A Disk Read Error Occured. Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart" error.

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by kat731, Jul 10, 2008.

  1. kat731
    Honorary Member

    kat731 Megabyte Poster

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    Hi all,
    another strange one.

    Just got an Advent laptop into the charity where i volunteer.
    Firstly before i got it, the guy tried to use the recovery cds, but kept getting read errors. I then used UBCD to chkdsk it and it had unreadable sectors. Put a new HDD in, recognised it, i decided to use my XP home with gen key, it formatted ok and loaded all files then after 1st reboot where it should go to installing windows 39 mins etc.... it just stopped at dos screen with the above. Googled about, think its bios related, not sure, loaded defaults, switched around boot order blah blah now no disk error, just flashing cursor!!
    Any thoughts???

    Kat
     
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  2. hbroomhall

    hbroomhall Petabyte Poster Gold Member

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    Could be an issue with drive size. How old is the lappy? What size disk did it have before, and what now?

    Harry.
     
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  3. kat731
    Honorary Member

    kat731 Megabyte Poster

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    Thanks Harry,

    cant be that old, says P4 2.8, 40Gb came out 40Gb gone in, 40gb for a 2.8 seemed a bit odd....

    K
     
    Certifications: BA (Hons), A+
    WIP: 70-685 77-884
  4. hbroomhall

    hbroomhall Petabyte Poster Gold Member

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    If the drive is the same size why not use the recovery CDs to see if they will accept the new drive? (Unless this is one of those that expects a hidden partition.)

    They are more likely to know about any weird hardware than a stock XP disk.

    Harry.
     
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  5. kat731
    Honorary Member

    kat731 Megabyte Poster

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    Ok, i did try that, but hey, i'll give it another whirl!

    K
     
    Certifications: BA (Hons), A+
    WIP: 70-685 77-884
  6. Mathematix

    Mathematix Megabyte Poster

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    I have the niggling feeling that it could be a memory issue. When you boot up a PC there is (or at least used to be) a lot of legacy stuff going on, like maybe the first 640kB of memory space being reserved for system-specific stuff or whatever. If this region of memory is corrupt you could get memory errors that fail to described the actual problem adequately.
     
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  7. kat731
    Honorary Member

    kat731 Megabyte Poster

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    Thanks Mat,

    ummm, just managed to use the recovery disks all the way through. Said finished, reboot, got NTLDR with flashing coloured cursor blocks! Yeh, gonna run memtest and then go get a sodim and try that.

    K
     
    Certifications: BA (Hons), A+
    WIP: 70-685 77-884
  8. Mathematix

    Mathematix Megabyte Poster

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    No probs, Kat. Glad to hear you're making progress regardless. :)
     
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  9. Mr.Cheeks

    Mr.Cheeks 1st ever Gold Member! Gold Member

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    have you tried the recovery console?
     
  10. Bluerinse
    Honorary Member

    Bluerinse Exabyte Poster

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    Was this a new hard drive you put in Kat? Maybe the replacement is faulty too :rolleyes:
     
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