Fatal Disk Read Error, making progress, but always run into something.

[jeff311]

Hi,

Working on an IBM thinkpad that worked fine last night. After trying to repair using my Windows CD, I could never get the CDROM to read first, no matter where I put in in the boot order on the startup screen. I followed the instructions from another site, step by step as to creating 4 floppy disks to initiate the set up and smooth sailing. Unfortunatly near the end after all 4 floppies are loaded up, Windows set up can not find my Windows Install folder and I need to put my Emergency REpair disk in to continue. I do not have this disk and can not find one anywhere. I have just downloaded ERD Commander and will try to get that running on the laptop, but doubt I will because I can not get the CDROM to read. Any help greatly appreciated.

[MaDef]

The windows 2000 cd isn't bootable (if I remember correctly). The way I got around this was to make a windows 2000 bootable cd slipstreamed with sp4. comes in handy if you don't have a floppy drive. ;)

If the system was working fine, why were you doing a repair? did you boot up and get the fatal disk read error? Instead of doing a repair, try booting to the recovery console and run "chkdsk /r" (without quotes). If that fixes the problem, you might want to dig a little deeper for the cause. If you shut the system off without shutting windows down, or you lost power, then that may be the cause of the error. If you didn't, then you may have a failing harware issue. Those are generally, hardive going bad, ide cable failure, ide controller failure (motherboard) or powersupply is failing.

[Comotor]

I made an install of windows 2k and the disk is boot able, if you are good with hardware try making sure that everything is cleaned(dust free) and unplug the cd-rom from the mother board then if the problem persists I would either have to say a bad cd-rom. I doubt it could be the mother board because you are booting up.

I can give you step by step instructions if you want and or other diagnosis if you want, just email me at: ***email removed by moderator***

have a great day!
Comotor