A disk read error has occured...

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Deleted member 88227

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Alright, so I have no idea what the problem here is.

I got home from work one night, got on my laptop like I always do. Noticed a few services/programs seemed to be crashing or something. I believe one of them was service.exe or something was having some problems and the computer was running very sluggish. I tried to just shut it down, but it was taking forever so I just held the button in until it shut off.

I turned it back on, and suddenly got the error:
A disk read error has occured
Press Alt + Ctrl + Del to restart

So I try rebooting it a few times, same thing no matter what. So I grab a old copy of Slax, the Linux Live CD I had laying around and booted my computer on it.

Loaded fine, no problems. I can even browse the harddrive on my laptop and see all my files, directory structure etc...

Not sure what the problem is, anyone mind lending me some advice.

First and foremost though, I am going to pick up an external harddrive and transer all my data to it using Knopixx the Linux Live CD that allows writing NTFS. After that, I'm not sure where to being to see where or what the problem might be.
 
Download the CD image of Hitachi Drive Fitness Test, burn the ISO file to a CD, and then boot from it, just like you would do with the XP/Vista install CD. Test the hard drive and see if any problems are found. DFT will run on most manufacturers' hard drives. Alternatively, you can use Seagate's SeaTools for DOS to test a Seagate or Maxtor drive. For a Western Digital drive, you could use Data Lifeguard Tools for DOS to test a Western Digital drive.
 
Well err, that is helpful to determine if that is the problem, however it could be a virus thats messing up the boot structure. I'd say go with UBCD BlindedByScience suggested, and it it passes, do a repair install of your Windows OS.
 
I used the Dell Diagnostic CD that I have, it ran those tests and all of them passed. So I guess now I just need to backup all my data and pretty much do a reformat?
 
I still recommend running the hard drive scanners via UBCD :))) just to make sure. A disk read error, at least in my experience, points towards a failing drive.
 
Danny Bui said:
I still recommend running the hard drive scanners via UBCD :))) just to make sure. A disk read error, at least in my experience, points towards a failing drive.
Click to expand...

You may be right, but the diagnostic CD I used does the same thing I do believe. It ran a write test at the beginning and end of the disk, random seek test in the middle, read test at the beginning and end of the disk, ran the S.M.A.R.T data and did some other tests. All in all it took about an hour for the test to go through.

I will most likely order a new harddrive anyway, just to be sure. I had a harddirve fail on my earlier this year, almost the exact same symptons only the harddrive didn't work at it. I closed the LID on the laptop and instead of it going on standby mode, it just went to a BSOD and caused the temps to get REALLY high which alternatively caused the harddrive to fail. :(

I have no way of burning the ISO right now. As the only computer I have, this laptop, only has one drive and I'm currently booting off a Linux Live CD on the CDRW, so I can't remove the disk to insert a blank CD to burn from it.

Just going to pick up an external harddrive, toss all the data ~95GB worth onto it, then reformat the drive. After that point, I will then see about doing further tests on the harddrive, but all-in-all I will probably just order a replacement.
 
Before I go about in formatting the drive, I want to see if I can repair it. How can I go about in doing that?
 
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