Got a "A disk read error occurred. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart"

Hi everyone.

My problem is that my computer can not start because of the following error
msg. "A disk read error occurred Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart".

What I have done before was that I was trying to use a Knoppix cd, stopped
it from it booting from the cd, then restarted my computer where a menu
popped up allowing me to decide which mode to start off Windows, but I
selected the normal mode which caused the Windows logo to load for quite
awhile, it didn't do anything, so I restarted my computer and continually get
the disk read error message?

I tried using the recovery console but it only showed one selection for a
recent window installation on my e: drive. My regular windows OS is in my c:
drive but does not appear as a selection to repair. Can anyone help me
recover my windows installation? Does this also mean I lose all my files
from that particular OS??

Please help me....must recover some data...

Peter