My boyfriend's computer shut down last night and when he rebooted it gave him this error:

A disk read error occurred
Press Ctrl + Alt + Del to restart

He is running Vista, it did not have SP2 installed yet and it's never had this problem before. All he installed yesterday was a game called Pirates of the Burning Sea, and I ran a virus check on it while installing so I know nothing happened from that. His computer was working all day until the shut down.

I did a search for this error and was led to the UBC site. I am unsure however what I should be doing to fix the problem. From what I've read so far, I'm under the impression that I should back up the hard drive, and then run some diagnostics on it to see if it's damaged. I've never done something like that on my own before though so I could use some advice on what programs I should be running and in what order. And anything else I should be looking for or trying to resolve this issue and get his computer back up and running. I hope this is the right place to post this, I could not find a comprehensive FAQ that included this issue and what I should do about it. I appreciate any help!

Just an update..

I changed the boot order so it was CD first and hard drive second, then rebooted the computer and Windows actually pulled up. It seems to be working fine now. I'm worried though that there is still something wrong, so now I'm seeking advice on what I should to do to make sure this doesn't happen again. Thanks!

Is there any reason for the boot order to be different from what it was before?

A) Was the shutdown "as usual", or was something not expected? What I mean is, did you actually shut down the system, or "something" made the computer shutdown "by itself"?

B) Is a "desktop" system? If the computer has batteries, plug in the power cord and leave it connected until all the checks/test are done, in case the problem is somehow related to the batteries.

C) Can you report the exact model(s) of the hard drive(s)?

D) Can you get to the BIOS? Is the BIOS detecting the hard drive(s)? Is the information in the BIOS correct? Is the BIOS detecting the hard drive(s) correctly?

E) Can you boot the computer with UBCD, or with some boot CD or bootable usb, instead of booting to the hard drive?

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If you can report back your test/info for the above checks, then maybe we could find if the problem is related to software or hardware, and then, according to the info you provide, we could maybe suggest what tool to use.

Try to find the answers for the above questions and report back whatever info you can.
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In addition to the above questions:

F) I wouldn't discard so fast a virus problem. I'm not saying it "has" to be a virus, and I can't say that the game you installed has a virus for sure. It could be a coincidence, or not. I'm just saying, after reporting back the previous questions, it would be very advisable to run a complete check with some UPDATED antivirus rescue disk (that boots from CD/DVD/usb) and can completely check the system, including BIOS, the whole boot process sectors, and the whole hard disk.

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Report back and we'll continue from that point accordingly.

Thank you both for your answers. I apologize for not answering yet, I have been ill this past week.

So we gave over the computer to my brother in law who is very good with hardware issues. After much testing he figured out that certain SATA ports on the motherboard didn't work for the hard drive. They do work for the DVD drive, and one port remaining works consistently for the hard drive. We're not sure what caused it, but that was the culprit. It's up and running now with a fresh install of Windows 7. Thanks again!

If I press Ctrl+Alt+Del, it just returns to the same screen. Also, when my PC first starts up a get a blue Intel pentium screen, which never appeared before. It will not boot into Windows. I tried setting the boot drive to the DVD drive in the BIOS and booting from my Vista DVD, but after the message "press any key to boot from CD", I just get the same error message.