Fixing ‘Read Error’ in Grub after switching to AHCI

This read error drove me crazy

I switched the SATA Control mode from IDE to AHCI after installing my new Samsung Evo 850 SSD on my Gigabyte Z68AP-D3 board.
This resulted in an unrecoverable halt of the system prior to grub execution and the following error message:

Loading Operating Systems
Read Error

My Setup

SSD: Samsung Evo 850 SSD, firmware: EMT02B6Q (latest)
Board: Gigabyte Z68AP-D3, BIOS: F8 (latest)

Possible workaround for the read error

I did some research and found other people to experience the same problem. They came up with a small workaround.

  1. Remove any medium from your CD/DVD drive
  2. During boot open the Boot Menu where you are able to select a different start option such as boot from CD/DVD, USB etc.
  3. Choose booting from CD/DVD
  4. Your system might be able to boot now

Unfortunately this did not work in my case.

First possible solution

The same person later came up with a solution that worked for him/her.

  1. Enter BIOS
  2. Go to Integrated Peripherals
  3. Change Onboard Serial Port 1 from 3F8/IRQ4 to auto
  4. Reboot
  5. Your system might be able to boot now

This did not work for me either.

Second possible solution

I did some additional digging and found another person with a problem that might be the same as mine or at least similar. However the solution they figured out was the one that solved the problem in my case.

  1. Enter BIOS
  2. Go to Advanced BIOS Features
  3. Change Quick Boot from enabled to disabled
  4. Reboot
  5. Your system might be able to boot now

I have yet to figure out what’s the exact source of the problem and if there’s a better solution which does not involve disabling quick boot. On the other hand, I couldn’t notice any major delay due to this change. My guess would be that the SSD takes too long to initialize during startup. A firmware update via Samsung Magician could not help. If you can provide some insight feel free to leave a comment.

Author: xmoex

I'm a computer sience student currently working on my master's degree. At the moment I'm interested in the topics C++, Java and parallelization.

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