the darn boot sector

[crater]

Hello again,
Back with a new prob.
I just tried to boot pc and the screen says :Boot from ATAPI CD-Rom : Disk Boot Failure, insert system disk and press enter

now being just a little smarter than just checking to see if there was a disk stuck somewhere, I changed the BIOS setting so that it would boot from CD-Rom first, then inserted my XP disk to use the recovery console but with no luck, Yes it did boot to the disk, but after trying FIXMBR and FIXBOOT I still get the same message. I even tried to re-install OS.

My ? , In your prof. opinon is the hdd fried?
I tried using the utilites from MAXTOR and YES it did come up with a read failure. However is this because of the boot sector or MBR being bad and can it be fixed?
any thoughts out there?

 

[scarecrow]

There's an option in your computer BIOS to lock the boot sector as a measure against MBR viruses. Check if this is enabled, if it is then disable it first and try again the recovery console thingy.