[SOLVED]Error Shrinking Vista Partition - A disk read error occurred

A1)  To fix Vista, it may help to read FAQ point number 9.

The FAQ also outlines how to download a Vista recovery disk image. 

A2)  Good question.  I am not sure why there would be such a large gap between partitions.  GParted defaults partition boundaries to round to cylinders, which at most are 8 MB in size.  This is significantly smaller than 6 GB so it does not appear to be a partition boundary rounding problem.

Did you happen to save the gparted_details.htm file when you resized the partition?  If so this would contain useful information that might help us to determine what happened.

Ok, I still have the same problem. I tried everything I read, including the things in the FAQ. I used bcdedit with no success, vista recovery disk, etc. I always end up with the "A disk read error occurred"...(it actually has the error O missing, like "A disk read err r occurred").

Anyways, ideas? bcdedit's information looks ok. I can't burn a CD or DVD so I can't use other tools available on the internet, just my recovery disk + recovery VAIO partition and a GParted bootable CD.

Any thoughts more than welcome!

Hello vacaloca,

using "GParted Live CD", would you please give us the print-out of "Terminal"(console) command

fdisk -l -u

where "l" is a lower-case L, or you use the below described drive information file.

Furthermore, I would like to have the hexadecimal content of sectors 0 (MBR) to 9 of your HDD.

How do you get it ?

First of all, we need an independent storage media like an USB stick or an external USB harddisk to store files permanently, so that they can be sent to a file sharing site (e.g. mediafire.com), and you can give us the links.

1. Attach your USB-Media
2. Boot "GParted" ( maybe Boot sequence has to be changed)
3. Write down or keep in mind the device name of your USB-Media, e.g. sdb1 (you see it with GParted's graphic; use your media's device name in the following commands, wherever "sdb1" is used), and your HDD's name ( sda or ? ), minimize "GParted" window
4. Open "Terminal" and write down (press [ENTER] after each line):

mkdir /mnt/usb
mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usb

5. Close "Terminal" window
6. Right-click anywhere on Desktop - Fluxbox opens - File/System utils - start MC_HxEd
7. Before you click on the [+] sign, double-click on the text of the single visible line, creating
a drive info file "drvs.dat", which gets automatically stored to the USB media ( location, see below)
8. Now click on every [+] sign to unfold treeview
9. Choose "Show_Block(s)" below your HDD's device name, type

0#10

for sector 0 to 9 .What you see, gets automatically stored to the USB-media (subfolder /BootRec,
as BLK-File (sorry, BLK-Files do NOT )).
10. Shutdown "GParted" and give us the two files.

Regards
cmdr

Ok done! Sorry for the delay and helps for the help. Here are the files:
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=9467 … f6e8ebb871

I also included 63#10 just in case.

THAAANKKK YOUUUU!

Hello vacaloca,
well done !

1) "63#10" is empty as expected. Due to "fdisk.log", recovery partition sdb1 (file system ID 0x27) starts at sector 2048 (instead of 63 = 1 track), which is usual with that kind of partition, and ends at block 18782207 (-> size : 18,782,207 - 2,048 +1 = 18,780,160 blocks ->  * 512 /1,024/1,024/1,024 -> 8,96 GiB). Could you please upload the sector content of "2048#30" ?

2) Gap : 18,796,049 - 18,782,208 + 1 = 13,842 blocks -> *512/1,024/1,024 -> 6,76 MiB
Start of Gap is NOT aligned to a cylinder border (next border : 18796050, see 3). That is, the Gap is due to cylinder alignment !
Could you please upload the sector content of   "18782208#80" , to see, what was there before your action ? A Partition Boot Record ?

3) Vista : 406,475,119 - 18,796,050 + 1 = 387,679,070 blocks -> *512/1.024/1,024/1,024 ->184,86 GiB. Start of Vista partition is aligned to a cylinder border. Vista partition has bootflag.
Could you please upload the sector content of  "18796050#30" ?

Regards
cmdr

Maybe I found the mistake ! Just try it, explanation follows.
Note, that you need the mounted second drive(USB stick?). Perhaps device name of your HDD is "sdb2" again. Check it and use the right device name (I use a question mark instead)!

You get direct access by clicking on "sd?2" within "MC_HxEd"; edit ([F2]) the four bytes and save it afterwards ([F6]). "MC_HxEd" detects the change and asks, whether you want to overwrite the present block. Say "Yes". Shutdown "GParted", remove the stick and boot your laptop.

First three 16-byte lines of your corrupted sd?2 PBR look like this

EB 52 90 4E 54 46 53 20 20 20 20 00 02 08 00 00
00 00 00 00 00 F8 00 00 3F 00 FF 00 [00 98 1E 01] <- Last 4 bytes seem to be false
00 00 00 00 80 00 80 00 50 83 1B 17 00 00 00 00

I have 2 variants, which should be tested
1)

EB 52 90 4E 54 46 53 20 20 20 20 00 02 08 00 00
00 00 00 00 00 F8 00 00 3F 00 FF 00 [00 08 00 00]
00 00 00 00 80 00 80 00 50 83 1B 17 00 00 00 00

2)

EB 52 90 4E 54 46 53 20 20 20 20 00 02 08 00 00
00 00 00 00 00 F8 00 00 3F 00 FF 00 [12 CE 1E 01]
00 00 00 00 80 00 80 00 50 83 1B 17 00 00 00 00

Good luck !
cmdr

YYYYYYYYYESSSSSSSSSSSS!!!! first one worked!!! I guess you changed the pointer to the MBR?

THANK YOU SOO MUCH!!! genius!.. Still if you could explain what was happening in a little bit more detail that would be super!

UPDATE: Actually first solution pointed to first partition, second solution to the other one So both of your solutions worked great, it was just a matter of choosing which one to use

oohhh.. damn Little Endian Intel. I did that conversion (hex to int) to see if it matched one of the sectors, but I forgot this was little endian.

So, just to clear up things.

If you can't boot your Vista  (or whatever) and the Vista Recovery disk doesn't work (i.e. you still have the same read error problem).

1. Identify the starting sectors of your HD's partitions
2. Identify which partition you want to boot from Convert that value to hex, invert the words (double bytes) and invert the bytes themselves. So 0x011ECE12 becomes 12 CE 1E 01.
3. Use the most excellent MC_HxEd tool and open up the broken partition. Change bytes 28, 29, 30 and 31 (zero based) and save
4. Restart without any CD/DVD: vista will complain that something is broken
5. Insert vista recovery CD/DVD and make sure it boots. It will automatically detect you screw up and fix it
6. Next restart you will be as good as new.

Thanks Again and I really hope this helps another idiot like me
Regards
VL

hi I have the same problem... I know how to do everything what vacaloca wrote to point 2. I use Mac with bootcamp.

1: I identyfied partition
2: 84566160 -> 0x050A6090 -> 90 60 0A 05

and could you tell me step-by-step how to use MC_HxEd to change bytes and which bytes I have to change (and what I have to write).

thanks