This is a >3 year-old system: HP a1640n. There have been no issues with it in the past. I added a video card 2 years ago, and more memory 1 year ago, both without issues. There haven't been any recent hardware changes. I did install Win7 in Oct., but there were no issues with that either.

I used the computer fine two nights ago, and turned it off. Yesterday, I tried to turn it on, and got the error:

"A Disk Read Error Occurred. Press CTRL ALT DEL to restart"

So I restart, see the initial start screen (HP) and enter the BIOS. The hard drive and dvd drive appear to be listed, but the names are gibberish text.

I tried putting a Windows disk in the dvd drive, and continued with the boot, but the disk did not get recognized. Even though the BIOS was set to check for optical media before the hard drive. Back to the error screen.

If the computer would boot from a cd or dvd, I would just figure the hard drive needed replacing. But both being problematic worries me.

Is this a matter of replacing both the hard drive and dvd drive, or might it be an indication of a bigger problem?

Thanks for any advice.