is it my motherboard or me?

[stevemurdock]

I have an Abit AT8 32X RD580 939 motherboard with an amd A64 3800+ 2.4g processor, EVGA 7600GT 256 graphics card and cruicial ballistix 1gb (2 x 512mb) ddr sdram memmory. This is my first complete build and I am having some intermiten sucess but mostly failure. Originnally I got everything working and windows loaded, then the next day it wouldn't boot up and so I tried clearing the cmos and reseting to the optimized defaults. that didn't help so I tried reloading windows, it stoped and told me it had to stop to prevent damaging computer hardware. I decided maybe the problem was because of the hard disc beeing pluged into ide 2 instead of ide 1. So I changed it and went through the clear the cmos again, it worked for 30 minutes but the tool bar at the bottom took up 40% of the screen, then it stoped working again. So I went to the manual and went through it page by page I found that the hard disc jumpers were set for 16 heads and should have been set for 15 so I changed it unhooked all power suply including battery and atx and cleared the cmos again, still not booting. Right now it starts to boot up at the bottom of a black screen it says "verifing DMI pool data...................." then the monitor screen goes black and nothing else happens. I have a display on my motherboard for trouble shooting it says " boot atempt (INT19h)"

Thank you for your time!!

 

[lobbyone]

After all that plugging, unplugging, did you reinstall Windows again?

 

[stevemurdock]

I have tried to reload windows but it won't let me. once this morning it started to load everything then stoped and said if it went any farther it would damage my computer. It sugested clearing the cmos and load the optimed defaults, I tried that, since then I can't get windows to open or load, I can get into set up and I have tried and then untried and tried the next thing then untried it.

 

[Juno]

the hard drive may be a failure...such as bad sectors.

 

[stevemurdock]

previously I had a problem that it couldn't identify the hard drive, but when I moved the hard drive from from ide 2 too ide 1 it stoped giving me that message.
Could I have messed up the hard drive having the jumpers set for 16 heads instead of 15 heads? The hard drive is the only piece of equipment that wasn't new, it is less than a year old.

 

[stevemurdock]

What are bad sectors? and is there a way to test my hard drive?

 

[stevemurdock]

I found this online
Computer stops at verifying dmi pool data...

Cause:

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

Corrupt boot files on the computer.
Settings for hard disk drive are not correct.
Floppy diskette or CD in computer causing issue.
Boot devices not set properly.
BIOS corrupt or misc. setting not set properly.
Connections loose or disconnected.
Bad Hard disk drive or other bad hardware.


I have tried everything on the list including buying a new hard disc, since nothing worked I am left with " other bad hardware".


My question is which piece is most likely the culprite: the motherboard, the memmory or the video card? All three are new.