Boot hangs at same place every time

[Huggy6ear]

Hi,,
My system will not complete the boot. It hangs in the same place 'verifying DMI pool data'. The problem started a couple of weeks ago intermittently and at different places. I guess it's a hardware problem that has now hardened up. I have disconnected drives, memory, printer and scanner. I have run the maxter stand alone test on the drives. During the boot the memory is good and the drives are displayed ok.
Are there any diagnostic tools available I can test the motherboard etc with?
Any other thoughts?

XP Pro Sp2
AND Athlon XP 2800
2 x 512mb DDR400 RAM
All in Wonder 9000 Graphics
Diamondmax Plus9 SATA Drives
- 250gb
- 120gb
Canon I865 Printer
Epson Perfection 1670 Scanner
Nec 1300A DVD +/- Dual format

 

[wolluf]

Have you tried disconnecting everything - except graphics card, RAM, CPU, keyboard? It should complain about missing system disk if ok. If it does, reconnect one at a time, starting with one hard drive.

Have you tried resetting the CMOS (either by mobo jumper of removing the mobo battery for a few minutes). Go into bios settings when next boot & load setup defaults (or similar option).

 

[micker377]

Try a Win 98 or Win ME boot disk (with the other drives disconnected, and one stick of memory). This will at least tell you if the motherboard (and memory) is OK. If you can get that far, run "Memtest 86" and check all the memory.

 

[BadBigBen]

The 'verifying DMI POOL data' is not an error message, but the last BIOS message before BIOS starts to initiate the HDD...

Follow these 3 Steps:

1.) Check your HDD configuration, if the Boot order is set up right. Also check the cables, replace them etc...
Check for a Virus by doing a SCAN of the said drives, either by an updated Viral Scanner or through an online Virus Scan, ie. TrendMicro.

2.) Test your RAM, with the program called MemTest86+, if it detects an error, then either the MEM, CPU or the MoBo has a defect. Replace components starting with the RAM.

3.) Try one of these programs, for diagnosis of the Hardware: NSSI Navrátil Software System Information {

http://www.navsoft.cz/nssi058.exe),

PC-Analyzer (

http://www.pcanalyser.com/eng/products/download/download.html),

or PCI Sniffer (ftp://ftp.sac.sk/pub/sac/utildiag/pcisnf14.zip)...

if these don't help... then I am at a loss...

PS: DIAG TOOLS GALORE @

http://www.sac.sk/

Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

 

[Huggy6ear]

Thank you for these good replies. I have downloaded memtest and will start testing soon. I will feed back results.
Ian.

 

[cyberspace]

Have you tried using the windows XP recovery console? Use the chkdsk /r command. Might not work but its worth a shot.

'When all else fails.......read the manual'

 

[Huggy6ear]

Hi, I have completed all the tests and cannot find any problem. I also run 'Maxter PowerMax 4.22' on the drives and all is ok. So I decided to reformat and reinstall XP. When the install process got to the format task it display a new 8mb partion as C disk. The old C 256gb disk was reassigned D disk. I deleted the new partion and tried booting the system again and, YES, Windows booted ok! So what happened?

 

[BadBigBen]

Kinda sounds like the MBR got a bit screwed up there, or an app you/someone (Malware) added a partition (the 8mb space is actually what is left by Partitioning with XP) and the BIOS could not recognize it correctly in order for it to continue...

and by deleting that extra partition you reset the MBR as it should be...

"Check your HDD configuration"...

Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."