Well, it looks like I'm going to be offline for a while. I came home Sunday morning (around 2:30am) and moved my mouse to deactivate the screensaver. So far so good. Then I go to chat with someone on MSN, and BOOM FATAL ERROR! I try to reboot. What do I see, and have seen for the last day or so?
A disk read error has occurred. Please press Ctrl-Alt-Del to restart.
I've checked the wiring and cables, and even replaced the SATA cables for the drive in question, no change. Also tried booting from WinXP and going to the repair console, but I'm not able to run chkdsk or even go to the C:WINDOWS folder, as it "does not exist". Does anyone have any good ideas? Cause I'm all out of ideas.
Update (Oct 26): So I may have lost another HDD, as I can't seem to pick it up in the Windows setup. I'm really, really hoping the data on this disk has not been lost, as it had all my web designs, music, application backups... it also had the new design I was working on for JezzJournal. I'm hoping I haven't lost it all. :(
Update #2 (Oct 30): So, my good buddy Greg ended up getting all my data off my HDD, so I haven't lost all my important data. But the computer problems continue. After formatting the 80GB SATA, and reinstalling XP w/ SP1 streamlined, and SP2 from a disk. Tried to move the data from my 6o (all my important data) which doesn't come up in XP, by booting Knoppix from a cd, and trying to transfer. Since Knoppix makes the main drive (the SATA) a read only, we couldn't transfer. So we booted back into XP. Initially, it just froze on the Windows XP boot screen. Rebooted again, got into windows, went to create myself a profile. It froze again, so I reset after a few minutes, and guess what. "A Disk Error Has Occurred. Press Ctrl-Alt-Del to restart." I wish I had my computer... :(
Update #3 (Nov 1): Well after running some Maxtor diagnostics on my 80GB SATA HDD, it looks like it's dead. After some wrangling with Maxtor, I'm able to get a replacement drive at no cost (except shipping). I'm currently got my computer back up and running, with my 120GB HDD as my system drive, and was able to covert my 60GB ATA back, so I have all my files. So I'm happy. Now, to get this new design done...