Hello all. About a month ago I booted up my computer but encountered an error: "A Disk Read Error Occured. Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart." I restarted, but the same error popped up. I gave up all hope and abandoned the computer. I came back to it a week or two later and booted it up again. This time, I was able to get to reach the GRUB booter (I was dual booting Windows XP Pro and Ubuntu 5.10). I selected Windows XP Pro but encountered the following error:

"Booting 'Microsoft Windows XP Professional'
root(hd0,0)
filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x7
savedefault
make active
chainloader +1

A Disk Read Error Occured. Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart."

I booted into the Windows Recovery Console using the Windows XP install disk and ran chkdisk /r to try repairing any erros. Chkdsk started out fine and got to 29% where it encountered an error. It attempted to fix the error, but was unable to. It displayed the error: "The volume appears to contain one or more unrecoverable problems." I gave up on the Windows Recovery Console.

I am able to boot into Ubuntu Linux just fine. A friend of mine suggested that I attempt to rescue the files off my Windows partition from my Ubuntu install. I'm not sure how to do that from Ubuntu, but while searching for answers I found a simple looking solution: use the Knoppix Live CD. I booted into Knoppix 5.01 (the live cd) and attempted to mount "hda1" which was on the desktop. The progress bar came up and didn't appear to do anything for a couple seconds. I then recieved the following error:

"Could not mount device.
The reported error was:
Error reading $MFT : Input/output error
Failed to load $MFT : Input/output error
Failed to startup volume : Input/output error
Couldn't mount device '/dev/hda1' : Input/output error
Mount failed. "

It would be great if someone could help me figure out how to retrieve my files. I think my next step would be to just format the entire disk and just do a fresh install.

Thanks in advance.