Hi emrap,

A disk error in event viewer does not necessarily mean you have a problem with your hard drive. But let me suggest you test your drive using the Dell diagnostics. To test your hard drive, you need your Dell Drivers and Utilities disc:
1. Reboot your system. When you see the Dell logo, hit F12 to enter the boot menu.
2. Insert the Dell Drivers and Utilities disc in your CD/DVD drive.
3. Pick the option to boot from the CD/DVD drive.
4. You will be prompted to hit any key to continue booting from the CD/DVD drive.
5. You will be prompted to hit 1 to run the Dell diagnostics. You may see two such menus.
6. Select Test System.
7. Select Custom Test.
7. Use the arrow keys or mouse to select your hard drive.
9. Click Run Tests.
10. Write down any error messages.

When you post back, please provide the model of your Dell and your operating system.

Hello Ospery4,

Thank you for your response which I did not expect over the week end.  In the meantime, I had run CHKDSK with repair facility set.  It produced the message: ' Windows replaced bad clusters in file 7138 Windows\bootstat.dat.  After completing the process in about 3 hours, I got the message that the drive is clean.  Everything appears to be working normally now.

Thank you again for your help!

Regards

emrap

Ok, glad things are working. However, I strongly suggest you maintain a current back-up of your important files. Sometimes bad clusters are a harbinger of worse things to come.