Help! Bad_Pool_Header BSOD Error

[rekless]

My rig continuously reboots. It comes to the screen that asks me to boot in Safe Mode, Safe Mode w/ Networking, etc. I've selected every option but it still comes back to that screen. My rig is around 14 months old and my specs are below.

I tried booting from the Windows XP CD too. I launched the Recovery Console but after it detected my hardware and I pressed "r" to recover, I get the Bad_Pool_Header stop error BSOD. I keep getting the same stop error every time I use the XP install CD to launch the Recovery Console. When I boot without the XP CD it continuoulsy reboots.

I've disconnected the DVD-ROM, DVD burner and removed the soundcard. I've swapped the RAM around, booted with only 1 stick on slot 0, booted with only 1 stick on slot 1, etc, etc. No dice.

I installed Abrosoft's FantaMorph v3.6 over a week ago and things ran fine until now. Leading up to this, I had a "keyboard not present or found" error during power up. I swapped the USB keyboard for an old keyboard and rebooted. It recognized the keyboard but now is in this reboot loop.

My rig specs:
AMD Athlon64 3200+ 90nm Winchester
MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum
Corsair XMS 3200XL Platinum 400 MHz 2x512
Sapphire Radeon X800XL
Gamesurround Fortissimo III 7.1 (now disconnected)
Sony DVD-ROM DDU1615 (now disconnected)
NEC DVD-R DL ND3250A (now disconnected)

Please help me!!
Thanks,
rekless

 

[Askalon]

I had this same thing happen to me. Mine wa son a MSI K8N Neo Platinum as well (but not a Neo4). It was bad memory and I ended up having a bad memory slot on the board. Try removing the memory closest to the processor first, that is where mine was at.

 

[Harvey]

It appears there are several possible causes and answers, depending on your hardware and some drivers. The links from searching Google for "Bad_Pool_Header" (in quotes) may give you some good insights.

 

[rekless]

Askalon, I did try that. I pulled the ram out of DIMM slot 1 and tried booting with a stick in slot 2. It wouldn't even get to the boot screen. Then I replaced that stick on slot 2 with the one that I pulled out of slot 1 but same thing. Same result. I followed the memory combination list in the motherboard documentation as well. Since I have double sided RAM the recommended set-up is:
1 stick - put in either slot 1 or slot 3
2 sticks - put in either slot 1 and 2 as a pair or slots 3 and 4 as a pair
I've swapped them all around.

Harvey, I did search Yahoo and Google and found folks that had the same error but none that also had the continuous reboot problem. Since I cannot get into Windows I can't try some of their suggestions like disabling the Indexing Service, etc.

NOTE: My orginal post SHOULD read slot 1 and slot 2 NOT slot 0 and slot 1.

 

[rekless]

Additional Info....Problem Still Exists

- Powersupply - Antec NeoPower 480
- Temps - System Temp 35C/95F and CPU Temp 38C/100F

Any thoughts??

 

[rekless]

Okay. I've tried a few more things...but still continuously rebooting.
- Changed the "Halt On" BIOS setting from All Errors to No Errors...basically telling it to not stop for any errors during boot. Didn't help.
- Set the Timing Mode BIOS setting to Auto from Manual...basically telling it to auto detect my DRAM timing. Didn't help.

Also, here is some additional information:
BIOS version: v1.1 011205
In the Standard CMOS section of the BIOS, my System and Total Memory is being displayed as 1048576K....I have a gig of RAM in the system. Shouldn't that be coming up around 1024K?

I also noticed that during the boot sequence, the PCI Device Listing screen pops up and shows:
PCI Device Listing IRQ
Memory Controller NA
SMBus Controller 3
USB 1.0/1.1 Cntrlr 5
USB 2.0 Controller 12
etc, etc
Shouldn't the Memory Controller have an IRQ assigned to it?

So, I still have the problem. Tried booting from XP CD again and got the same Bad_Pool_Header BSOD. When trying a normal reboot, it loops through the Safe Mode, Safe Mode w/ Networking, etc screen over and over.

I don't have a spare PCIe video card laying around to swap out the one that I have in the system and the motherboard doesn't have an onboard video option.

Here's a thought...could I pull the hard drive out...put it into another machine (I have an older Sony Vaio) and set it up as the Slave. If I can at least read the hard drive as the slave then I can rule that drive out as the culprit. Thoughts?

 

[rekless]

Well, I disconnected the SATA hard drive and replaced it with the an IDE drive from my Sony VAIO.

It recognizes the new IDE drive during boot then does the exact same thing as before....it goes to the advanced options screen asking to boot in Safe Mode, Safe Mode w/ Networking, etc. It just keeps looping back through the boot sequence.

From what I can tell, I cannot connect the SATA drive to my Sony (model PCV-RX670) since the motherboard does not support it. I might be wrong though. The motherboard is an Asus P4B266-LM. If I could install that drive as the Slave in the Sony, I could potentially replace some of the registry files, etc with good versions.

Man, I need some help.

rekless

 

[rekless]

It's either the video card or the motherboard....and I'm guessing that it's my motherboard that has failed.

This is a non-SLI board...should I go ahead and get the SLI version? Down the road as prices drop, I could find another Sapphire Radeon X800 XL PCIe and go SLI for reasonable price.

Is there a big price difference between the non-SLI and SLI boards?

Please share your thoughts....

Thanks!