A disk read error occured. Press ctrl+alt+del to restart

[GARoss]

Well, I really screwed something up this time!:shocked:
My son gave me an external HDD but I needed to re-format to NTFS. So, I loaded my XP disk & selected the proper drive, formatted & then the system tried to install XP. I kinda paniced & pressed Esc thinking no harm to anything. But, now I get "A disk read error occured. Press ctrl+alt+del to restart." I can't even get into BIOS let alone boot to anything! What can be done to fix this without further damage?

dual boot Ubuntu Linux & XP on separate HDDs.
DG965RY Intel MB, 4Gb of RAM

 

[Flipped Gazelle]

Originally posted by: GARoss
Well, I really screwed something up this time!:shocked:
My son gave me an external HDD but I needed to re-format to NTFS. So, I loaded my XP disk & selected the proper drive, formatted & then the system tried to install XP. I kinda paniced & pressed Esc thinking no harm to anything. But, now I get "A disk read error occured. Press ctrl+alt+del to restart." I can't even get into BIOS let alone boot to anything! What can be done to fix this without further damage?

dual boot Ubuntu Linux & XP on separate HDDs.
DG965RY Intel MB, 4Gb of RAM

You don't need to use the XP disk to format the external drive.

It's strange that you can't get into the BIOS. Have you tried unplugging all the internal and external HDDs?