How to resolve error message

I recently purchased a new 40g hd and cd-rw for an older compaq computer. After installing everything I decided to purchase a bare bones unit (case, motherboard, processor, and sound card), and just upgrade the entire thing. I had copied the windows 2000 pro from the old hd to the new one then, after buying the new computer, placed both drives into the new machine. The 40g drive as the master and the old 20g drive as the slave. Upon attempting to boot I keep getting "A Disk Read Error Has Occurred" "Hit - Ctrl - Alt - Del to restart.

I tried booting up from each drive individually but when I boot up from the new drive I get the above message. When I boot up from the old drive, the screen goes blank except for a blinking cursor on the upper left hand side. I'm not sure what I am doing wrong.

I can get into the BIOS and CMOS and everything looks fine. When I tell the machine to detect the drives it does so and lists the type and size of drives that are connected.

Help.

This question was answered on March 20, 2003. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

A serious disk error occurred trying to read/write drive.

Cause:

This issue could be caused by any of the following possibilities.

Error with hard disk / floppy drive

Bad hard disk / floppy drive

Solution:

Error with hard disk / floppy drive

Attempt to run through scandisk on the hard disk drive or floppy disk drive Additional information on scandisk can be found on our scandisk page.

Bad hard disk / floppy drive

If after running a through scandisk on the floppy drive the same issue continues or if the floppy has errors unfortunately the floppy disk is bad and it is recommended it be discarded.

If after a through scandisk on the hard drive the same continues It is recommended that you replace the hard disk drive.

About the author

Posted by Enyenihi of Katharine Gibbs School - New York on March 20, 2003

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