Data error and reading devices... need help...pleease

[Ethansa]

Please can you halp me.

My friends computer is based win98 and starts as normal and boots up but when the 98 logo appears. The problem is it does not go to the desktop and complete the startup.... but....
gives what seems to be a dos prompt saying

" DATA ERROR READING DRIVE C:
ABORT,RETRY,IGNORE,FAIL?_"

yet when you press either A, R, I, F, a new promt appears
saying

"WHILE INITIALIZING DEVICE VKD:
WINDOWS PROTECTION ERROR YOU NEED TO RESTART YOUR COMPUTER"

Which of course has been done on a number of occassions.

Please help us as we are worried about retriving important files on the hard drive.

Ethan

[ORAC]

Possible key board failure, see the Microsoft knowledge base (http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=263318). Make sure it's plugged in OK, if it is, swop it for a different one. See if that cures it.

[Mac the Knife]

Ja, I've had that on a couple of occasions - once it was a jammed key on the keyboard and the other it was the corner of a book sitting delicately unnoticed on one of the keys!

The first gave me an hour or so of worry before I figured it out - the next time I sussed it sooner.

Don't like

" DATA ERROR READING DRIVE C:
ABORT,RETRY,IGNORE,FAIL?_"

much.....

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

Ethan,

If you have a problem with the drive and cannot get it to boot, you can always pull the drive out of the computer and put it in another computer as a secondary drive in order to save your data.

Take Care,

Richard