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Why is my computer deleting physical memory and says "disc read error"?

Posted By : Henry of Katharine Gibbs School - New York on December 14, 2004

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While working on my computer it froze. I used cntl/alt/del trying to end what it was doing. This didnt work on first try so I did it a few more times then a screen came up saying deleting physical memory. Since then I have not been able to start the comuter. When i do turn it on it comes up with a screen that says disc read error, cntl/alt/del to restart.

Any idea of what I can do to fix the problem would be greatly appreciated

This question was answered on December 14, 2004. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.


Consider your installed memory Make sure your memory (RAM) is capable of running the PC As a rule of thumb, you need 256MB at least, ideally 516MB.

Of course, this strange behaviour could also be caused by a virus or malware.

Run a scan with your anti-virus, Ad-Aware and Spybot just to make sure Ad-Aware and Spybot are free programs - download, update and then run:

Ad-Aware: http://www.lavasoft.de/ Spybot: http://safer-networking.org/

Also run Disk Cleanup: Start>All Programs>Accessories>System Tools>Disk Cleanup.

Next, disable your anti-virus and turn off the screensaver, then run Disk Defragmenter: Start>All Programs>Accessories>System Tools>Disk Defragmenter.

As for the "disc read error" check to see if you have a floppy disk or cd in any of the disk drives Removing them might help.

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Posted by Henry of Katharine Gibbs School - New York on December 14, 2004

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