"Solved" - How to clear CMOS on 8PE667 Ultra? System hanging at "Verifying DMI Pool Data"

[Padawannabe]

I just built a new system the other night, the first time I booted up, everything seemed fine. I shut the system down, put in the XP cd, hit the power button, the system began to boot off the cdrom. Windows began loading files, once I got to the license agreement screen everything went downhill. For some reason the F8 key wouldn't work, I paged down to the bottom of the agreement thinking that it was like NT, still the F8 key would not work, so I figured I would Esc out, switch keyboards, and try again. Well once I rebooted the system now hangs at "Verifying DMI Pool Data...". So now I'm searching AT & Google for any suggestions. I've found tons of things to try; however, one that I've never done before is clearing the CMOS. I know that some boards have jumpers, but I've read the manual, looked all over the internet, but I can't find any documentation on how to clear the CMOS on my motherboard (Gigabyte GA-8PE667 Ultra). Can someone please help?

Thanks,
P

 

[mechBgon]

One moment please... *scurries off to giga-byte.com*

(slow download on this one, go have a sandwich and a Pepsi)

 

[Padawannabe]

mechBgon,

Tell me about it, I downloaded the manual last night, hoping that there was a newer version. Maybe I overlooked it, but I don't think the manual mentions anything about CMOS jumpers or how to clear the CMOS.

Thanks for checking,
P

 

[mechBgon]

Heh, I admit defeat as far as the manual goes. They don't document any jumper for clearing the CMOS, and from looking at photos of the board at newegg, I don't see any jumper near the battery like you'd usually find. You're going to have to

• unplug the power cord from the wall
• punch the case's power button a few times to drain the PSU
• remove the motherboard's button battery
• threaten it a bit
• put the battery back in after a while, maybe 30 seconds
• plug in the power cord and see how it goes

What kind of power supply do you have (brand and model) and what's the rest of your system like? Did you plug in the 4-in-a-square secondary power plug from the power supply into the motherboard?

 

[Padawannabe]

Antec 430W TruePower -1080AMG
2.53 GHz P4 (retail) stock Fan & Heatsink
512MB Corsair XMS PC2700
Maxtor 40GB DiamondMax Plus D740X - IDE1(Master)
Asylum GeForce4 Ti4200 128MB
Memorex DVD+RW/CD-RW - IDE2(Master)
Artec 16x DVDRom - IDE2(Slave)
Norcent 48x CD-RW - currently not installed but may be added later as slave on IDE2
Logitech MX500
Logitech Z640
onboard lan
onboard sound

Yes, the secondary power plug is connected to the motherboard. The first time I booted the system everything seemed fine, couldn't believe I got one beep. First time I've built a system in over a year and a half, couldn't believe things seemed to be going fine the first try. The problems started once I had to back out of XP installation. Lucky me had to run into such a broad problem. I been reading everything I can find about hanging at the "Verifying DMI...." Some place blame on HD, others on the Mobo, even the RAM. Doesn't look like a quick fix is in my future.

 

[mechBgon]

Ok, couple more things to kick around:

1) Look at page 35 and you see the ability to enable/disable the onboard LAN and the Boot ROM. For sure disable the Boot ROM if it's enabled, and consider disabling the onboard LAN if that doesn't help. Make sure that LAN is not one of the boot items in your boot list (see page 33). The onboard LAN may simply be pausing your rig for a while so it can contact the "boss" of the network and get an IP address... a discontented LAN adapter can stall you for a minute or two sometimes. You can also opt to try waiting it out (sandwich!).

2) Check the jumpering on your hard drive and set it as needed, I assume it's solo on its cable and therefore either Master or Slave should work. Maxtor documentation for D740X The drive should be at the far end of the cable so there isn't vacant cable beyond it causing signal bounce.

3) If no dice, try running the MaxBlast diskette and do a diagnostic to confirm your drive's ok

4) Check jumpering on the other drives maybe

Good luck!

BTW, nice choice of parts, always good to see someone avoid the cheapie RAM and power supplies Welcome to the forums, hope things work out for you...

 

[Padawannabe]

Thanks, plenty of things to try once I get home. Gotta love 3rd shift jobs, where else could you stay up to date with AT Forums. I've been a long time reader of these forums, it's a shame it took a problem before I decided to start posting.

As far as the MaxBlast diskette, I can tell you that isn't going to work, atleast for now. The verifying dmi pool data is hanging before the system enters the boot process. I can't even use a boot disk to fdisk /mbr. I still have to try disconnecting everything except video, CPU, RAM, and FD to see if that will allow me to boot from floppy.

I seriously hope I don't have faulty parts, most of them have been purchased over the last 5 months. The HD was purchased last year when Office Depot had the Hot Deal for $15. Everything other than the RAM and CPU were purchased before Christmas. Oh well, still things to try, I'm not counting myself out yet.

Thanks again,
P

 

[mechBgon]

Another thing that could boggle a motherboard is low-rpm fans. If you plugged the fan-monitoring black&blue cable from the PSU into the mobo, try unplugging that. Its RPM signal will be slow enough to cause problems with some boards, dunno about yours.

Also, make sure you didn't overlook the power plug for either of the optical drives if it's plugged into the data cable, that would be likely to stall it at that point too. I've done that a couple times.

You might want to disable USB Keyboard and USB Mouse support if you can get away with that, and disable the onboard RAID perhaps. You can always re-enable them or clear CMOS if you paint yourself into a corner.

Anyway, my brain's fried, good night and good luck

 

[Padawannabe]

Ok, problem solved. I highly recommend searching through all forums new and archived for "verifying dmi pool data" if anyone runs into this problem in the future. I found many suggestions and recommendations in the archived threads.

Fix:
My last resort was going to be clearing CMOS; however, I never had to go that far. I decided to check out the hardware first so I removed all devices from the motherboard with the exception of the cpu, ram, video card, and floppy drive. By the way, I was able to update the BIOS to version F3 from floppy by using the Q-Flash Utility. After rebooting with minimal devices connected to the motherboard, the "verifying dmi pool data" message popped up but only briefly before the Invalid system disk message appeared. This verified that motherboard, cpu, ram, and video were functioning so I installed the Maxtor HD. Again after rebooting I received the Invalid system disk message so I used the Max Blast utility to format the HD then I went into BIOS to boot from cdrom first. I rebooted before I installed the cdrom just to run a double check on the hardware connected to the motherboard. Once they all checked out I installed the cdrom, booted to the XP Pro cd and installed the OS. Basically, after XP was on the system, I installed each additional device one at a time, reconfiguring master/slave connections as needed.

As far as BIOS settings go, I never had to disable usb keyboard or usb mouse support nor did I have to disable onboard LAN. I did disable RAID since I only have one HD at this time, and I took mechBgon's advice and unplugged the blue/black fan cable. I assume my problem may have been too many new devices competing for BIOS attention. It doesn't appear that I have faulty hardware (at least at the present time). System has been running for approx 72 hrs now w/o problem, I have shut down and rebooted everytime I've installed anything new in the system and everytime I've finished using the pc just to give the error every opportunity to reappear. **Note** every system should have the message "Verifying DMI Pool Data", but only briefly, in my case the system would hang on this message and would never enter the boot process.

Thanks mechBgon and AT for all your help!
P

 

[mechBgon]

Hehe... you are cleared for runway 253