Hang on boot: HDD failure???

[vicwang]

I was transferring about 20 gigs worth of large files from one of my PC's to the other over the network, when the PC being transferred to suddenly rebooted itself in mid-copy. Now, when I boot up, it hangs on the "Verifying DMI Pool Data...." part of the boot sequence. I wonder if the boot sector got corrupted or something. It was working fine and perfectly stable until this happened. I can't even hit F8 to get into Safe Mode.

Any suggestions?

 

[sswingle]

This happened to me earlier today actually. I figure mine was a dead drive.

 

[lobadobadingdong]

use the recovery console off the cd, and run chkdsk /r to see if it's a corrupted file. and fixmbr to see if it's a damaged master boot record.

 

[sswingle]

If his is anything like mine, that won't work. The computer will not post with the hard drive plugged in. Can't boot off of a cd or floppy or anything because it doesn't get that far.

 

[fredtam]

Assuming its xp. Boot from the cd and do a repair installation.

 

[sswingle]

You people just aren't listening.

The computer will not even get as far as trying to boot from the cd if the hard drive is plugged in. The computer WILL NOT POST.

 

[Kipper]

Check RAM - make sure it's seated correctly, check video, make sure it is seated and fine, check the CPU - any of these could make it fail to POST.

 

[fredtam]

Originally posted by: pwddesign
You people just aren't listening.

The computer will not even get as far as trying to boot from the cd if the hard drive is plugged in. The computer WILL NOT POST.

Sorry, I didn't realize you had officially hijacked the thread.
I have had the same thing happen several times.
Sometimes clearing the cmos helps.
If the cdrom is selected as the first boot device it will get past the "verifying dma pool" if its not then it will stop there. Also change the bios to not halt on errors.

 

[sswingle]

I didn't hijack the thread, its just that I had the exact same problem.

 

[fredtam]

How do you know you have the "exact" same problem.
The problem can exist due to a bad OC.
Bad HDD.
Bad Floppy
Corrupted boot files.
Corrupt bios.
Loose cables.

Clear CMOS - check connections- if it still doesn't boot - boot from cd- repair (recovery console or repair installation
No success= new HDD

 

[vicwang]

Thanks for the suggestions. I over-wrote the MBR and boot.ini and got past the previous point where it was hanging, but then kept getting message about hal.dll missing or corrupted. Apparently that is a common error due to a bug in Windows. However, the suggested solution I was able to find online had to do with the boot.ini, which I had already overwritten.

Anyway, I ended up just doing a reinstall. So far it is working OK.

 

[EmperorIQ]

ha. the story behind this thread is funny. . . :beer: