Hi my son has a dell 4100 dimensions with windows xp about 8  or 9 years old a message was on the SCREEN that said a disk read error ocured press control alt deltto restart Idid that but the same messge keeps comming back. I called dell and they said it was a hard drive problem he called and they said it was a windows xp problem. I hope that some one can help me fix his computer. In laymans terms and I am just a pretty new begginer myself ALSO he doesn;t have the start up disc that came with the computer any help would be greatly appreciatedBoot to your XP CD and choose the first "repair" option (press "R"). That will take you to the recovery console. Once there, RUN chkdsk /r. It will take a while to complete - let it finish. Remove the XP CD and reboot. Post back and let us know if that helped.thanks for the fast reply ALLEN but my son doesn;t have the start up disks is there anything else we can do?According to Dell, Dimension 4100 did not come with WinXP; Win98, WinME, or Win2k.You can download the recovery console .iso file from http://forums.pcpitstop.com/index.php?showtopic=150212

Then you have to burn it to a cd and boot to it. Alternatively, you can borrow an XP CD (it has to be the same version you are running (home or pro) and boot to it and to GET to the recovery console. Sorry but I'm not sure what else to tell you to do