I have a Acer Aspire 3100 and upon trying to boot it up I keep getting an error that says: disk read error occurred press ctrl+alt+del to restart Upon doing this, I receive the same error. I cannot enter safemode or anything. I cannot locate my disk recovery cd (not sure if it came with one even) nor my windows vista cd to see if either of these will help fix the problem. Please help!!?! I have homework to do and no way to use my computer!!! Thanks!
First of all make sure there's no CD in the drive. Secondly go into the BIOS (probably by pressing delete at the first screen you see when you turn the laptop on, it might be a different key you have to press, if it is, it'll tell you) and check if it's set to boot from the hard disk first or the CD. if the latter, swap them around.
And there's no disc in the CD drive? If that's the case, the hard disk may have failed. Is it listed on the POST screen?
There's no disk in the drive. I have researched it on the net and it seems to be a common occurence. I have Vista do you think the problem is with that? I have followed the directions in my manual to restore without a back up CD and it won't work.
Oh..it's listed on the screen directly after the Acer logo shows up. From there you can click f2(to enter setup) or f12 (boot menu setup), but that is it. The manual tells me to press alt f10 at the logo sign and it will take me to the system recovery page, but it won't do anything with that prompt.