Solve : Hard Disk Read Error on booting up.?

1.	Solve : Hard Disk Read Error on booting up.?
Answer» SONS PC died; XP with SP2 & 2 hard drives, has worked fine for MONTHS until now. On bootup get black screen and "disk read error" Have attempted recovery console, reinstall et al, no joy. XP setup not reporting any problems but machine stays dead. In desparation reset BIOS to boot from 2nd IDE using 2nd disk and managed to install XP to 2nd disk. PC now start fine and have read/write access to disk on primary IDE, but everything still fails if I reset BIOS to boot from primary IDE. Have not yet opened the case as I think loose cable is unlikely given the above fudge makes eveerything accessible. I am now thinking of clearing the CMOS but this to me is a "do or die" last resort. Don't LIKE relying on fudge solutions, so any help in ISOLATING the problem would be appreciated. Nick P.S. My 20 year old son mistakenly thinks I'm a PC guru, FOOLISH boy, I was in the days of DOS! Boot from the windows XP CD, press the "R" key in the setup in order to start the restoration console. Select your windows XP installation from the list, and enter the administrator password. Enter the command: "FIXMBR" (without the quotes) at the input prompt and confirm the next question with a "Y" (without the quotes). Use exit to restore the computer. edit: Make the defective drive the boot the device first.Good idea but doesn't win the coconut. Still no joy with primary drive!

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