"A disk read error has occurred. Press ctrl+alt+del to res..

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general (More info?)

Folks :-
I recently splashed out on a new hard disc and put it in my relatively
elderly system. Replacing a couple of elderly and full hard discs that
could be used elsewhere.

The hard disc went in OK and seemed to be recognised. XP SP2 (a
slipstreamed version) was installed and apparantly recognised it had
200Gb to play with. I shifted my apps and data over and for a couple of
weeks everything was fine.

Then I come to boot my computer up one day and it fails with "A disk
read error occurred" - arrggghhhh! I tried repairing the installation
from the XP recovery console using fixboot, fixmbr and chkdsk /r with
no joy. I reconfigured the disc as a slave plugged it into another
computer and retrieved my data (mental note - regular backups are
good.) I've tested the disk with the maxtor diagnostic tool (PowerMAX?)
and it had a clean bill of health.

I finally came to the conclusion that when my motherboard says it can
only support 137Mb it means it. So I went and bought a cheapie PCI ATA
controller card. Plugged everything in, set the BIOS to boot from SCSI
as suggested in the controller card manual, powered up and "A disk read
error occurred" appears on the screen.

This time when I start up the XP CD it gets to "Setup is detecting your
hardware" then 5 seconds later I get a blank screen and the PC has
apparently hung. The maxtor powermax software still says the disc is
good. Booting up XP with the floppies and the additional drivers gets
me to the recovery console where I run fixmbr, fixboot and chkdsk /r.
Reboot and still "A disk read error occurred."

I used the floppies to boot up XP again and repair the installation
with the additional drivers and still it fails.

So I'm stuck. In an ideal world I'd like to repair the XP installation
so I don't have to set up all the apps and data again. I'll live with
being able to install XP.

Do you folks have any bright ideas how to fix the problem or at least
find out what the "disk read error" is?

Thanks

Kevin

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general (More info?)

If the disk was originally recognized and used by the Motherboard, that is
not likely the problem.
Did you used an overlay software (to allow the old motherboard to see it)
when you installed it the first time.
It almost sounds like the first sector is not being read properly, overlays
can do that.
If you used an overlay utility, you'll need to undo it with that program.
If that is not the case, maybe someone will have another idea.

--
A Professional Amateur...If anyone knew it all, none of would be here!
<HartleysXB@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1125704004.915939.51940@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
> Folks :-
> I recently splashed out on a new hard disc and put it in my relatively
> elderly system. Replacing a couple of elderly and full hard discs that
> could be used elsewhere.
> The hard disc went in OK and seemed to be recognised. XP SP2 (a
> slipstreamed version) was installed and apparantly recognised it had
> 200Gb to play with. I shifted my apps and data over and for a couple of
> weeks everything was fine.
> Then I come to boot my computer up one day and it fails with "A disk
> read error occurred" - arrggghhhh! I tried repairing the installation
> from the XP recovery console using fixboot, fixmbr and chkdsk /r with
> no joy. I reconfigured the disc as a slave plugged it into another
> computer and retrieved my data (mental note - regular backups are
> good.) I've tested the disk with the maxtor diagnostic tool (PowerMAX?)
> and it had a clean bill of health.
> I finally came to the conclusion that when my motherboard says it can
> only support 137Mb it means it. So I went and bought a cheapie PCI ATA
> controller card. Plugged everything in, set the BIOS to boot from SCSI
> as suggested in the controller card manual, powered up and "A disk read
> error occurred" appears on the screen.
> This time when I start up the XP CD it gets to "Setup is detecting your
> hardware" then 5 seconds later I get a blank screen and the PC has
> apparently hung. The maxtor powermax software still says the disc is
> good. Booting up XP with the floppies and the additional drivers gets
> me to the recovery console where I run fixmbr, fixboot and chkdsk /r.
> Reboot and still "A disk read error occurred."
> I used the floppies to boot up XP again and repair the installation
> with the additional drivers and still it fails.
> So I'm stuck. In an ideal world I'd like to repair the XP installation
> so I don't have to set up all the apps and data again. I'll live with
> being able to install XP.
> Do you folks have any bright ideas how to fix the problem or at least
> find out what the "disk read error" is?
> Thanks
> Kevin

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general (More info?)

Hi!
Thanks for the reply.
No I did not use any overlay software - i thought that XP SP2 could
circumvent the problem (and SP1) could circumvent the problem.
Regards
Kevin

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general (More info?)

No the bios is involved in the denoting the capacity of the hard drive. The
OS must also. Two stage deal. An up to date ide adapter with its own bios
should easily accomodate a 200GB hard drive.

Might be wrong, not sure about this part. Believe that XP needs a driver at
the preliminary stage of installation for SCSI and pseudoscsi (ide adapter)
cards if your hard disk on that connection is to be the boot drive. Am sure
we'll get some disinformation responses on this. Filter it accordingly.

You shouldn't snip your original post when replying. Nor, snip the prior
respondents reply that you're replying to.

<HartleysXB@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1125737438.805053.218140@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Hi!
> Thanks for the reply.
> No I did not use any overlay software - i thought that XP SP2 could
> circumvent the problem (and SP1) could circumvent the problem.
> Regards
> Kevin
>

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general (More info?)

Hi!

Lil' Dave wrote:
> No the bios is involved in the denoting the capacity of the hard drive. The
> OS must also. Two stage deal. An up to date ide adapter with its own bios
> should easily accomodate a 200GB hard drive.
>
> Might be wrong, not sure about this part. Believe that XP needs a driver at
> the preliminary stage of installation for SCSI and pseudoscsi (ide adapter)
> cards if your hard disk on that connection is to be the boot drive. Am sure
> we'll get some disinformation responses on this. Filter it accordingly.

During the installation process if you press F6 you get the opportunity
later on to install drivers for SCSI and psuedo-SCSI (as this is)
adaptors. Is this what you mean? If so I have successfully installed
that driver.

>
> You shouldn't snip your original post when replying. Nor, snip the prior
> respondents reply that you're replying to.

Sorry - finger trouble on my part - it was one of those days.

However does anyone know specifically what is trying to be read when "A
disk read error occurred." is generated. I notice looking round the
google usenet archives I'm not the first person to grouse about this,
but no-one seems to have come up with a definitive answer.

Thanks again

Kevin

>
> <HartleysXB@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:1125737438.805053.218140@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> > Hi!
> > Thanks for the reply.
> > No I did not use any overlay software - i thought that XP SP2 could
> > circumvent the problem (and SP1) could circumvent the problem.
> > Regards
> > Kevin
> >

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general (More info?)

> Lil' Dave wrote:
> > No the bios is involved in the denoting the capacity of the hard drive. The
> > OS must also. Two stage deal. An up to date ide adapter with its own bios
> > should easily accomodate a 200GB hard drive.

Further playing last night reveals that the cursory checks I can get
knoppix to do seem to show the partition is OK. I've also tried
changing the IDE cable and using cable select instead of master / slave
that other folks have suggested in the past may be the cause of the
problems. However I am fast running out of ideas - does anyone else
please have any ideas before I rebuilt the system from scratch and
cross my fingers it doesn't happen again....

> > You shouldn't snip your original post when replying. Nor, snip the prior
> > respondents reply that you're replying to.
>
> Sorry - finger trouble on my part - it was one of those days.

I've just noticed that replying on / via google sometimes doesn't give
you the option to quote...

Thanks

Kevin

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general (More info?)

I just ran into this same problem on my friends computer. He had a 280
gig hard drive and a relatively older computer with pentium 4 1.5 ghz.
I was able to get it working by partitioning the drive into three
different partitions. Windows xp can't use partitions larger than 127
gigs without special drivers i believe. At least on the partition you
install windows on, just make it 127 gigs and you shouldn't have any
problems.



--
stupendousman
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted via http://www.mcse.ms
------------------------------------------------------------------------
View this thread: http://www.mcse.ms/message1831316.html

 

[Malke]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general (More info?)

stupendousman wrote:

>
> I just ran into this same problem on my friends computer. He had a
> 280 gig hard drive and a relatively older computer with pentium 4 1.5
> ghz. I was able to get it working by partitioning the drive into three
> different partitions. Windows xp can't use partitions larger than 127
> gigs without special drivers i believe. At least on the partition you
> install windows on, just make it 127 gigs and you shouldn't have any
> problems.

The 128GB limitation is only for the FAT32 file system, not NTFS.

Malke
--
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic!"
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User

 

[largosak]

hello.. i bumped into the same problem, only that it occurred when i tried replacing my old cdrom with a dvdrom.. i know that replacing the cdrom back will boot my pc back, but is there any way that i can use my dvdrom in that cpu? ....

 

[Guest]

the problem is with boot.ini

on RISC based computers they use an ARC path to connote which drive has the system files - you will need to edit the boot.ini file with the proper location of your drive - there are 4 settings and they specify which controller, drive on that controller, and partition on that drive that holds windows - i imagine you just need to switch between multi and rdisk but its been 8 yrs for me

and the 127GB limit is a BIOS limitation NOT a filesystem limitation - since your MOTHERBOARD's bios has to be able to read the disk geometry, as the original poster said, its the mobo (specifically the bios code)

 

[Zoron]

Interesting.... since Windows doesn't run on RISC processors. Yes, your BIOS has to be up to date for drives that are greater than 120GB... but you must also be running at least SP 1 (possibly SP 2, I can't remember) to make partitions greater than 127GB.