk sounds likely. Or possibly severe fragmentation.

 

This past week I had the same thing happen. I keep my computer clean. I did a virus scan and none showed. I defraged and it was fine. Finally I lost the desktop icons and all the others. So I knew something was wrong. Within the past few weeks I downloaded several MS updates and that is when the problems started.
Later I found out that the driver for my external hard drive was the problem after I installed the MS updates.

So I reformatted the HD and when I installed the driver for my external HD is when the same thing happened. So I went to their website and they stated that as a problem. So I uninstalled the old driver and downloaded the new driver and things have been fine since.