My parents leave their computer on at all times and when I checked it out the other day, the following message was on the screen:

A disk read error occured
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart

So I restarted, thinking the computer would start-up in "Safe mode"... instead I was only able to go into the Boot menu or check the BIOS settings for a few seconds until I got the same screen again:

Press F11 to start recovery (3 seconds to do so and then:)

A disk read error occured
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart


When I press F11 to start recovery, I wait several seconds and then I get this message:

File \minint\system32\halaacpi.dll could not be loaded.
The error code is 4128.

Setup cannot continue. Press any key to exit.

The computer has an Intel Celeron CPU, 2.8 GHz, Windows XP

I've tried pressing F5 and F8 when I reboot, but It makes no difference. What is this? A virus?


If anyone can help me out with this problem, please let me know.

Try replacing it here

Most read errors are due to corrupt MBR or failing hardrive. Are you using Acronis Disk Directory? If so, see the dicussion here where this issue was reported.

Since this does not appear to be malware related, I will move this topic to the Hardware forum, where others with more savy in hardware issues may be able to help.