Vista - Disk read error...

Hello everyone,

I'm new here and desperate for some help. I have a Sony Vaio
vgn-ar320e and I'm getting a disk read error. Before you immediately
assume its a dead hard drive let me say that I've already put another
drive in it and seem to be getting similar errors.

-With the original drive in it I can see it listed in my bios and when
I try to boot off of it I get a message that says windows didn't boot
correctly and I can launch the repair tool or start windows normally.
If I launch the repair tool I get the I/O error. If I choose launch
windows normally it just goes to a black screen and never does anything.
If I try and hit F10 during startup to load the recovery partition and
recover the system, I get disk read error press crtl+alt+delete to
restart.

-When I put the other hard drive in the machine I tried to boot off of
a xp cd just to see if I could format the drive and load an OS on it but
windows said there were no disks present. I can also see this drive in
the bios. I know this drive is good b/c I took it out of another laptop
that it was working in.

I got the machine as a present last september and it should still be
under warranty, however, since I didn't ask for the receipt and can't
produce a duplicate of the receipt Sony doesn't believe me that it's
less that a year old (barely) This machine cost close to $2000 at the
time of purchase and now sony is basically telling me that I'm out of
luck less than a year later.

If anyone can think of anything for me to try I would greatly
appreciate it.

Chris


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wckelly
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Hi and welcome to the forums

Firstly I would try a repair install either from the original vista disk or the repair disk which is available fot download have a look here at a tutorial that explains most options.

The other thing I would check is, because of the two disk problem you are having, if there is an update for your bios available.

To add, if the disk is a sata & you are trying to install winxp then you
would need to use the F6 option, early in the install process to install the
sate raid drivers from floppy.
Now you're going to say I dont have a floppy


"wckelly" <wckelly.3fa9nb@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:wckelly.3fa9nb@xxxxxx

No luck with those steps... Disk read errors and I/O errors and there's
no bios update available for me.

Let's for a second pretend like the original hard drive doesn't even
exist. Why would I not see a hard drive listed when I booted off of a
windows xp cd but see it listed in the bios? Do I/O errors always
indicate hardware errors? If so, what other hardware could be causing
this problem besides the hard drive?

If you can't tell I'm lost and extremely desperate to get this thing
fixed. It was very expensive and I didn't even get a year out of it...


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Now I'm even more confused...

I tried booting off the vista repair cd and it actually now saying that
it is attempting repairs to the disk. It's been running for a little
while now and I'm not sure if it's actually doing anything. The
processor lights is constantly lit up. I'm wondering if it runs into
whatever I/O error I've been having will it tell me and stop trying to
repair it? Should I leave this running all night?

Getting more confused by the minute...

Chris


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wckelly
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Answer allready posted

"wckelly" <wckelly.3faqbc@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:wckelly.3faqbc@xxxxxx