'Dumping Physical Memory' then 'Disk Read Error' and nothing more?

[Susanne]

Hi all,

Firstly allow me to apologise in advance for being totally computer illiterate, but I am desperate for help in working out what happened to my laptop computer (an Acer Aspire 3680, Win Vista).

Last night it just suddenly froze for no apparent reason. I rebooted, but it froze again almost as soon as I opened up a window which I managed to close and selected 'shut down'. As it was shutting down, it started to install Windows updates, which I thought was fairly normal. However, ten minutes later it seemed frozen again and the computer itself was making some extremely loud and bizarre noises. I hit the Power button to turn it off as I thought it was overheating, and I got a blue screen with white text come up briefly (only 5 seconds tops). All I had time to read off it was something about 'dumping physical memory' and a 'crash dump'. When I tried to turn the computer on again, all I got was a black screen saying 'disk read error, press ctrl+alt+del to reboot'. I have tried this but all it does is switch off, come on again and go straight to the screen telling me to reboot.

I have no idea what happened but I'm terrified that I've lost the data on my hard drive. Can anyone tell me how to fix it/recover my stuff/where to turn to to have it fixed?? Much appreciated!!

 

[rev_olie]

Hi,

With that screen there would have normally been a sting of letters called a STOP code. As you didn't catch that (you rarely will on the first go) it would have told you what wrong.

I think that you could have possibly god a bad RAM module or worst case a corrupt windows install/hard drive.

If you can you could do to find another PC (eg a friends PC) unplug your hard drive form your PC and plug it in theirs. This way you will hopefully be able to save the data.
Due to the nature its hard really to give specific instructions easily.
Anyhow,

Here's how to install [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMTOgt3UiB4]An IDE hard drive[/ame]
This is a hard drive that will have a huge wide but very thing cable coming off it.

Here's how to install a [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCgFYNLzn18&feature=related]SATA hard drive[/ame]

Now before i say about repairing windows. You other post has a reply with very good advice on using Knoppix to rescue data.
https://www.techspot.com/vb/topic103803.html

And finally here's how to do a repair windows install