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Boot ups unsuccessful; error given "A disk read error occured."

Original title: Boot ups unsuccessful; error given "A disk read error occured. Press ctrl+alt+delete to restart." on Windows 7 PC.

This is quite sudden, and I'm not entirely sure of the cause. However, I suspect a rootkit of some sort may have comprimised my computer's boot files.

I'm sending it to a repair shop if nothing else works, and would rather not pay their hefty fees to fix what could be a simple problem.

 

But, then again, the hard drive could simply be borked.

Any insight? Solutions? Thanks.

 

Oh, and by the way, this didn't occur the first time I started the computer this morning. It booted as usual, albeit considerably slower so I restarted once it was finished and this kept occuring.

Answer
Answer

Hi Quo Vadis,

 

The error message could be due to one of the following reasons.

 

¯ You may have a corrupt MBR (master boot record)

¯ Your hard drive may have a bad sector

¯ Defective drive

 

To cover all these bases, follow the methods given below.

 

Start Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE) to troubleshoot and repair the above items in Windows.

 

What are the system recovery options in Windows 7?

 

Method 1: Run Bootrec.exe tool

 

To run this tool, start Windows RE mode and run the FixMbr command.

 

For details, please see:

 

How to use the Bootrec.exe tool in the Windows Recovery Environment to troubleshoot and repair startup issues in Windows

 

Method 2: Run Check Disk

 

Chkdsk inspects the physical structure of a disk to make sure that it is healthy. It can repair problems related to bad sectors, lost clusters, cross-linked files, and directory errors.

 

Run the check disk from command prompt in system recovery.

 

Following is the command.

 

chkdskdrive /p /r

 

The chkdsk command checks the specified drive and repairs or recovers the drive if the drive requires it. The command also marks any bad sectors and it recovers readable information.

You can use the following options:

/p Does an exhaustive check of the drive and corrects any errors.
/r Locates bad sectors and recovers readable information.

Note If you specify the /r option, the /p option is implied. When you specify the chkdsk command without arguments, the command checks the current drive with no options in effect.

 

Let us know how it goes.

Regards,

Shinmila H - Microsoft Support

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Question Info

Last updated January 23, 2018 Views 0 Applies to: