How to fix a dell when i turn it on and it says"disk read error occurred press...

[davey]

Replace the hard drive & do fresh install of XP. That will definitely fix it. Or just but a new laptop with Windows 7.

[Mohammed]

...ctrl+alt+del to restart"? I have an old dell dimension 4550 that I haven't used in about a year and i have been trying to start it up but when ever I turn on the power it doesn't load to windows xp screen but is starts to do something called IDE configuration and then it says "disk read error occured, press ctrl+alt+del to restart" so I did that and the same thing keeps on happening and I checked everywhere on google and I couldn't find anything helpful, PLEASE HELP!!

[sewrobb]

Either the drive has crashed and died on you or you have corrupted boot up files

[Joe]

You might have a corrupt hard drive in which case you need to reinstall Windows. If you have any discs in the DVD drive, take them out. Or try setting your hard drive to first boot device in the BIOS (if it already isn't)