Disk Error on Boot (Possible boot sector issue)
- by Choco
I own a 4-5 year old Dell Dimension E510 with Windows XP: Media Center Edition. I have 2 drives installed:
C Drive: Windows XP: Media Center Edition
G Drive: 2 partitions:
Windows 7 (beta)
Windows XP (professional)
That is also the order they are connected. The C Drive is my primary drive.
When I attempt to boot the computer, the bios loading screen appears normally; the progress bar moves and it's fine. The very next page, however, supposed to be a boot choice.
When I installed Windows 7 onto the G Drive in context of the C drive it added a boot selector to the C drive's boot sequence. It gives me the option of booting Windows 7 or Windows XP: Media Center Edition.
However, my problem is now this: After the bios screen I previously mentioned, instead of a boot selector, I receive the following error:
A disk read error occurred.
Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart.
The drive is spinning up normally. I hear no odd noises/clicks/scraping coming from it, even after disabling the other drive to listen to it carefully.
According to me, it's a boot sector issue. I have never experienced this before, but maybe during a recent shutdown, Windows XP: MCE errored out and ruined the boot sector.
Dilemma! I don't have the Windows XP: MCE disc, because it was installed by the factory.
I have accessed the hidden partition on the drive before (you hit a key combination on the bios screen and it comes up with an interface to fix your drive). However, I don't want to reformat the drive (which is what the interface gives me the option to do). I want to possibly fix the boot sector.
How can I achieve that?
