cannot read disc - press control + alt + del to restart

I bought a new computer yesterday that has a Athlon 64 bit processor. I installed Windows XP home edition and everything was fine. A friend and I wanted to try Windows 64 bit edtion so we got a trial release. We made a new partition for the new operating system and installed it with no problems until we had to reboot. The error message "Cannot Read Disc - press Control + Alt + Del to restart" now appears every time I turn the computer on. Using the windows recovery console I deleted the problematic/new partition. I've tried fdisk and fixmbr but neither of them have helped. I am currently running chkdsk /r but its taking forever. I would REALLY prefer not to have to reformat the harddrive but if it comes to that I guess I have no choice. Any help would be appreciated.

1. Use only one copy of WinXP
2. Use a legit copy of WinXP
3. Make sure all PC components are 64-bit compatible
4. Make sure drives are connected (properly)
5. Uninstall Home before installing 64-bit Ed.
6. THINK BEFORE YOU POST!

DialupDaemon lol wtf....really think before you ask HOW. It isn't much of a hassle to reformat anyways. My advice, you should have thought twice about buying that computer. Take it back to Khampfrestryke.

Hi dialupdaemon

I would reformat and reinstall, it is by far the cleanest solution in the long run.

I can't say I am surprised that you can't dual boot a 32 bit home edition with a 64 bit professional one. The 64 bit product is aimed at quite a specialist market.

Just my £0.02 :)

Wow, do I get banned if I post in this thread!!

Dialupdaemon , like you said it was a "Trial Version" - these things happen, thats the nature of trial/beta versions of software, unexpected things happen.

I would have a guess that some 64 bit code/drivers etc has found its way into somewhere that doesnt understand what it is and is refusing to boot because of it. Prob in your MBR, I know you said you ran the fix utillity but was that from the 32 bit O/S or 64 bit?

The easiest solution by far would be to format your hard disc- you say you prefer not to but you should have maybe thought about backing it up if you knew you where about to start playing with 64 bit O/S's.

Hope it helped!!

Nokia makes a good point. As we don't really know what happened we cannot be certain that any attempt to "fix" will actually leave you with a stable system. Given that the machine is almost brand new, a reformat and reinstallation would seem the best option.

If I wanted to play with a trial 64 bit OS I would replace the HDD first and install onto that ;)

Hello every1,

If I may ask, what 64bit operating system did you install??? And the trial version you got was it a beta release or a finall version with limited time or functions???

I suggest you dont dual boot using some trial OS, If you realy want to try it, do it on a fresh system, and please read the "readme.1st" ;) file b4 starting the installation.

Wish you all the success.

Regards :)

I used a program called Partition Table Doctor to create a boot disk which hopefully would have fixed my problem. The program immediately discovered some errors and fixed them and I also ran the recommeded procedure called fixboot which supposedly fixed my problem. Now when I boot up I get the option to choose between Windows XP Pro and Windows XP Home. XP Pro is running as the default OS even though I never put it on the computer, so I'm guessing that the attempted install of the x64 OS is resposible. If I let the computer boot into Pro, a message comes up saying "Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem. Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk hardware."

If I select to run Windows XP Home, it boots up like normal but when it gets to the screen where you select which user you would like to use, there are no users to select from. I tried using safe mode but the same problem occurs: it gets to the user selection screen and there are none there.
Is this a problem that can be fixed? Or is all hope lost and I have to resort to reformating?

Well, I really don't think it is worth messing with, given the potential stability question. I would just go for the reformat.

:)

Take your pick of the OS's you want to repair....................Then do a repair install.

You probably trounced the registry with your second OS install. Windows of any flavour likes to be the one and the only one installed on a single HDD or Computer for that matter.

Hi jinxy

I am not sure if that will work................AFAIK you cannot even upgrade from XP Pro 32 bit to 64bit, it has to be a clean install. This is XP Home?

:)

Nihil,

I may have had one to many (bank holiday:)) but I read the post to say he was attempting a dual boot.......................................I have had this sort of problem before. The second win install buggers the reg of first install and cuz it was installed first the second partition, for some inexplicable reason won't boot either.

But anyhoo a clean install fixes all.

dialupdaemon - if this was my own computer i would boot from my normal XP cd, delete both partitions and then format the entire hard drive and reinstall the version of xp that came with the box. Problem solved (hopefully)

Like nihil says, the box is only a day old so there cant be that much stuff on there & if you want to learn, play or experiment with 64 bit O/S's use and different hard drive that you dont mind messing up!

I thought about it some more and decided to just go with the reformat because I definitely don't want to have to deal with recurring issues that might have resulted. The PC is back up and running in great condition again. I haven't managed to reclaim the 50 GB of space that I set aside for the 64 bit partition though...

Hi dialupdaemon ,

I am glad to hear that things are getting back to normal :)

About the "spare" 50Gb partition.

1. Does the BIOS report the correct total drive size?
2. Does XP Home "see" the partition?
3. What drives/partitions (physical and logical) is your system showing and what letters have been assigned to them?
4. What file system is it, or is it showing as "unformatted"?


:)

Did you delete the partitions before you formated or did you just format the original windows partition? If you just formated your normal installations partition, chances are the 64 bit OS may still be there!

if you go into compmgmt.msc (start > run > commgmt.msc) do you see the partition there??? if you need any assistence look at this KB from Microsoft...
http://support.microsoft.com/default...309000&sd=tech