Page 1 of 1

HDD error: "failed to ArcRead the boot partition to check for a signature"

Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2003 1:52 pm
by Judg3
Anyone know what this means?
Just bought a used 40GB drive and went to install it. Figured I'd make it the master on the gf's system, and do a clean install of Win2k. Upon bootup, it takes a lot longer then normal for the BIOS to detect the drive. Doing a Win2k install I get the following errors:

"failed to ArcRead the boot partition to check for a signature"
and
"Disc I/O Error: Status=00002000"

Did some googling, and tried a few things. I made it the slave in the current system, rebooted and formatted the drive. Then shut down and tried to make it master again - still no dice. I'm now going to make a WD diag disk and try to get it going. Any help would be appreciated though! Thanks!

Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2003 1:58 pm
by b-man1
is this the one you got from me?...still giving you problems? :(

Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2003 2:00 pm
by Judg3
Nope lol, this is a diffrent one - yours is humming along nicely on my server right now - that's how I"m posting!

Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2003 3:27 pm
by Judg3
Ha! Now the drive shows up in BIOS as something along the lines of:


"EHE E)F*(& FKLEF )(EF*UED FJKDHF DF(*)D F)(*DF HDOU IHFDI JFH"

think I'll run WD's Windows DL Diag now, since there's no floppy on this machine

Hmm..

Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2003 3:36 pm
by eGoCeNTRoNiX
Be there some kind of strange jumper settings your not meeting? Just a thought.. And I know you're smarter than that.. ;)

Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2003 4:10 pm
by Judg3
Well, I looked around and everything seemed fine. Even tried a diffrent UATA cable - no luck.
Won't even boot up with it connected anymore, time to RMA it I gues =\

Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2003 4:35 pm
by b-man1
shew! glad it's not the one i sold ya! :)

good luck...RMA that puppy.

Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2003 4:36 pm
by FlyingPenguin
That's either a defective drive or a loose or dirty ribbon cable connector. Since you swapped cables I'd say it's the drive.

Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2003 7:12 pm
by NascarFool
That is a defective IDE cable. Try a different cable on it.

Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2003 9:59 pm
by Judg3
Tried 3 cables with no luck - no biggie though, I can wait for the RMA so no worries hehehe. Thanks for the help guys.

I wouldn't of even posted if I hadn't googled the errors and read up on some other solutions. This is better, I didn't want the drive to "magically start working" and then die on me after I had gotten windows installed and what not.