Re: A disk read error occurred; Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart

My system is still down. I bought an identical Maxtor 200GB ATA/100
hard drive. By using another hard disk to boot the system, I used
Partition Magic to copy the "Disk Read Error" drive to the brand new
one. And guess what? The brand new drive boots up "Disk Read Error"
too! I tried resetting the BIOS, using manual settings for the drive
in BIOS, running the XP Recovery Mode Console and doing FIXMBR,
FIXBOOT, CHKDSK /R /P - and none of these fix the problem.

When I boot my MaxBlast 4 CD, the "Ontrack Disk Manager BIOS Checker
1.00.03 finds "Int 13 IO to drive 80", but then totally hangs at the
"ATA Level Communications" part, when it indicates "Attempting PM ATA
Identify - SN [spade character]< - Invalid Response" ...the next line
reads "Attempting PS ATA Identify _" where the "_" is a flashing
cursor, but no keyboard input is accepted (bar ctrl-alt-del).

I'm going to try getting support on this from Maxtor, and if I find a
solution I'll be sure to share it here.


On Feb 4, 11:54 am, "Rock" <r...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
<dynamicbl...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote





Ever since the last time I restarted my Windows XP PC, I get the
followingerror:

Adiskreaderroroccurred
PressCtrl+Alt+Delto restart

This has happened before, and my solution was to backup all the data,
reformat the drive, and then put all the data back again. This is
very time-consuming, and a pain in the ___! The drive appears OK when
connected as a slave, and I even ran NortonDiskDoctor on it and no
errors are found.

I'd like to find out #1, why this problem has happened and seems to re-
occur from time to time, and #2, if there is a better way of fixing it
short of keeping a spare drive on hand to do a data-transfer,
reformat, date-transfer-back, which is a major hassle and takes a long
time to do. Even after that, some applications need to be
reinstalled, because something about this procedure makes them lose
their registered status.

This could be a hard drive problem, a driver cabling problem, a controller
problem or maybe even a power supply problem. Start by downloading a drive
diagnostic utility from the hard drive manufacturer's web site. This will
create a bootable CD or floppy. Boot from that and run the diagnostics on
the drive. (As an aside IMO you can do without Norton DD or any of the
Norton home products. You are better off without them.)

Second issue, you state the solution is to backup of all your data and...
Well by that time it's too late to be backing up your data. You should
always have a full and complete backup of important data.

I suggest you invest in a drive imaging program such as Acronis True Image
(ATI). Use this to create compressed images of the hard drive and store
these on an external USB connected hard drive (consider burning a copy to
DVD for redundancy). ATI can also do file backups. This takes care of two
issues, backup up the data and giving you a means to quickly recover the
system in case of disaster. The most recent image can be restored quickly.
--
Rock [MVP - User/Shell]- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -


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