Wayfarers of Veeshan

This message is all I get now...

My PC rebooted today on its own in the middle of me using it. If I press Ctrl-Alt-Del it begins to restart, goes to the initial HP screen (ESC=boot menu, F1=Setup, F10=System Recovery), but then slips back to this black screen of death telling me the same thing..."A disk read error occurred Press Ctrl-Alt-Del to restart"

HP's phone technical support spent 45 minutes having me fiddle with things, only to tell me I'm stuck and we need to wipe the disk (and all personal info on it) clean and start again from scratch.

I had to do this EXACT thing before, last year, when their hard drive went bad on me (thankfully it was under warranty then).

Can ANYONE think of what this error message means and how to fix it without wiping my hard drive?

Drex

P.S. If I do have to wipe the drive, the sys admins at work will at least copy it for me first, so I won't lose personal info...but this seems drastic if it's something where I have a BIOS issue or something that can be accessed by the F1 menu upon reboot.

_________________
Drexxell , 71st GNecrOMancEr -- Wielder of ()
Druul , 60th Troll Shaman () + Wielder of and
Driss, 51st Dwarf Priestess of Brell Serilis
Dralia, 36th Erudite Enchantress

ugh. My sympathies.

TechnoDeus (aka Tanliel) or Freez are the likely ones to have an answer for this.

_________________

70 Bard, at your service
Elder, Wayfarer of Veeshan

Also, , , Irodanise (52 Pal), Irodanes (31 Rog), Iroardanis (19 BL), Sinadori (25 SK), Dreminal (32 Dru)

_________________
Rhennium Chlorride (56 Epic Shaman) 202
Darcasterr (77 Arch Mage) holder of the10th Coldain ring andon her way tolevel 78
Rheniium64 epic Zerker former DragonHunter) with epic 1.0 (currently working towards Epic 1.5hopefully soon holder of the 10th Coldain ring)

Nytjade if needed [ actually belongs to Nytrix ](inactive account)( Darhen (56 enight 55 Warrior
Darkrezz 5362 Cleric
Doc rhenn 74 Cleric
Rhenyt 24 monk
Rhenn66 Wizard
Fendelyn 51-warrior

_________________
Rhennium Chlorride (56 Epic Shaman) 202
Darcasterr (77 Arch Mage) holder of the10th Coldain ring andon her way tolevel 78
Rheniium64 epic Zerker former DragonHunter) with epic 1.0 (currently working towards Epic 1.5hopefully soon holder of the 10th Coldain ring)

Nytjade if needed [ actually belongs to Nytrix ](inactive account)( Darhen (56 enight 55 Warrior
Darkrezz 5362 Cleric
Doc rhenn 74 Cleric
Rhenyt 24 monk
Rhenn66 Wizard
Fendelyn 51-warrior

id try booting off a different device to safe mode...it'll at least eliminate the drive as the faulty component...somethin might have b0rked on the mb

_________________
Drexxell , 71st GNecrOMancEr -- Wielder of ()
Druul , 60th Troll Shaman () + Wielder of and
Driss, 51st Dwarf Priestess of Brell Serilis
Dralia, 36th Erudite Enchantress