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Disk read error in bios. Can't boot
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Original Message
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Name: neobonzi
Date: February 5, 2005 at 20:45:46 Pacific
Subject: Disk read error in bios. Can't bootOS: Win XP ProCPU/Ram: AMD XP/ 512 DDR |
Comment: Hey all, I looked through the forums for a good hour and couldnt find a question like this so hope its not a repeat. I built a custom machine that crashed awhile back, I cant even remember the original problem. Now that I got the time to fixing it up I decided it best just to reformat the Hard drive. I have an Epox motherboard and a Western digital harddrive. I tried to boot from my CD-rom drive (with my windows xp pro disk) but at the startup it just says Boot from CD: A disk read error occurred
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart I've tried 3 different cd-rom drives and replaced my harddrive twice. The boot order is fine (booting from cd-rom first) and my drives are all recognized correctly in the bios. I've tried a windows xp home disk and a western digital boot disk also. I'm stumped as to what the problem could be. Is it the motherboard? Something else? Thanks
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Response Number 3
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Name: JackG
Date: February 5, 2005 at 23:17:10 Pacific
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Reply: (edit)The object now is to not waste time trying to install the OS, but find out what the hardware problem is. It could be a memory problem, so a standalone memory test like MemTest86_v3.2 can be used to check the memory, system bus and processor. Try booting with a Window 98/ME boot diskette and see if it can read the Disk drive and the CD using DOS. That will give you an idea of what kind of hardware problem you have. One thing to try is unplugging all drives but one CD-Rom drive and see if it can be accessed from the boot diskette. Try both IDE plugs on the system board. Then try adding the disk drive. See if both can be accessed. Try getting into the BIOS CMOS Setup and setting everything to default. Sometime CMOS settings can get so messed up that you have to pull the CMOS battery to clear it and start over.
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Response Number 4
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Name: neobonzi
Date: February 5, 2005 at 23:24:55 Pacific
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Reply: (edit)Wow thanks for all the help! I tried every of your suggestions and it helped to find the solution, although not directly. AFter trying the recommendation of switching IDE cables (which didnt effect anything) I started to think that It might be the actual socket on the bored thats messed up. So I disconnected the IDE cable from my harddrive from the socket on the board and plugged the CD rom into it. It turns out the socket on the board is bad!!! I dont know how, and I dont see any pins missing... So now the question is, how can it go bad? is it maybe some seeting im missing in the bios why it works in the primary master and not the secondary?
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Response Number 6
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Name: neobonzi
Date: February 6, 2005 at 00:15:29 Pacific
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Reply: (edit)I would think so too, but the weird thing is that it recognizes the drive and will attempt to read from it. It just cant read the disk thats in it when its on the 2nd slot, but can when its in the first? weird... any other ideas?
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Response Number 7
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Name: Rimfire
Date: February 6, 2005 at 00:48:38 Pacific
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Reply: (edit)How many drives do you have and how are they connected? Sometimes two ATAPI drives on the one IDE cable just won't play together.
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Response Number 8
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Name: setishock
Date: February 6, 2005 at 12:09:23 Pacific
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Reply: (edit)On boot up the system is looking for a designated boot device. But it's looking at the primary boot device to be on the primary IDE channel not the secondary. At least it's that way on my motherboard... I may be crazy, but I'm not stupid...
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