HELP!! disk read error; won't boot and won't go into safe mode

Discussion in 'Software' started by ookiepoo, May 21, 2008.

  1. ookiepoo

    ookiepoo Private E-2

    Help! I don't really know where to begin, so I guess I'll just try to explain this chronologically, as best I can.

    While my Sony Vaio laptop was booting, I accidentally bumped the power bar it was plugged into. The power went out for a moment, then came back. My Vaio has refused to boot and gave me the following error message in white against a black screen:
    A disk read error occured. Press cntrl-alt-delete to restart.
    I did this, of course, and after a moment of the Sony Vaio start up animation, the same message came back again. I hit the power button and did the restart combination several more times and got the same result.

    I then consulted your website and saw that other members had a similar problem. I tried to follow some of the advise that was given, but unfortunatly it will not go into safe mode. I actually tried every single "f" button (not with the restart combo, but actually turning it off, waiting 30 seconds, then starting it and quickly tapping the F1, F2, ect) and the only one that did not give me the same error message was the F2, pulling up the bios screen.

    I'm not one to want to mess around with bios, or even safe mode for that matter, so I called a friend of mine that is very computer savy. I have the sony vaio recovery disks, so first we tried that. The disk did actually load, but it does not have an option that didn't include deleating every file on my hard drive, which would really break my heart.

    Next we tried booting from an XP installation disk. That didn't seem to work at all, so we went into the bios again to verify the "boot order". Put optical followed by hard drive, ect. as the order. Disk still did not work.

    Then I thought that maybe there was a problem with my cd rom drive - it had been fickle in the past, but lately it'd been working fine. So we shutdown/unplugged/removed the battery, then removed the 160 g relatively new hard drive from the comp and put it into another sony vaio that I have. Still got the same error message. We went through all the steps that we went through on the original vaio, and still got the same error message.

    Today, I thought that ok well maybe I can still save the valuable data by putting the hard drive into an external hard drive enclosure that I have and plugging that into a working computer. (I have all my work stuff on the comp, and a lot of original artwork of mine, and all my pics and music, so like most people, its extremely important I don't loose these files.) I was suprized that my drive actually showed up! However, when I tried to open my documents under documents and settings (under my user name), a window popped up saying "access denied". (and that was all it said - nothing about privliges or anything like that).

    Thinking that maybe all my stuff got misplaced, I went through all the other folders on my hard disk. Almost every other folder, except for desktop and one other one was able to be opened, even under adminitrator and other user names. My hard drive is 160 gigs, with about 52 gigs in use. When I added up the size of all folders on the drive, it came to about 10. It seems that the my docs folder I am looking for is taking up space somehow, but at this point I'm unable to access it.

    About two weeks ago, I had a malware issue that I was able to fix through the help of majorgeeks; you can view the thread under my user name. That problem was fixed, but I was thinking that maybe something that I downloaded to fix the malware problem is now denying me access? Like maybe the comodo firewall or something?

    Sorry for the long post, but it seems (at least to me!) that this is a complicated issue.

    Thank you so much for taking the time to read this and (hopefully) give me some good news!!
     
  2. joelsz

    joelsz First Sergeant

    From the sound of it, I would say that your best bet would be to try to recover as many files as possible using a Data Recovery program such as these:
    http://www.majorgeeks.com/downloads38.html

    I am wondering what exactly you mean by
    Did the disk not load? Or what?
     
  3. ookiepoo

    ookiepoo Private E-2

    no, the xp boot cd would not load in that computer. It just gave me the same error message.
    Do you have any recomendations as to which of the downloads from http://www.majorgeeks.com/downloads38.html
    would be a good match for the problem I am having?
     
  4. Unbanable

    Unbanable Specialist

    You need to gain access to your files so that you can back them up.

    After this, I STRONGLY suggest that you regularly back up anything that you don't want to loose. Think hard! Back up everything that you don't want to loose...

    I started to type out the instructions to gaining access to your files, but instead of doing that, I'll just give you a link to Microsofts article on it.

    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308421

    That should do the trick. Be sure to take note of the article on what to do if the Security tab doesn't show. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307874/

    Hope this helps in getting your things backed up.
     
  5. ookiepoo

    ookiepoo Private E-2

    I couldn't believe how easy that solution was!!! Something none of my computer geek friends had ever heard of. . . THANK YOU . . . you saved my world and my computer . . .
    I do apologize for not giving thanks much much earlier - I finally sold my house that week so it got kind of hectic, and then I put this little task in the back of my mind. Sorry!
    Better late than never, I guess!
     

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