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General discussion

Error reading drive C

Mar 7, 2004 9:41AM PST

I have a 6 yr. old COMPUSA PC with a pentium MX2 350 hz chip with windows 98
When I turn the computer on,I get the message"data error reading drive C.
Abort ,retry,ignore,fail?"
At another time i saw a message which said that the
windows did not finish loading on previous
attempt.Choose safe mode to start windows with a
minimal set of drivers.
enter a choice. f5 -SAFE MODE sHIFT+f5 =COMMAND
PROMPTSHIFT+f8 =STEPBY STEP CONFIGURATION./
When any of the choices are made message reads"while
intializing VK'

Discussion is locked

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Re:Error reading drive C/hopefully
Mar 7, 2004 10:12AM PST

you have a Win 98 startup disk. I would boot from that and try to read from the drive. If so, it might be possible to recover some data while you can as it may be that the drive is in a failure process if not gone already. There are tools to repair the master boot record or reinstall system files. Again, you need a startup or recovery disk. The "fdisk" utility on the startup disk, by using the /mbr switch, might accomplish this but I don't remember if the "sys" command works as it did with old DOS originals. Otherwise, you can try to reinstall Windows from the CD without reformatting first. No guarantees but maybe worth a shot. Good luck.

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Re:Error reading drive C
Mar 7, 2004 10:13AM PST