Restarted the computer and got the samsung screen immediately followed by "disk read error, press ctrl+alt+del to restart". repeated the message multiple times upon restarts. before chkdsk was run. Easy recovery essentials will start analyzing the selected drive for problems. easyre will test for and attempt to automatically correct errors with the disk, partition, bootsector, filesystem, bootloader, and registry.. "the solutions and answers provided on experts exchange have been extremely helpful to me over the last few years. i wear a lot of hats - developer, database administrator, help desk, etc., so i know a lot of things but not a lot about one thing..
If you think the disk is a system disk that can be used to boot the computer, try reading it once the computer loads normally to see if it contains what you think it does and isn't damaged. if you have another computer handy, see if it can be used to read the disk or if the disk will start that computer.. I assume it's running vista, so you can try the startup repair tool or run system restore to roll back to a couple of days ago. do this by either accessing the recovery environment from a vista disk or by pressing f8 as soon as you boot and selecting 'repair my computer'.. Wait for the automated repair to be completed.once the process has reached completion, you will be informed if either your hard disk drive or ram has failed or is failing. if you find that your hdd really has failed or is failing, replacing it with a new one and then starting over with a new installation of windows should fix the “reboot and select proper boot device” problem..