Acer laptop 'A disk read error occurred'

[Jobos]

Had a strange fault on a laptop today which when I first saw it I thought it would only be a quick job but so far I've spent quite a bit of time on it already.

 

Acer Travelmate 8481 left over from the Olympic legacy.

Fault: not booting with the message 'A disk read error occurred press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart'

 

Thinking the HD is corrupt I reimaged but the same error so I replaced the HD and reimaged again. Still the same so this time I loaded the setup defaults in the BIOS. No difference still got the same error. Next I swapped the memory and HD from a working laptop. Still the same so now I’m running out of ideas and the only thing left I can think of is to reset the BIOS by removing the battery inside the case which I don’t fancy doing.

 

Any ideas?

[LosOjos]

Sounds like a dodgy IDE/SATA cable/header

 

If there's a cable in there it should be easy enough to swap it for a new one and see if that solves it. If it's just a header on the mobo, you'll have to judge for yourself whether your soldering is up to the challenge! (although if you exhaust all other possibilities, better to try than just bin it!)

Edited October 2, 2013 by LosOjos

[Jobos]

Yes there is cable in the HD bay with the connector just poking out from the case. Didn't think it might be the cable as the laptops have hardly been used