a disk read error

[michael]

Hi

My XP crashed and I had to reinstall it.
After formatting (during XP installation),
the windows started to install some files
and reboot the system automatically (regular routine so far)
During the reboot, it said "A disk read error occurred Press Ctrl+Alt+Del
to restart"
message came up and the system halted.

What do you think is the problem?

I'd appreciate your inputs.
Thank you

michael

 

[KG1]

You could have a bad sector on your harddrive. I would run my harddrive
manufacturer's disk utilities to scan the drive and fix errors; then try the
install again.

KG1

 

[Carey Frisch [MVP]]

Error Message:
A Disk Read Error Occurred, Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart

Translation:
Your BIOS cannot read large partitions on your hard drive.

Solution:
If you get a hard drive read error message after the Windows installation
program reboots your machine, then your BIOS may not be capable of reading
a hard drive the size that you set up. Open the BIOS and make sure to enable
LBA support for the hard drive, and that SMART montioring is also enabled.

Clean Install Windows XP
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows - Shell/User
Microsoft Community Newsgroups
news://msnews.microsoft.com/

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

:

| Hi
|
| My XP crashed and I had to reinstall it.
| After formatting (during XP installation),
| the windows started to install some files
| and reboot the system automatically (regular routine so far)
| During the reboot, it said "A disk read error occurred Press Ctrl+Alt+Del
| to restart"
| message came up and the system halted.
|
| What do you think is the problem?
|
| I'd appreciate your inputs.
| Thank you
|
| michael

 

[Steve N.]

Error Message:
A Disk Read Error Occurred, Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart

Translation:
Your BIOS cannot read large partitions on your hard drive.

Wrong. KG1's answer is correct, most likely caused by a bad sector on
the disk.

Solution:
If you get a hard drive read error message after the Windows installation
program reboots your machine, then your BIOS may not be capable of reading
a hard drive the size that you set up. Open the BIOS and make sure to enable
LBA support for the hard drive, and that SMART montioring is also enabled.

Clean Install Windows XP
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html

If the BIOS was unable to read a large partition the XP setup wouldn't
be able to create a large partition in the first place. Aside from that
LBA itself has nothing directly to do with disk or partition size or the
BIOS' ability to support large disks, it is incidental in most cases
that enabling LBA (which modern MB and modern HDD support and is enabled
by default when initially detecting a HDD) enables large disk support,
but they are not really related. LBA is Logical Block Addressing, which
does not in and of itself enable large disk support but is a different
way of addresing data blocks on the disk.

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/bios/modesLBA-c.html

Steve