Disk Read Error...What the Heck??

[C J.]

Today when turning on my PC - I was greeted with a "Disk Read Error - press
ctrl - alt - del to restart." message. My PC has been running great - up
to today. I'm thankful I thought to make a NT Boot floppy a while back just
for stupid things like this happening.

Anyway, I typed in the error and found a KB article relating to using older
versions of Windows (multi boot) with Windows Vista. They recommend
correctly re-installing the older OS.

My problem however, is I'm running Windows XP SP2. Theres no Vista
installed on my System, and I've had no problems starting up until today.

 

[Rock]

Today when turning on my PC - I was greeted with a "Disk Read Error -
press ctrl - alt - del to restart." message. My PC has been running
great - up to today. I'm thankful I thought to make a NT Boot floppy a
while back just for stupid things like this happening.

Anyway, I typed in the error and found a KB article relating to using
older versions of Windows (multi boot) with Windows Vista. They recommend
correctly re-installing the older OS.

My problem however, is I'm running Windows XP SP2. Theres no Vista
installed on my System, and I've had no problems starting up until today.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=disk+read+error+windows+xp

http://groups.google.com/groups?um=1&tab=wg&hl=en&q=disk read error windows xp

Do you have a full backup of all data? If not do that first. The run a
chkdsk from the recovery console: chkdsk /p or chkdsk /r. Download a drive
diagnostic utility from the hard drive manufacturer's web site and run that
on the drive. Check all the cabling and connections. Look through the
above links. God luck.

 

[GHalleck]

Today when turning on my PC - I was greeted with a "Disk Read Error - press
ctrl - alt - del to restart." message. My PC has been running great - up
to today. I'm thankful I thought to make a NT Boot floppy a while back just
for stupid things like this happening.

Anyway, I typed in the error and found a KB article relating to using older
versions of Windows (multi boot) with Windows Vista. They recommend
correctly re-installing the older OS.

My problem however, is I'm running Windows XP SP2. Theres no Vista
installed on my System, and I've had no problems starting up until today.

Disk read error can also signify the beginning of hard disk problems
or issues. Open Event Viewer and look for any error reports as they
provide clues of where to start troubleshooting. Run Chkdsk. Download
diagnostic programs from the maker of the HD and run them. Having a NT
bootable floppy is not good enough if the hard drive physically crashes;
make backups of whatever is important. This error might be very minor
and of no consequence but be prepared.

 

[C J.]

Disk read error can also signify the beginning of hard disk problems
or issues. Open Event Viewer and look for any error reports as they
provide clues of where to start troubleshooting. Run Chkdsk. Download
diagnostic programs from the maker of the HD and run them. Having a NT
bootable floppy is not good enough if the hard drive physically crashes;
make backups of whatever is important. This error might be very minor
and of no consequence but be prepared.

Thanks G for the heads up.

Funny you suggested looking in the Event viewer. I did this yesterday, and
didn't find anything in SYSTEM. This morning is a different matter.

1 item -- Source: ATAPI Event ID: 5 Parity Error detected in
\Device\ide\ideport0

6 -items Source: Disk Event ID: 11 Controller error detected in Harddisk
0\D

I'm thinking this 7 y/o Intel Motherboard has finally decided to go out.
I've got another Maxtor boot drive with a valid copy of OEM WinXP Pro
installed on it (first XP I ever used.)

I'm going to scan harddisk first, and see if any errors are detected with
Maxblast.

Then I'm going to plug old drive in the primary ide channel, Slave this one
on secondary IDE - and see if the error duplicates with the older drive in
the chain.

Per the links Rock provided (thanks much.) The threads were over 3 years
old. Most of the problems reported consistently varied with different brand
Drives, hardware such as cabling. People tried Repair installs, Chkdsk /p
Fixboot and fixmbr with a mixed bag of results. Some posters even
suggested reformatting the drive to Fat32 (which I'm not about to do.)

I'll report back my results.

 

[C J.]

Well I'll be damned if I can understand it... some of it was the drive
Cable afterall. After cable replacement, did Chkdsk /P from the Rec
console: said there were problems with the drive, yet the Manufacturers test
prog Powermax gave drive clean bill of health. The test program wouldn't
even work with the old cable. Have Chkdsk set to run on next reboot to see
what is uncovered.

 

[C J.]

Well I'll be damned if I can understand it... some of it was the drive
Cable afterall. After cable replacement, did Chkdsk /P from the Rec
console: said there were problems with the drive, yet the Manufacturers
test prog Powermax gave drive clean bill of health. The test program
wouldn't even work with the old cable. Have Chkdsk set to run on next
reboot to see what is uncovered.

Problem solved. I took the opportunity to replace CPU fan (had a broken
attachment rail) and heatsink, and also to add a 2nd case fan.

Cause: Combination of problems with Drive Cable in primary ide channel
(faulty drive / board connectors) Ran powermax diag, drive tested ok.
Chkdsk /r on logical Drives D and E. Errors were found and corrected in
Drive E listed below:

Event Type: Information
Event Source: Chkdsk
Event Category: None
Event ID: 26180
Date: 7/5/2007
Time: 8:16:47 PM
User: N/A
Computer: SELF-DBXXXXXXF3
Description:
Checking file system on E:
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is Image.
Multiple object id index entries in file 0x19
point to the same file 0x219.
Deleting an index entry from index $O of file 25.
Cleaning up 10 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 10 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 10 unused security descriptors.
Windows has made corrections to the file system.

79353035 KB total disk space.
20546640 KB in 474 files.
228 KB in 99 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
70279 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
58735888 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
19838258 total allocation units on disk.
14683972 allocation units available on disk.
For more information, see Help and Support Center at
hxxp://xx.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 60 07 00 00 48 02 00 00 `...H...
0008: 5f 03 00 00 00 00 00 00 _.......
0010: 26 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 &.......
0018: 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 (.......
0020: aa 0b ae 00 00 00 00 00 ª.®.....
0028: c8 90 14 01 00 00 00 00 È......
0030: 4a 31 d4 00 00 00 00 00 J1Ô.....
0038: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0040: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0048: 3a 76 56 12 00 00 00 00 :vV.....
0050: 99 9e 36 00 00 00 00 00 ??6.....