twist - 10:58 pm on Jul 16, 2005 (gmt 0)

And now it no longer recognizes CDs. It just says "Disk read error" and prompts to restart.

If your laptop can't read a boot-up cd then their might be something wrong with your laptop. That could be a good sign though. It could mean that their is nothing wrong with your hard drive, just your laptop. Take your hard drive out of your laptop and either plug it in another laptop or rig something up so you can retrieve your data from it. I think that was the original purpose of this thread, get your data. So work on getting that done first and then we can deal with a laptop problems, if that is the problem.