While installing XP, the installation was down to 2 minutes left until completion when I left the room for a few minutes. When I returned, I had a black screen with a disk read error, Press ctrl+alt+del to restart. When I do that, it goes back to the same screen.

I rebooted with the XP disk, went into the recovery section and ran a chkdsk, which it found errors, so I ran fixboot. It said it fixed the boot sector. I ran chkdsk again and it found no errors that time. I rebooted, but still got the black screen with the disk read error message. I then attemptedto repair the Windows installation, but I still get the same thing.

I'm at a loss as to what to try next.

Some thoughts:

1. Are the read errors for the hard disk or the XP installation CD?

2. If the errors are for the hard disk, snag the drive manufacturer's diagnostic utility (usually creates a boot disc) from their web site and run a full diagnostic. Installing Windows on a marginal or failing drive even if chkdsk "fixes" it is a waste of time in the long run.

You might also want to check if your installation CD has scratches on it... That happened to me also when I used my old installation CD that had too many scratches.

If that is the case, you would want to buy, beg, borrow or steal >:) a new installation CD.

I am Mohammed toufeeq ahamd and I purchased 80gb hard drisk last 5 year. Now my hard disk didn't getting installing xp or didn't get formatting. After that I searched software called hiren's boot cd which is used to repair bad sector and I tried but it taking morethan 5 days to repair so tell me the software which hard drive get repaired very fast with in a day

If the drive is generating enough errors to take 5 days to "repair", the drive is bad. Replace it.