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Can’t launch Linux Mint, «Read Error»
Post by sashkello » Wed Jan 20, 2016 1:32 am
Sorry for unloading this personal problem in here, but I’m getting a bit desperate with this.
I’ve got an Acer Aspire S3 laptop and have just replaced the hard drive (upgrading it from 250 to 500 Gb, it was failing and old as well).
After this, I, as usual, made a bootable USB with Linux Mint (17.3 this time), and proceeded to install it with no troubles whatsoever. However, after installation went through, and I rebooted, it didn’t even start booting any OS, all I see is a black screen with «Read Error». Sometimes (seems random), it shows
Now, a few things which I have checked:
1. I tried to reinstall Linux Mint several times, trying to make manual partitions, to no noticeable effect.
2. I can see the new hard drive in BIOS.
3. When I boot from USB, I can see my partitions in GParted as well as the standard linux file structure. So, it looks like Mint IS there on the drive.
4. I have tried Boot Repair, both Recommended Repair and a few other options in Advanced, to no success.
5. I have tried reinstalling GRUB2 as described here, again, without any result.
UPDATE:
6. Tried to go through grub-rescue as described here, but get the same error («attempt to read or write outside of disk») on insmod command.
7. Tried to install some other distros, Linux Lite didn’t do anything new, but with Fedora I managed to get to the boot menu (somehow it works 50/50), and a couple of times it even went through to load OS itself, although most times it shows me «failure reading sector . from hd0», if it gets to boot menu at all («Read Error» is what I usually see).
8. Run
sudo badblocks -wsvf /dev/sdaWhat could be going on, how do I diagnose my problem further?
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 5 times in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
«Read Error» on boot
So my computer froze while it was in powersave mode, and I could not reboot it with REISUB, or access it over the network, forcing me to hard reboot. When I rebooted, I was greeted with the message «Read Error» in the top left corner. I booted into a LiveCD, and tried
root@ubuntu:/home/ubuntu# fdisk -l fdisk: unable to read /dev/sda: Inappropriate ioctl for device I immediately imaged the drive with gddrescue, and then proceeded to run e2fsck. That seemed to complete successfully, and now when I run fsck, I get:
fsck from util-linux 2.20.1e2fsck 1.42.8 (20-Jun-2013) /dev/sda1: clean, 1475560/18317312 files, 48594157/73242187 blocks So all seems good over there. However, I still cannot get any output from fdisk, and when I reboot, I still get the same error.
It showed an ext4 partition at sda1 and an extended partition at sda1 which when expanded, opens up to show a swap partition at ext5
Yes, I was able to mount /dev/sda1. The end of the day, I just reformatted and reinstalled Ubuntu, and now all is fine. Just wish somebody would tell me why fdisk -l didn’t work.
3 Answers 3
I faced the same issue, What resolved the issue for me was using the live CD i installed Boot Repair,that repaired my file system which was mounted on partition sd1. After rebooting the initial boot took a bit more time than usual but the machine worked fine after that.
Well, It’s my first time installing Ubuntu and had the same «Read error» and I solved it in an almost silly way.
I had disassembled my sister’s netbook to make a back up of the hard drive before installing Ubuntu. Her netbook was running so slow on Windows that so I had to disassamble to have access to the drive. Then I installed Ubuntu (the Lubuntu distribution) easily but when I reebooted I had this read error. So I simply suspected that when I re-assambled the netbook, I did not plug well the hard drive (excuse my poor english, I mean I didn’t connect it correctly).
MY SOLUTION
So I simply disassambled the netbook again and connected strongly the hard drive. When I rebooted, the Lubuntu worked normally.
Thread: Loading Operating System . Read Error
First Cup of Ubuntu 
Loading Operating System . Read Error
I have a computer with the following disks:
/dev/sda: SSD disk where I want to install Ubuntu 12.10
/dev/sdb: SSD disk with Windows 7
/dev/sdc: «normal» disk with data
I created a usb boot disk with the ubuntu iso, and installed ubuntu to /dev/sda. Grub was also installed to /dev/sda. Now when I reboot after the installation, I only get the message «Loading Operating System . Read Error», white letters on black background, right after the bios info. No sign of grub. I guess it’s a bios error. With the help of the dutch Ubuntu forums, I tried several things yet:
— when I leave the usb stick inserted while booting from harddisk, it works.
— that brought me to this topic: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1903015. The solution there was to upgrade the bios, so I tried that, but it didn’t help
— I recreated the installation stick in different ways (different tools, from within windows or ubuntu): no succes
— I tried to re-install grub with rescatux or from within ubuntu: no luck
— In the bios I changed from AHCI to IDE mode: grub works now, but I can’t boot windows anymore because that was installed in ahci mode
— I tried boot-repair (http://paste.ubuntu.com/5601888/) which gave me a slightly different error: «error: no such device: 71eeb5f0-bcc6-49a8-b9a4-1fee266b58ec» followed by a «grub rescue» prompt
— boot-repair says » The boot files of [ The OS now in use — Ubuntu 12.10 ] are far from the start of the disk». So I tried reinstalling ubuntu: first a /boot partition and then a root and swap partition. That gave me the original error again.
I’m running out of ideas now An option would be to leave the stick inserted at all times, but I would prefer a «real» solution. Any help is greatly appreciated!!