Probs w/ Verifying DMI Pool Data during bootup

[kaiotes]

I was do'n defrag on my hd, when all of a sudden it froze, leaving me w/ no choice but to hit reset, when i rebooted the computer, i'm at the screen where XP tries to verify DMI pool data and hangs there, i've left it on for good 15 min w/ nothing happening.
It detects the hard drive although not the entire 160gig (just recently did SP1)
how do i fix this prob?

 

[johnjkr1]

When you turn on the pc now do you ever actually see the XP boot screen come up? Or do you just see a message saying "verify DMI pool data"?

From microsoft:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;q28755


Basically, what it's telling you is that it can't boot. Maybe your boot sector is corrupt, maybe your hard drive is bad, it could be alot of things. First thing to check, is the hard drive seen by the bios, you said it was. If it is listed incorrectly, maybe your hard drive is bad. Run the diagnostic from the drive maker to test it out. If it passes, you likely don't have a bad hard drive, move on to step 2. Next, check your bios, is the hard drive listed in the boot sequence. If so, try resetting defaults. Step 3, boot to the xp cd and see if you actually have a partition anymore, if so, try to fix the master boot record or run a chkdsk. There are plenty more steps after that , but it's getting late.

 

[kaiotes]

never was able to get to win xp screen. i'm thinking boot sector is corrupt, the hard is brand new just installed a wk ago.
only see the dmi pool data message.
mSFT's site of that error is kinda useless, just says go contact ur manufacturer...
the issue w/ different hard disk size shown during post is due to windows service pack 1, probably got lost when i did restart during the defrag that got hung..

what do you mean by try setting to defaults? i dun even get a chance to let the computer boot cuz it just hangs if i have that hd in. will see what happens later tonight

 

[johnjkr1]

"what do you mean by try setting to defaults? i dun even get a chance to let the computer boot cuz it just hangs if i have that hd in."

The DMI pool message comes up because the computer can not find anything to boot off of, so it tries to boot off the network. Then it "hangs" because there is nothing for it to load. It could be that the hard drive isnt listed in the boot sequence, hence me mentioning resetting defaults in the bios. I'd agree that you probably have a corrupt boot sector, so a fixmbr should solve your issue, maybe a chkdsk /r.

 

[kaiotes]

the only cd that can be recognized is a plain boot cd, windows setup cd cna't be recognzied, when booting up w/ boot up cd, it leads me to dos, except that hd can not be found, fdisk shows a hd of the size of 60g, except mine is 160g, the hd posts during boot.

 

[kaiotes]

can you tell me where i'd go to do fdisk or fix mbr cuz fdisk is not recognizing it (w/ plain boot cd) and i can't boot off of xp installtion cd, i tried this cd on a working system w/o problems

 

[johnjkr1]

A plain boot cd will not help you if your drive is NTFS, which I assume it is. Also, FDISK has trouble seeing large drives like yours. But, you can use a plain bood cd to boot to DOS and run the full hard drive diagnostic (just put the files on the cd instead of on the floppy). This will verify whether or not your hard drive is good or bad. Next, to use xp repair utilities, you need to boot from the XP disk and choose "R" for the recovery console. Here you will have all kinds of fun options, you could type "chkdsk /r" to run checkdisk, you could type "fixmbr" to try to fix the master boot record. Lots of fun commands to run. I believe you said that "windows setup cd cna't be recognzied", could you explain that a bit more?