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randem
Moderator
Username: randem
Post Number: 1473
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, January 21, 2010 - 06:39 am: | 
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Aloha tyoungnj,
Glad this fix has help you! I hope many others are able to find it also. |
tyoungnj
New member
Username: tyoungnj
Post Number: 1
Registered: 01-2010
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, January 21, 2010 - 06:01 am: |
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So I read this solution with great skepticism, but I'm happy to admit I was totally wrong and you were right! Used this solution on a laptop with the dreaded "Disk Read Error" message that appeared out of the blue. This was on a Dell Inspiron 600m laptop, which is about ~5-6 years old. The disk was a replacement Seagate 160gb, installed about 4 years ago. It already had the most current BIOS version (A17), so my options were somewhat limited - wipe the drive and reinstall everything, or try this solution. Luckily I tried this and it worked!
Here are the steps I went through
- Pull drive from laptop and put in external case with USB interface, connected to another PC
- Install Macrium Reflect Free Edition (find it at download.com) and make an image of the drive "just in case"
- Install Easeus Partion Master Personal edition (free, at partition-tool.com) and reduce the partion size to ~90gb. There was only about 17gb of data on the drive, so the resizing was very fast (less than 15 mins) and I didn't lose any data. Note that if your drive is full you won't be able to reduce partition size without losing data.
- On the laptop, disconnect the clock battery temporarily to reset BIOS
- Put the drive back into laptop and reboot. After going into BIOS to reset clock, etc. . . .Windows Startup Screen!!!
- Once booted use Disk Manager to create and format the new partition from leftover space
Can't tell you the number of hours this saved!
BTW, I actually had to repeat some of the steps above a few times. Originally I resized the partition to ~135gb, but when I put it back in the laptop the BIOS was still reporting the drive as "137 GB". So instead of messing around trying to get as close to 137 as I could, I just dropped the size down to 90 (don't need the space extra on this partition anyway).
THANK YOU for a great solution - hopefully others will find this thread before qiping out their drives! |
randem
Moderator
Username: randem
Post Number: 1402
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, October 10, 2009 - 09:54 am: |
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Sorry it took so long to respond, the posts got lost.
The very first thing to do is to update your BIOS to the latest version. This in most cases will fix the problem. In other cases you will need to keep the primary partition under 137gb. One of those ways will fix the issue. |
rhoads3120
New member
Username: rhoads3120
Post Number: 2
Registered: 07-2009
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 11:47 pm: |
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Sorry, Running XP Home,WiFi,With CELERON Processor. Or Should I go Back To Stock PC First?I Have All Original Hardware and Software. Thanks. |
rhoads3120
New member
Username: rhoads3120
Post Number: 1
Registered: 07-2009
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 11:34 pm: |
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Did I upgrade to self destruct? 04'Dimension 2G RAM UP'ED to the MAX.Original harddrive. Can Iupgrade HDD and BIOS,Reinstall to fix? AIN'T SKEERD of INFO Loss. Do You Think It Will Work? |
randem
Moderator
Username: randem
Post Number: 1281
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, June 22, 2009 - 06:59 pm: |
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Yes, XP will support drives larger than 137GB but some computers may need their BIOS updated to accommodate this. If the BIOS was not setup to do this at boot time you can have many issues with large drives.
Also XP SP1 did not have support for booting drives larger than 137gb. XP SP2 does have this support.
(Message edited by Randem on June 22, 2009) |
rosewater
New member
Username: rosewater
Post Number: 1
Registered: 06-2009
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 19, 2009 - 12:56 pm: |
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So there's no update for XP for drives larger than 137GB? We're forced to use partitions in this way?
Also, thanks for this post.
(Message edited by rosewater on June 19, 2009) |
randem
Moderator
Username: randem
Post Number: 1189
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: 
Votes: 4 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, March 05, 2009 - 08:12 pm: |
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When I started getting this message lately and could not resolve it, all things pointed to a new motherboard and due to the age of the laptop that would have meant a new laptop. I had tried all the solutions of which NEVER worked before and even my old reliable solution; restore from a backed up drive image did not work this time. But I would not give up for I knew that this was a Microsoft error and they were not giving a clue on how to resolve it. I have found the solution for this issue and will now share it with all.
YOU DO NOT ABSOLUTELY NEED TO PURCHASE A NEW HARD DISK, THERE MAY BE NOTHING WRONG WITH YOUR HARD DISK!!!
I have had this error over and over again for the last few years but this time it was fatal. I was beginning a trip and then my laptop crashed with this infernal error. I have a backup imaged disk so I have been simply restoring the image and then copying over any updated files since the backup. However this time was different. I restored the drive and all and started my trip. When I got to my destination and attempted to use my laptop BOOM!!!; the error was back. So, I just restored again and updated again. This lasted until I turned the laptop off for the night and the very next morning, the error was back. Long story short, I did this routine a few more time and it eventually got worse until I just broke down a purchased a new bigger drive, I restored the image onto the drive and it worked for a little while until I rebooted. This went on for a few days while I was attempting to figure out what was happening. I searched the internet for a remedy to this issue but found not that would work in my situation. I had already tried everything that pertained to a laptop before the reset the BIOS, change the cables, and replace the drive. The only thing that always worked was to reformat the drive and this did not make any sense. But since I saw that many others were having the same issue I was relieved that it was not only me and my machine. So I set out to find the cure (at least for the type of problem I had).
I had an epiphany after failing so many times. Why would this only work after reformatting the drive, which was which all the other people would just parrot that you should do. Well, I will tell you why this works and why you don’t have to do that. Windows using 48bit mode Disk Access can basically only understand up to 137GB for a boot partition (Microsoft is not even vaguely clear about this, it is supposed to work with SP2 and beyond) and my laptop currently had a 250GB upgraded from a 160GB which was upgraded from an 80GB drive that the laptop originally came with. So what I did was to partition the 250GB drive into an 80GB drive for the boot partition and the remainder of the drive for data on a logical partition. Now, everything is working fine without failure. So it seems I am destined to have two partitions on my laptop (which I originally attempted to get away from), one for the OS and programs and one for the data. This would probably be the scenario that most people would be in attempting to have everything on one large drive in one large partition. It seems that when my hard disk booted directly after restoring the image, Windows attempts to write something to the last sector of the partition and on a partition greater than 137GB that screws everything up when you attempt to boot after shutdown if data is written there. No amount of MBR fixing would ever resolve this issue.
This is my solution to one of the many error that "Disk Read Error" means.
It is confirmed that Windows trashes itself if you have a boot partition larger than 137GB and have data there also because Windows writes something at the end of the boot partition. Since using 48bit mode Disk Access the Windows boot process can't access anything past 137GB and will write the data at the 137GB sector or somewhere short of there depending on where the partition ending value gets truncated into 48bits. Now Windows works fine as long as you have not written any data to that same location; but when you do, that's when all the fun starts and you mysteriously cannot boot after you shutdown Windows no matter what you try. Now if you were to remove some data then shrink your partition down to under 137GB then you computer will mysteriously start working or will work after you use the Fixboot or Fixmbr procedures or replace the MBR and/or repair the partition.
It took a week to figure this out with trial and error, but now it can possible help someone else. As advanced as Windows is supposed to be why can't it have better error reporting capabilities than DOS??? “Disk Read Error”… PLEASE!!!
Applications used to fix issue:
Easeus Partition Manager - Free
It's best to remove your drive from your computer and run this on another computer with your drive in a USB enclosure or as a slave drive. Make sure you tell the partition manager to check the disk for errors and not to recover bad sectors. This will make sure the file system is intact and working. Running Easeus in this manner will also work wonders if your partition reports the type RAW. It will correct it and fix the partition and file system to return it to your normal partition type. This may also help if your system starts to boot Windows then faults and restarts. |
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