A Disk Read Error Occurred - After imaging a HD

[Guest]

I keep running across this weird problem from time to time.
I happens with both Windows XP Pro and Windows 2000 Pro.
I restore an image using Drive Image V7 and the newly
restored HD will not boot. If I create a Boot floppy and boot
from the floppy the PC will boot up and run fine.
I don't get far enough to even get the XP boot up screen or
any information displayed from Boot.ini if I turn on /SOS or
other parameters.
I have tried many tricks:
1: FIXMBR
2: FIXBOOT
3: BOOTCFG
4: Copy the bootup files from Floppy to the C:\ Root
5: Repair/Update of the OS (WinXP Pro CD)


- The Drive is a 40GB IDE and on has a C: Partition of the total size.
- Partition Magic shows the partition as "unhidden"
- Fdisk shows the drive as active.
All the hardware appears to be good. If I install the OS from scratch
then it works fine as well.
The image was created on a Intel P4 system and is now being restored
to an AMD XP 2900+ system. I then ran a repair/upgrade after restoring
the image to get the proper Hardware info/HAL stuff into the OS.
I have this happening on other PCs and they only fix it a boot floppy.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

thanks in advance!!

 

[Steve N.]

I keep running across this weird problem from time to time.
I happens with both Windows XP Pro and Windows 2000 Pro.
I restore an image using Drive Image V7 and the newly
restored HD will not boot. If I create a Boot floppy and boot
from the floppy the PC will boot up and run fine.
I don't get far enough to even get the XP boot up screen or
any information displayed from Boot.ini if I turn on /SOS or
other parameters.
I have tried many tricks:
1: FIXMBR
2: FIXBOOT
3: BOOTCFG
4: Copy the bootup files from Floppy to the C:\ Root
5: Repair/Update of the OS (WinXP Pro CD)


- The Drive is a 40GB IDE and on has a C: Partition of the total size.
- Partition Magic shows the partition as "unhidden"
- Fdisk shows the drive as active.
All the hardware appears to be good. If I install the OS from scratch
then it works fine as well.
The image was created on a Intel P4 system and is now being restored
to an AMD XP 2900+ system. I then ran a repair/upgrade after restoring
the image to get the proper Hardware info/HAL stuff into the OS.
I have this happening on other PCs and they only fix it a boot floppy.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

thanks in advance!!

I've seen similar things using other re-imaging techniques.

Try booting from a Win XP CD and go in ot Recovery Console and run
CHKDSK /F.

Steve

 

[Steve N.]

I keep running across this weird problem from time to time.
I happens with both Windows XP Pro and Windows 2000 Pro.
I restore an image using Drive Image V7 and the newly
restored HD will not boot. If I create a Boot floppy and boot
from the floppy the PC will boot up and run fine.
I don't get far enough to even get the XP boot up screen or
any information displayed from Boot.ini if I turn on /SOS or
other parameters.
I have tried many tricks:
1: FIXMBR
2: FIXBOOT
3: BOOTCFG
4: Copy the bootup files from Floppy to the C:\ Root
5: Repair/Update of the OS (WinXP Pro CD)


- The Drive is a 40GB IDE and on has a C: Partition of the total size.
- Partition Magic shows the partition as "unhidden"
- Fdisk shows the drive as active.
All the hardware appears to be good. If I install the OS from scratch
then it works fine as well.
The image was created on a Intel P4 system and is now being restored
to an AMD XP 2900+ system. I then ran a repair/upgrade after restoring
the image to get the proper Hardware info/HAL stuff into the OS.
I have this happening on other PCs and they only fix it a boot floppy.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

thanks in advance!!

Oops, make that CHKDSK /P from Recovery Console.

Steve

 

[Haggis]

Oops, make that CHKDSK /P from Recovery Console.

Steve

the MBR has to be rebuilt...I use a win98 boot disk ....just boot up with
the floppy ...run "fdisk /mbr"
take the floppy out and reboot ...works for me :>

 

[Guest]

Steve:
thx for the reply!
I did try both chkdsk /r and chkdsk /p
You must be an old DOS guy to remember chkdsk /r?
Anyway, neither the /r or /p fixed the problem.
I rebooted after each run and same read eror....

thx for helping !!

 

[Steve N.]

the MBR has to be rebuilt...I use a win98 boot disk ....just boot up with
the floppy ...run "fdisk /mbr"
take the floppy out and reboot ...works for me :>

FIXMBR would have the same effect and he said that didn't help.

Steve

 

[Steve N.]

Steve:
thx for the reply!
I did try both chkdsk /r and chkdsk /p
You must be an old DOS guy to remember chkdsk /r?

Well, yeah, but CHKDSK in 2K/XP isn't really the same as CHKDSK in DOS,
just same name and similar command line switches.

Anyway, neither the /r or /p fixed the problem.
I rebooted after each run and same read eror....

thx for helping !!

Could be a bad image or a failing hard drive. Try testing the drive with
the manufacturer's utility.

Steve

 

[R. McCarty]

One thing to check is the Cluster size for the System partition.
After SP2 Windows XP will not boot from any partition that
uses non 4K Cluster size. You will receive an error message
"A Disk I/O Error has occurred". This is known/verified issue
with SP2/NTFS. If your partition isn't at 4K, resizing it with
Partition Magic may allow it boot properly.

The strange thing with this issue is if your System Partition is
non 4K using Gold/SP1 and you upgrade to SP2 it will still
boot & run. If you do a Repair install (SP2) it will generate
the error message listed above. This may not be related to the
issue you describe, but is worth mentioning.

Best I remember MS's explanation was that it was some kind
of Index Allocation that spanned records that prevented NTLDR
from working properly.