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Drive read error occurred while installing Windows XP

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by trish44

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I installed a brand new Seagate 320 GB IDE drive in my son's computer as the only drive. The drive he had in it was really old & wouldn't cooperate to copy anything over to the new one, it was really picky anyway. So I gave up & decided to just install Windows XP & start all over on the new drive. When I try to install it I get past the part where it formats the drive & restarts the computer. When it restarts it comes up with a message saying, "Drive read error occurred, press ctrl, alt, del to restart." I'm using the same Windows XP CD that was used originally & it installed fine then. I have tried doing the chkdsk /r /p & it says it fixed errors. I also tried fixboot, but neither of these things helped the problem or fixed it. I have tried two different ribbon cables & that didn't help either. Does anyone have any ideas about where I should go from here? I'm stumped!

9 replies

by rob miners

your Jumper settings on the Drive and ensure that it is Set to Master. If that does'nt work try setting it as Cable Select.

Let us know how you get on.

Rob

by trish44

I have tried jumpering the drive first as master & then as cable select & the same error message comes up. In addition, I have changed out the cmos battery on the motherboard because I was getting a message that the battery was low. Even after changing the battery to a new one I'm still getting this message & it says to press F2 every time I restart. Is this motherboard just dying or what?

by rob miners

that you are trying to install this Drive to. If you could supply the Make and Model it would make it a bit easier to help you nut it out.

If you enter the BIOS and check that everything is OK like the Date and Time and Save the settings on exit you should get rid of the press F2 message. Check that the Drives are set to Autodetect while you are in there as the original drive may have been manually setup.

by oh smeg

When you remove the BIOS Battery you loose any stored BIOS Settings. These need to be reset and Saved On Exit to prevent the F2 message that you are seeing on every restart. It will also cause problems with the way that a HDD is addressed as well so enter the BIOS set the Date & Time and check to see that the HDD is correctly Identified.

If it isn't the current BIOS doesn't support that Size Drive which is the most likely reason that you had difficulties in copying Data to it. If the BIOS doesn't support the Drive you only have one real option if you wish to keep the drive and that is to fit a PCI IDE Controller Card and Boot off that.

You'll need to copy the IDE Controllers Card Driver to the Root of a Floppy Disc and press the F6 Key at the first Blue Screen on the Windows Installer Routine and then when prompted insert the Floppy and press enter to copy the IDE Controllers Driver to the system.

I think that you'll find that the HDD is currently Formatted to something considerably less than the 320 GIG Capacity even if you have a XP SP2 Install Disc and if you don't have a XP SP2 Install Disc it will be formated to 127 MEG which is the biggest that XP SP1 Supports and there will be errors.

The reason why you are seeing the Drive Read Error Message is because the BIOS is reporting the Drive to a different Size than the Circuit Board on the HDD and this is causing a error to occur preventing you from copying files to the HDD.

Col

by trish44

Thanks everyone for your help, I really appreciate it. I think it's best at this point it looks like since I don't want to install a smaller drive to just junk this old motherboard & buy a new one. It's probably outlived it's usefulness. I was trying to get by as cheaply as possible since this is my son's computer & he has a very low budget right now. However, I've seen some combo deals online that will probably work.

Thanks again for all of your help & suggestions.

by trish44

This is a home built computer, so there is no brand or model. The motherboard & CPU are 4-5 years old, they're the ones that were previously in my computer before I upgraded a couple of boards back. The motherboard is an ECS K7S5A & the CPU is an AMD, but I don't know which one. I can go into the BIOS on startup & change the date & time & all, save the settings on exit & the next time the computer is turned off it changes back to the default & you get the message to press F2 again. The computer was running before I started with two old IBM deskstar hard drives, one of which was failing. The CMOS battery had been showing low for awhile, this is why I got a new battery & changed it out, but it hasn't helped as far as I can tell. Where do I go from here?

by trish44

This is a home built computer, so there is no brand or model. The motherboard & CPU are 4-5 years old, they're the ones that were previously in my computer before I upgraded a couple of boards back. The motherboard is an ECS K7S5A & the CPU is an AMD, but I don't know which one. I can go into the BIOS on startup & change the date & time & all, save the settings on exit & the next time the computer is turned off it changes back to the default & you get the message to press F2 again. The computer was running before I started with two old IBM deskstar hard drives, one of which was failing. The CMOS battery had been showing low for awhile, this is why I got a new battery & changed it out, but it hasn't helped as far as I can tell. Where do I go from here?

by rob miners

the new Drive is not compatiable with that Motherboard. Try putting the original Drive back in and see of the error message stops. If it does the other alternative is to get a smaller capacity Drive. Considering the age of the PC I don't think that I would be spending too much on it.

Rob

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