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180 Posts
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14962
July 30th, 2008 12:00
XPS 720 Disk Read Error at startup
My computer is attatched to an apc battery backup. I usually shut down both the computer and the UPS at the end of the day.
When I turn on the UPS in the morning the computer always acknowledges the power has been restored by turning on the lights and running the fans for 3 seconds or so.
This morning when I turned on the UPS the computer acknowledged that power was restored but hung in that condition. I decided to press the computers power button to see if I could get the computer to start normally. This caused a different type of hang condition. I had to hold the power button in to completely shut down the computer.
Turning the computer back on, the computer indicates a floppy drive failure. However I don't have and never have had a floppy drive in this computer. I went into bios and it looked to me like everything in there was reset to factory defaults. I had to turn the floppy drive off again. Once I got all the BIOS settings back to normal I restarted the computer. The dell logo screen comes up fine. However instead of a nice Windows XP startup screen I get "Disk Read Error, Press ctrl - alt - del to restart"
When I press ctrl - alt - del, the computer trys to restart. The Dell logo screen appears then "Disk Read Error, Press ctrl - alt - del to restart." over and over and over.
At first the diagnostic lights 123 were lit. Which according to the XPS 720 manual indicates "another failure has occured." So could be anything. However after a few attempts at restarting the computer that condition went away. Now no diagnostic lights are lit.
I've been running Dell Diagnostics from the CD. The computer is passing all the diagnostic tests. I'm not sure what to do now.
XPS 720 H2C
QX6700 2.66GHz Overclocked to 3.47GHz
4GB RAM
Dual 768MB nVidia GeForce 8800GTX
SATA RAID 0 with Dual 160GB 10k RPM Hard Drives
X-Fi sound card
Ageia PhysX Processor
1 kilowatt Power Supply
Windows XP Pro
0 events found
Gontue
180 Posts
0
July 30th, 2008 12:00
Well, those are excellent suggestions. The computer and ups are off at the moment. I'll go see if it retained the changes I made.
XPS 720 H2C
QX6700 2.66GHz Overclocked to 3.47GHz
4GB RAM
Dual 768MB nVidia GeForce 8800GTX
SATA RAID 0 with Dual 160GB 10k RPM Hard Drives
X-Fi sound card
Ageia PhysX Processor
1 kilowatt Power Supply
Windows XP Pro
Kilmerj
90 Posts
0
July 30th, 2008 12:00
Is it possible the motherboard battery has died and this has caused your loss of bios settings? Is it possible this reset of the bios settings changed the setup for your hard drive and that is why it won't boot? Just some quick suggestions off the top of my head...
John
tasone
182 Posts
0
July 30th, 2008 13:00
hello
i had this happen before on me,
you get that read error, when it is trying to boot from a hd that does not have the io.sys (and the others i cant remember the names of) files on it.
all you need to do is replace the battery, and do the default settings, and then check all of the HD setting, looking at the boot order of the harddrives, making sure your main hd you boot from is selected as the first drive to try.
Andy
Gontue
180 Posts
0
July 30th, 2008 13:00
It looks to me like the first item in the boot order is the expected hard drive.
XPS 720 H2C
QX6700 2.66GHz Overclocked to 3.47GHz
4GB RAM
Dual 768MB nVidia GeForce 8800GTX
SATA RAID 0 with Dual 160GB 10k RPM Hard Drives
X-Fi sound card
Ageia PhysX Processor
1 kilowatt Power Supply
Windows XP Pro
Gontue
180 Posts
0
July 30th, 2008 13:00
The BIOS retains info.
Hmm, I wonder if your right about the hard drive settings. I wonder if the RAID configuration has been lost. I previously had it set (from the factory) at RAID 0. I'm not sure how to check that though.
XPS 720 H2C
QX6700 2.66GHz Overclocked to 3.47GHz
4GB RAM
Dual 768MB nVidia GeForce 8800GTX
SATA RAID 0 with Dual 160GB 10k RPM Hard Drives
X-Fi sound card
Ageia PhysX Processor
1 kilowatt Power Supply
Windows XP Pro
Gontue
180 Posts
0
July 30th, 2008 14:00
UP and Running!
When the BIOS was magicly reset it also turned off the RAID ON option under hard drives. Turning that back on fixed the problem.
Thanks Dell Tech support!
XPS 720 H2C
QX6700 2.66GHz Overclocked to 3.47GHz
4GB RAM
Dual 768MB nVidia GeForce 8800GTX
SATA RAID 0 with Dual 160GB 10k RPM Hard Drives
X-Fi sound card
Ageia PhysX Processor
1 kilowatt Power Supply
Windows XP Pro