What just happened?

[ddjkdg]

I was sitting there listening to MP3's when all of a sudden my rig just froze completely. No warning, no errors, no blue screen, the mouse just froze and sat there. Upon trying to reboot after the initial screen the motherboard POSTs and recognizes all IDE devices etc, it goes to a new screen with the box listing a bunch of stuff about my system and it says "Verifying DMI Pool Data..." then immediately the computer locks up and random blocks on the screen turn into a random color out of 16-color mode. I thought it may have been a heat issue so I took both hard drives out, cooled them with a fan until they were room temperature, and put them back in. Same thing happens.

I really have no clue as to why this is happening, if anyone has any ideas I'd love to hear them. Here are my specs:

WindowsXP
AMD Athlon 1.33GHz
Abit KG-7
1 x 256MB PC2100 Crucial
ATI Radeon 7500
1x Western Digital 30GB/7200RPM
1x Seagate Barracuda IV 60GB/7200RPM

and that's about all I think is important. Nothing is overclocked.

edit: just realized I put in a bunch of "blahs" as placeholders because I couldn't remember the exact words that were showing on the screen, then I posted it anyways. fixed now.

 

[Mitzi]

I've had this error before and its aways something to do with bad hardware. Do you have a spare stick or RAM to try? Was your machine overclocked before it crashed? What were your system temps like?

If you take a look on Google you'll find hundreds of links about this problem but very few are helpful. This link is from Microsofts Knowledge base has helpfully tells you to contact your computer manufacturer :Q

 

[DaiShan]

I think mitzi nailed it, I got that exact same problem when my old western digital crapped out. was the WD your boot drive? do you have windows on the seagate? try booting off another drive?

 

[ddjkdg]

Nothing is overclocked. When the motherboard POSTs it verifies the RAM so I don't think that's the problem... and I don't have any more to test out

Actually must first suspicion was that the WD (my boot drive) had failed. However I popped in WD's boot disk with their diagnostic tools and after running both the express and full tests it could find no errors on the drive. Also I booted from the XP CD and went to "repair installation" and all it did was bring me up to a quasi-DOS prompt, but I could browse around C drive fine.

 

[ddjkdg]

One other thing, I don't think that the "Verifying DMI Pool Data" message is an error or anything, because since I built the computer (over 4 months ago) it would show that message every time on boot up. Then it would go to the XP splash screen. Now, though, it doesn't make it to the splash screen - instead the screen turns screwy like I described.

 

[DaiShan]

I understand what you are saying, but have you tried to put windows on that seagate? or actually tried to write to the c:\ maybe run scandisk? listen for clicking when you boot up also, that indicates a dead hdd.