I’m getting a disk read error occured at boot. Can’t even get into safe mode. Trying to boot from Windows XP disk. 2 problems. 1) If try repair option, it prompts for admin password which I don’t recall ever setting.
2) If try to re-install windows xp it’s prompting me for evidence of a prior version of windows. I had windows 98 on my PC prior to upgrading. It was factory installed. I have no 98 cd so I can’t re-install XP. Any way around this?
Additional info. I’m thinking it could be a hard drive problem. The hard drive is relatively new (250 gig Western Digital). It was humming along just fine for a few months. It seems odd it would go bad. Can’t run the WD diagnostics disk though because can’t get beyond error message. Any ideas, let me know.