"Disk read error, please reboot"

[kaizersose]

My machine posts just fine, but as soon as Windows (XP Pro) tries to load, I get a blinking cursor for a minute or two and then it says, "Disk read error, please reboot". It's a ~3 year old WD 80GB w/8MB buffer.

Anyone seen this before? Thanks.

K

 

[athlonxp2200]

Iv'e seen this before. The problem was the IDE cables in the computer weren't connected to the hard drive tight enough. You might also check the floppy cable.

 

[SparkyJJO]

last time I saw that was a loose cable, the time b4 it was a case of WD sudden death syndrome
hope its a loose cable, but on a WD that old, well....

 

[kaizersose]

is there a way i can tell if the drive is kaput?

i have a newer 200GB seagate 'cuda. i am considering installing windows on that and just trashing the old WD but that will take a lot of time that i dont have. any boot level utilities to check the health of the drive?

 

[kaizersose]

crap, just read up on this at hardwareanalysis.com and it looks like a LOT of people have had this problem and there is no clean fix. people suggest running checkdisk but that isnt guaranteed. i think i will try to get it up and running, move everything to the new drive and chuck this thing.

any suggestions still appreciated.

 

[athlonxp2200]

At the moment I can't think of any. You could try searching Google for some sort of software.

 

[athlonxp2200]

You can thank dial-up for my late response time.

 

[kiIIxthexIights]

yea man check your cables it happend to me before

 

[kaizersose]

checked the cable connections and they are all good. i am thinking about trying a new IDE cable but the more I read, the less likely it looks like that will help. the thread at HA forums is 11 pages long and 75% are to report having the problem on one or more drives.

 

[Madwand1]

Since you can't use your OS (unless you another working computer to which you can connect this drive), you'll have to user boot-level utilities to start. You should look for low-level utility from your HD manufacturer. Most of them have DOS floppies and/or bootable CD ISO's. Here's a link for WD:

http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp?swid=1

You might get additional help / access to other utilities if they exist if you contact them for support.

You might also try booting off the OS installation CD and running a repair.

Of course, if your drive is really toast, it's time to move on to a new setup; recovering what files you can, if you can.

 

[athlonxp2200]

If you can, try to listen for the hard drive spining up and then shutting I a Fijitsu that does that(don't no why I kept it). If it does then it looks like it should be replaced.

 

[Velk]

Have you moved your drives around or added new drives recently ? You can also get disk read error if your system has an invalid drive ID for c: in the registry even if the hardware is working perfectly well. ( For example if you clone the current windows xp boot drive and then try to boot off the new clone without reassigning drive letters ).