New SATA DVD-RW burner -- Hangs at Verifying DMI pool data

[Ketchup]

One more question to clarify, is this an SLI board?

 

[mfenn]

Maybe not, but I am trying to help. What is your conclusion to the cause of this issue?

I'm betting it's a bug in the SATA boot ROM or BIOS where it's not handing control back to the IDE controller after polling the SATA drives for bootable media and not finding any.

 

[mfenn]

One more question to clarify, is this an SLI board?

It's an AGP GA-K8N Pro, so no. Unless you're talking about the original 3dfx SLI! :awe:

 

[Muse]

OK, having a little trouble with the post before this one, sorry. With your burer connected in the drive, you can go set your hard drive with Windows to be the first in boot order (hard disk priority), save the settings, then what happens?

I suppose you mean like My Computer/Properties/Advanced/Startup and Recovery/Settings/Default Operating System. Yes, I've been doing that, but usually without the burner attached. Like you said, it's probably not safe to hot plug the drive and that's the only way I can have it attached to get past the verification of DMI pool data. I guess I could try it, but I'm not optimistic.

I'm betting it's a bug in the SATA boot ROM or BIOS where it's not handing control back to the IDE controller after polling the SATA drives for bootable media and not finding any.

That sounds pretty reasonable to me.

 

[mfenn]

I believe that what changed was the HD priority sequence. Not sure what that even means because Windows gives you a boot menu and that's determined by boot.ini in the C: root,

Partially. The drive/partition which is recognized as C: is not fixed. It is set based on the first active partition on the highest priority drive (i.e. the one the BIOS looks for a bootloader on). Since you seem to have a multitude of Windows installs on your box, switching the boot priority to a different drive could very well result in a completely different boot.ini file being read.

 

[Ketchup]

I suppose you mean like My Computer/Properties/Advanced/Startup and Recovery/Settings/Default Operating System. Yes, I've been doing that.That sounds pretty reasonable to me.

Nope talking about the BIOS.

Whenever installing a new drive, I have a habit of checking the boot order, both the general one and the one for hard drives. I find that often, it has changed on me (mostly when adding hard drives, but I have seen this on opticals as well).

 

[Ketchup]

It's an AGP GA-K8N Pro, so no. Unless you're talking about the original 3dfx SLI! :awe:

Just curious since the only page showing this board is for Estonia, not exactly out the back door.

 

[Muse]

Just curious since the only page showing this board is for Estonia, not exactly out the back door.

I have this bookmarked to check out the MB:

http://ee.gigabyte.com/products/page/mb/ga-k8n_pro/

Huh, I guess that maybe is Estonia! :\

 

[Ketchup]

I'm betting it's a bug in the SATA boot ROM or BIOS where it's not handing control back to the IDE controller after polling the SATA drives for bootable media and not finding any.

If this were the reason, why won't it boot with the hard drive set to be the first boot device?

For comparison sake, I use this old gem for my file server:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&docname=c00609384&product=1841795

It also has only 2 SATA ports. I am in reverse of Muse, using IDE for the DVD drive and SATA for the hard drives, but NEVER had an issue. But, like I said, as soon as I installed the drives, I had to set the boot sequence correctly in the BIOS.

Shoot Muse, you could just make this real easy. Do a boot with only the one OS hard drive plugged in and the burner. Might not even have to check a thing.

 

[mfenn]

If this were the reason, why won't it boot with the hard drive set to be the first boot device?

Would not be the first time that a BIOS has enumerated controllers and their drives in a certain order and only then looked back at the boot priority.

It also has only 2 SATA ports. I am in reverse of Muse, using IDE for the DVD drive and SATA for the hard drives, but NEVER had an issue. But, like I said, as soon as I installed the drives, I had to set the boot sequence correctly in the BIOS.

Right, but that's because you have a completely different motherboard that doesn't have a buggy BIOS (or at least doesn't have this particular bug).

 

[mfenn]

Shoot Muse, you could just make this real easy. Do a boot with only the one OS hard drive plugged in and the burner. Might not even have to check a thing.

Worth a shot. I'm always down for eliminating confounding variables.

 

[Ketchup]

Would not be the first time that a BIOS has enumerated controllers and their drives in a certain order and only then looked back at the boot priority.



Right, but that's because you have a completely different motherboard that doesn't have a buggy BIOS (or at least doesn't have this particular bug).

It is different but same generation (2 ports of first gen SATA). Just giving that as an example, not saying they are the same. BTW, is the BIOS on these boards known to be buggy?

 

[tcsenter]

It is different but same generation (2 ports of first gen SATA). Just giving that as an example, not saying they are the same. BTW, is the BIOS on these boards known to be buggy?

The earlier SI controller oproms were buggy. I've modded several different BIOS hoping to solve some compatibility issue. e.g. Actual change notes from a couple SI oprom updates:

- A system with 2 ODDs attached to a Sii3512 may not boot
- Blank CD-R in CD or DVD-ROM causes startup failure
- Systems that incorrectly relay shared interrupts prevent startup

There are more, its just that not every update included a change log/history.

 

[Ketchup]

The earlier SI controller oproms were buggy. I've modded several different BIOS hoping to solve some compatibility issue. e.g. Actual change notes from a couple SI oprom updates:

- A system with 2 ODDs attached to a Sii3512 may not boot
- Blank CD-R in CD or DVD-ROM causes startup failure
- Systems that incorrectly relay shared interrupts prevent startup

There are more, its just that not every update included a change log/history.

Gotcha, thanks. I was wondering what those updates did.

 

[Muse]

Shoot Muse, you could just make this real easy. Do a boot with only the one OS hard drive plugged in and the burner. Might not even have to check a thing.

What would that accomplish?

I don't have an OS on the SATA HD, only on a couple of the 3 IDE HDs. I could unplug all but one of the bootable IDE HDs and install the SATA burner. If it boots, what does that reveal? 😕

I could make the 500GB SATA HD bootable by creating another partition on it and installing WinXP. Maybe that would be a workaround... Is that the idea?

 

[Ketchup]

What would that accomplish?

I don't have an OS on the SATA HD, only on a couple of the 3 IDE HDs. I could unplug all but one of the bootable IDE HDs and install the SATA burner. If it boots, what does that reveal? 😕

I could make the 500GB SATA HD bootable by creating another partition on it and installing WinXP. Maybe that would be a workaround... Is that the idea?

That would accomplish not having to worry about hard disk boot order, since I don't know what you have on every drive. Don't you have your IDE burner by now anyway?

 

[Muse]

That would accomplish not having to worry about hard disk boot order, since I don't know what you have on every drive. Don't you have your IDE burner by now anyway?

I do have bbhaag's IDE burner (thanks!) and it works. So, there's my workaround. I sent one of the Lite-on SATA burners back to Amazon, will keep the other for my next system. I'm going to research motherboards, CPU's, video cards, whatever I need to assemble my next desktop (HTPC) system. I'll probably run WinXP on it, at least a couple of PCI cards, would like it to support two DVI (or HDMI) connected displays.

I guess I can try disconnecting all but IDE 1 Master HD, connect the SATA burner and see what happens... within a day, probably, will report back. :thumbsup:

 

[Ketchup]

I do have bbhaag's IDE burner (thanks!) and it works. So, there's my workaround. I sent one of the Lite-on SATA burners back to Amazon, will keep the other for my next system. I'm going to research motherboards, CPU's, video cards, whatever I need to assemble my next desktop (HTPC) system. I'll probably run WinXP on it, at least a couple of PCI cards, would like it to support two DVI (or HDMI) connected displays.

I guess I can try disconnecting all but IDE 1 Master HD, connect the SATA burner and see what happens... within a day, probably, will report back. :thumbsup:

OK, cool. I know we went down some rabbit trails, and what the others mentioned could very well be the case, but I hate giving up on stuff.

 

[Muse]

OK, cool. I know we went down some rabbit trails, and what the others mentioned could very well be the case, but I hate giving up on stuff.

Same here, I'm kind of a bull dog when it comes to computer issues. But there may not be a solution to this one. I'll try it now and report back, disconnect HD1. Only HD0 and HD1 are bootable.

 

[Muse]

I disconnected all bootable HDs but one, connected the SATA burner and it again hangs before finishing POST. It seems there's no workaround, not a big deal because I have a working IDE burner. I'll probably be quite happy when I get another mobo and can put that funky/buggy SI SATA controller behind me.

 

[Ketchup]

I disconnected all bootable HDs but one, connected the SATA burner and it again hangs before finishing POST. It seems there's no workaround, not a big deal because I have a working IDE burner. I'll probably be quite happy when I get another mobo and can put that funky/buggy SI SATA controller behind me.

Glad something works. I know that when SATA first came out there were some oddities in those. I guess SATA or those chipsets was an all-or-nothing deal. Oh well.

 

[Muse]

Glad something works. I know that when SATA first came out there were some oddities in those. I guess SATA or those chipsets was an all-or-nothing deal. Oh well.

I think it was an early implementation of SATA. Cutting edge has its issues, generally. I usually like to wait a few generations before I get on board. The iterative improvement process is greatly beneficial. 😎

I disconnected all bootable HDs but one, connected the SATA burner and it again hangs before finishing POST.

When I put things back together after the test (reconnecting power to the 2nd IDE HD and removing the SATA burner) I wasn't able to boot Windows from that 2nd IDE HD. Got a message that hal.dll was missing or corrupt and I had to replace it. 😱 This happened 2-3 weeks ago, and I remembered the fix, which I stumbled on pretty much by accident -- going into advanced options in Setup and changing the boot priority. When reconnecting the 2nd HD, the machine had moved it to the bottom of the priority sequence and somehow that caused the error. Moving it up to 2nd in the priority (after the primary master, it being the secondary master), Windows XP again booted OK off the 2nd HD. I did this twice today.