New Build Locks up on Verifying DMI Pool..

[kels]

Well, here's what's going on.

I upgraded my computer, took my old parts out, threw them in a case, and had everything I needed except a power supply and a harddrive.

Took an old IDE out of my old computer, which was running at the time, threw that harddrive into the new build. First time I booted it up it gave me the typical windows screen I got, then it gave me a blue screen.

Bios recognized it, set jumpers as master, etc., After the first few times (I did change bios settings around though) of getting the original screen then freeze, I decided to go back into bios reset to "fail-safe defaults."

My motherboard is a VIA K8T800, harddrive is a 13.5 GB IDE from a compaq.

The computer freezes on verifying DMI Datapool, heres the screen I get.

http://i30.tinypic.com/f9qlqc.jpg

I also tried a new SATA I had just bought, but that wasn't even recognized at all, I think it's because the MOBO supports 1.5 SATA but not 3.0.

I also booted an XP disc from cdrom but it never brought me to the format screen, and I also tried a Ubuntu live cd, but it wouldnt even load ubuntu live (unless I just had to wait longer.) it'd always stick on a screen flashing _ _ _.

It anyone can help I'd greatly appreciate it. I have all the harddrive cords connected properly I believe, though the jumper settings may be incorrect. The bios does recognize the harddrive as Master 1.

http://i29.tinypic.com/20hxcug.jpg

I am aware there is no power running to it in the picture, I had to unplug it to try and get a picture of the pin settings, which ended up not working anyways. According to the image on the harddrive the placement of the jumpers IS master 1.

Thanks

kels

[mudmanc4]

Welcome to testmy.net kels.

First thing is that HDD is going to be slow as molasses, the seek time has to be " forever",  so you will wait a minute for boot, especially w/ XP. That clickin you hear is the heads.

Secondly, the compaq MB compared to the 64 bit K8 might be messing with you, as wellas the northbridge/southbridge "chipsets". Either way, expect to be re installing windows. The hardware changes alone will throw a million flags.

What cpu is in there? Is this a new MB ? If not have you reset the bios?

[kels]

Thanks for the welcome!

Yeah I know the HDD is bad, I'm going to buy a nice SATA once I can get everything running.

I'm not sure exactly what just happened, me being an idiot plugged the power cable back into the harddrive (had to plug the cdr drive in, and in order to do that I had to unplug the harddrive cables). Anyways, when I went to plug the harddrives power back in I forgot the power supply was still plugged in and I saw the largest spark ever.

Scared my pants off. After that the motherboard starts playing the "oh no you just messed up badly" siren, which freaked me out even more. I was waiting for me to either die or the house to burn to the foundation.

Anyways, after that the harddrive booted up to the screen I saw in the past. Put the XP disc in, formatted it, installed windows, rebooted, and it's hanging on the Verifying DMI pool, which is, like you said, probably because of the ancient harddrive.

Lets see if this spark helped me in the long run.

[mudmanc4]

Well at least you have a good sense of humor about it 

I wouldn't say the HDD is bad, I have a couple of those on headless folding machines, they work well w/ Linux.

Where did the spark exactly come from, or were you too stunned to see it ? 

[kels]

Spark came from the power supply to the 4-pin connection to the harddrive, it was because I connected it while the computer was still on.

As for the computer now, it is giving me one of the longest boots I've ever experienced.

In the old computer it was in it took a max of 3-4 minutes to completely boot up XP.

This one took about 2 minutes to get past the Verifying DMI Pool Data, then another 5 to get past this weird loading screen (took about 2-3 seconds on the old computer.) now it's loading XP.

to answer "What cpu is in there? Is this a new MB ? If not have you reset the bios?"

It's an AMD Athlon 3500+ I think. The motherboard is the same motherboard the processor ran on in December. I upgraded my main PC in December, took the old parts and boxed them away. Lately I bought a new powersupply, so then I had an extra sitting 'round. All I needed was a harddrive and I had a fully working computer for free basically.

It's not the best, but it's still a darn good XP computer. All I need to do is upgrade ram and it's very excellent.

Video card is a Radeon 9600XT.

[Blako]

Sounds like you have made good progress.  If you have any other questions we're available.  Do you see your motherboard in these pictures?

I found three 13.5GB hard drives and two 13.52GB drives made by compaq these two are the closest matching IDE's:

Part # 170284-001 - 13.5 GB, IDE HDD (WD135AA)

Part # 158735-001 - 13.5 GB, 3.5' IDE HDD (Maxtor 91366U4)

And this unspecified drive (which is the only one with specs) which is most likely not yours:

Compaq Prosignia Desktop 330

Capacity: 1,350 MB

Height: 1 in/25.4 mm

Width: 3.5 in/88.9 mm

Interface: Ultra ATA

Transfer Rate: Media  148.8 MB/s  &  Interface 16.6 MB/s

Seek Time: Single Track 0.90 ms,  Average  9.0 ms,  Full-Stroke  < 20.0 ms

Cylinders 11,530  &  Data Heads 8  &  Sectors per Track 269 to 320

Wow have times changed:

EIDE

Last modified: Monday, September 10, 2001 

Short for Enhanced IDE, a newer version of the IDE mass storage device interface standard developed by Western Digital Corporation. It supports data rates of between 4 and 16.6 MBps, about three to four times faster than the old IDE standard. In addition, it can support mass storage devices of up to 8.4 gigabytes, whereas the old standard was limited to 528 MB. Because of its lower cost, enhanced EIDE has replaced SCSI in many areas.

EIDE is sometimes referred to as Fast ATA or Fast IDE, which is essentially the same standard, developed and promoted by Seagate Technologies. It is also sometimes called ATA-2.

There are four EIDE modes defined. The most common is Mode 4, which supports transfer rates of 16.6 MBps. There is also a new mode, called ATA-3 or Ultra ATA, that supports transfer rates of 33 MBps.

My computer went from 8GB to 80GB to 500GB.  I remember (bearly  ) each GB of hard drive costing $100, then $1 per GB, now 4GB per $1.

[kels]

Sounds like you have made good progress.  If you have any other questions we're available.  Do you see your motherboard in these pictures?

I found three 13.5GB hard drives and two 13.52GB drives made by compaq these two are the closest matching IDE's:

Part # 170284-001 - 13.5 GB, IDE HDD (WD135AA)

Part # 158735-001 - 13.5 GB, 3.5' IDE HDD (Maxtor 91366U4)

The harddrives an IBM DTTA-351350

I can give you the exact motherboard part number also.

AV8 VIA K8T800

The new problem I'm having is it literally takes 15 minutes to start windows XP. I understand it's an old harddrive, the only boot time was 3 minutes on a computer with lesser specs.

On the Verifying DMI Pool Data it hangs for about 7 minutes, then there's a loading bar (which was also on the last computer) which too takes 7 minutes.

This computer technically has better specs, therefore is there any reason it takes so long to boot

[Blako]

Well Performance Specs Part number 5500813 says between 16.6 (PIO Mode 4) and 33.3 (Ultra DMA/33) MB/sec.  16 MB/s does not explain the computer hanging for 7 minutes.  Is the harddrive activity light on during boot up?  It looks like a quality motherboard: http://techreport.com/articles.x/7286/2

When I was building a computer and doing the first boot-ups the computer would hang at "network config" for 10 minutes waiting for a connection.  It was really frustrating because the LAN cable was not connected and the network driver were not yet installed.  After that I set a personal record boot up time of about 12 seconds from hitting power button to desktop.  After installing all the drivers & programs I needed it went to, O maybe 40-60 seconds    Do you have the option of booting in safe mode?

On another thought, this (http://pcpitstop.com/pcpitstop/default.asp) diagnostic is enough to point me in the right direction when troubleshooting.  I choose new member -> test anonymously

[mudmanc4]

ok look at it this way people, say for instance your CPU is running at 2.5 Ghz, that's 2.5 Billion operations per second, most HDD's spin at 7200 Rpm's , or 120 cycles, or 120 Hz, man, that puts the CPU @ 20 Million times faster than the hard drive,  so take an old HDD, and put it in a newer system, and your kinda fallin on your face from the get go.

[kels]

ok look at it this way people, say for instance your CPU is running at 2.5 GHz, that's 2.5 Billion operations per second, most HDD's spin at 7200 Rpm's , or 120 cycles, or 120 Hz, man, that puts the CPU @ 20 Million times faster than the hard drive,  so take an old HDD, and put it in a newer system, and your kinda fallin on your face from the get go.

Well the thing is I don't see why it'd take 15 minutes to boot up. I could understand 5 minutes, but any more than that just seems insane.

AS for Blako, I haven't installed drivers yet as I havent really thought it was worth it until I know everythings working.

The computer also isn't connected to the internet, because it has the same copy of XP as this computer has, I'm not sure if that's okay or not. It's an OEM and I didn't receive documentation really. So I'm relunctant to connect it to the internet and have something mess up.

Another thing thats raising my concerns after running the test you linked on my own computer is my new harddrive. I always feel for some reason that it's 'defective.' It's kind of loud, and the data transfer didn't seem fast.

After running the test my main harddrive with windows (a 160 gig SATA hitachi) had the following transfer rates for files based on drives. Uncached speed 38 MB/s  46 MB/s 25 MB/s

Where as my Samsung (the new one, 500 gb SATA) had these speeds. 11 MB/s  11 MB/s  12 MB/s

Any ideas?

[Blako]

In short, when the BIOS is "Verifying DMI pool data" it is verifying the table of data it sends to the operating system.  There is some form of confermation that is not getting through and it hangs waiting for a responce.  If it takes my computer 2 seconds and it takes him 7 minutes its not due to a hard drive that is one forth the speed of mine!  No, its not drivers its something very low level as the following quotes suggest.

Computer stops at verifying dmi pool data.

Cause:

This issue can be caused by any of the below reasons.

1    Corrupt boot files on the computer.

2    Settings for hard disk drive are not correct.

3    Floppy diskette or CD in computer causing issue.

4    Boot devices not set properly.

5    BIOS corrupt or misc. setting not set properly.

6    Connections loose or disconnected.

7    Bad Hard disk drive or other bad hardware.

Continue reading Here

The following post said:

Thanks for all the help guys! After leaving my pc unplugged for a few hours it was booting up ok!

Thanks again

DMI or DesktopManagement Interface is a layer of abstraction between system

components and the software that manages them. The System Management BIOS (SMBIOS) is an

extension of the Basic Input Output System (BIOS) that formulates and delivers this

information to the operating system. The pool data is the information. In short, when the

BIOS is "Verifying DMI pool data" it is verifying the table of data it sends to the

operating system (Windows, etc.). If it isn't sucessful, it should return an error.

Wait a reasonable period of time for it to finish. It may make take some time or it may be

stuck. Possible fixes:

1. If you changed the hardware just before this problem occurred

(e.g., installed a new hard disk drive), unchange it.

2. If you installed a new hard disk drive, set the motherboard CMOS Setup to Auto for the

drive type. You may have to disconnect the drive first.

3. Enable "Reset Configuration Data" (may be "Force Update ESCD" in some CMOS Setups) in

the motherboard CMOS Setup PNP/PCI configuration. (Rebooting will automatically disabled

it after it has done its thing.)

4. The CMOS may be corrupted. Clear it.

Kels Said:

Uncached speed 38 MB/s  46 MB/s 25 MB/s

vs.

Where as my Samsung (the new one, 500 GB SATA) had these speeds. 11 MB/s  11 MB/s  12 MB/s

Why do you have 3 transfer rates?  Is disk cache enabled?

[jypagan]

on the HD pic is showing 2 jumpers. That kinda looks like cable select? just try using one jumper and set it to master.

[Enzone26]

try to change your power supply to a higher watts may be 600watts, then scan your hardisk to see if there build a badsector.