motherboard & harddrive

[DaddyJim]

I am putting together a new computer for granddaughter for christmas and son
wants me to use harddrive out of his computer that needs power supply, but
drive is good. I'm using a motherboard that I have, but only get to
verifying dmi pool data when booting, stops there, won't go further. Drive
is out of HP Pent 4 2.53ghz. WD/80gb. I want to leave motherboard in older
computer and install power supply later. How do I get new computer ( new
case anyway) to boot. Have changed jumpers on drive, settings in bios, still
no boot. I have win xp cd that I have, but older computer was bought with xp
pre installed. He has lots of pictures he wants to keep from drive, and I
know I can put another drive in, trying to save extra expense as this "pink
case" was enough. Any help appreciated. Specs for motherboard I want to
install are below. Thanks.

Motherboard ID:
11/19/2001 VT8336-8233-6A6L-VM4AC-00
Motherboard chipset:
VIA VT8366A Appolo KT 266A
Using AMD Athlon XP 1800 ( older stuff I know, but still works good enough
for 7 yr old)

 

[philo]

I am putting together a new computer for granddaughter for christmas and son
wants me to use harddrive out of his computer that needs power supply, but
drive is good. I'm using a motherboard that I have, but only get to
verifying dmi pool data when booting, stops there, won't go further. Drive
is out of HP Pent 4 2.53ghz. WD/80gb. I want to leave motherboard in older
computer and install power supply later. How do I get new computer ( new
case anyway) to boot. Have changed jumpers on drive, settings in bios, still
no boot. I have win xp cd that I have, but older computer was bought with xp
pre installed. He has lots of pictures he wants to keep from drive, and I
know I can put another drive in, trying to save extra expense as this "pink
case" was enough. Any help appreciated. Specs for motherboard I want to
install are below. Thanks.

To get a drive with an OS already on it to work in another machine...
a repair installation is usually in order.

The other method would be to perform a parallel installtion
****be sure NOT to format the drive *** if you choose that option


also note: To access the files that are already there it's possible you may
have to take ownership
if they are located within one of the profiles.


You safest option would be to just put in a different drive as
you'd probably have to repeat the process when you put the drive back in
the original machine!

 

[CBFalconer]

I am putting together a new computer for granddaughter for
christmas and son wants me to use harddrive out of his computer
that needs power supply, but drive is good. I'm using a motherboard
that I have, but only get to verifying dmi pool data when booting,
stops there, won't go further. Drive is out of HP Pent 4 2.53ghz.

.... snip ...

Just get and install Ubuntu. Try ubuntu.com for a free CD.

 

[kony]

I am putting together a new computer for granddaughter for christmas and son
wants me to use harddrive out of his computer that needs power supply, but
drive is good.

Is it possible the drive was damaged by the failing PSU or
had it been tested working in another system already?

I'm using a motherboard that I have, but only get to
verifying dmi pool data when booting, stops there, won't go further.

As you suspect, the next step is to check the boot devices
in turn for one that's viable.

Drive
is out of HP Pent 4 2.53ghz. WD/80gb. I want to leave motherboard in older
computer and install power supply later. How do I get new computer ( new
case anyway) to boot. Have changed jumpers on drive,

Are you certain it is jumpered to "Single", not Master
(assuming there is only one drive on the cable- if there is
more than one, temporarily disconnect the other drive to see
if it makes a difference).

settings in bios, still
no boot. I have win xp cd that I have, but older computer was bought with xp
pre installed. He has lots of pictures he wants to keep from drive, and I
know I can put another drive in, trying to save extra expense as this "pink
case" was enough. Any help appreciated. Specs for motherboard I want to
install are below. Thanks.

As another poster has mentioned, windows XP may not run from
this drive because it was installed on the other system.
However, this does not account for the drive failing to
begin loading windows which it is not, so it is entirely a
bios or drive problem (or related, for example if it were a
bad data cable and you had a spare to swap in that would be
a good thing to try).

Motherboard ID:
11/19/2001 VT8336-8233-6A6L-VM4AC-00
Motherboard chipset:
VIA VT8366A Appolo KT 266A
Using AMD Athlon XP 1800 ( older stuff I know, but still works good enough
for 7 yr old)

You haven't mentioned the board brand, but you might go to
the manufacturer's website and get the latest bios if it
isn't running that already, then clear CMOS via the jumper
while AC power is disconnected from PSU.

If you have a floppy drive (or you're lucky and it will boot
from a USB device, but I doubt it as that is a bit before
most boards were expected to actually be able to do so) you
might boot to DOS to see if the drive is visible... if it's
formatted as NTFS, run FDISK to see if it sees the drive,
partition.

 

[GHalleck]

I am putting together a new computer for granddaughter for christmas and son
wants me to use harddrive out of his computer that needs power supply, but
drive is good. I'm using a motherboard that I have, but only get to
verifying dmi pool data when booting, stops there, won't go further. Drive
is out of HP Pent 4 2.53ghz. WD/80gb. I want to leave motherboard in older
computer and install power supply later. How do I get new computer ( new
case anyway) to boot. Have changed jumpers on drive, settings in bios, still
no boot. I have win xp cd that I have, but older computer was bought with xp
pre installed. He has lots of pictures he wants to keep from drive, and I
know I can put another drive in, trying to save extra expense as this "pink
case" was enough. Any help appreciated. Specs for motherboard I want to
install are below. Thanks.

Motherboard ID:
11/19/2001 VT8336-8233-6A6L-VM4AC-00
Motherboard chipset:
VIA VT8366A Appolo KT 266A
Using AMD Athlon XP 1800 ( older stuff I know, but still works good enough
for 7 yr old)

Based on what I had read, the first thing to do would be to salvage all
of the important pictures, files, documents, etc., from the hard drive.
Get an external USB drive enclosure for this purpose instead of making
it a slave in another computer system. Copy them to a safe place and
make additional backups as well.

The rationale is that Murphy's Law will happen. There already is an
issue, indicated by the "verifying DMI pool data" report. The solution
may not be an easy one but which could ultimately change the geometry
of the hard drive. And if this hard drive has an OS from another system,
it might not be compatible with the new, target system, the "repair" of
which can also be catastrophic. And then there is, of course, the option
of a new, clean install.

Sort out what needs to be logically and determine how to do it.

 

[kony]

On Sun, 04 Nov 2007 00:16:16 -0700, GHalleck

There already is an
issue, indicated by the "verifying DMI pool data" report.

Some boards/bios display that "verifying..." message when
working normally, every time they boot, but it is only
onscreen for a brief moment as it's the last thing seen
before the onscreen result of booting from (any viable) boot
drive.

 

[Mistoffolees]

On Sun, 04 Nov 2007 00:16:16 -0700, GHalleck




Some boards/bios display that "verifying..." message when
working normally, every time they boot, but it is only
onscreen for a brief moment as it's the last thing seen
before the onscreen result of booting from (any viable) boot
drive.

But most motherboards with functioning bioses do not hang after the
"verifying DMI pool data" message.

 

[kony]

But most motherboards with functioning bioses do not hang after the
"verifying DMI pool data" message.

Any motherboard that displays the "verifying..." message may
potentially hang when it can't find a boot device, it does
not mean the bios is malfunctioning necessarily it just
means the bios wasn't designed with an *out* of that loop
like resetting or displaying a message.

 

[DaddyJim]

Guess I've really screwed up now. Took first posts advice, tried repair, now
I get the Verifying DMI Pool Data with 2 Y's at bottom of screen with crazy
symbol beside each Y. Have no idea what this means, except messed up drive
even more I suppose. I have installed another drive, loaded win xp, and
everything working fine. Point is, I wanted to salvage data on other drive,
(which I know for a fact was good drive), but I took bad advise. Live and
learn I guess.

 

[kony]

Guess I've really screwed up now. Took first posts advice, tried repair, now
I get the Verifying DMI Pool Data with 2 Y's at bottom of screen with crazy
symbol beside each Y. Have no idea what this means, except messed up drive
even more I suppose. I have installed another drive, loaded win xp, and
everything working fine. Point is, I wanted to salvage data on other drive,
(which I know for a fact was good drive), but I took bad advise. Live and
learn I guess.

I know of no particular issues with your motherboard or
chipset, it should've been fairly straightforward to install
and boot XP. I also wonder if the drive label shows the
jumpering in a confusing way and the jumpers are still
wrong.

You wrote that you booted the XP CD, it saw the drive and
existing XP installation on it, and it seemed to do a repair
on that installation and complete successfully, but still it
does not boot? Had you yet rechecked the jumpering to be
"single" and disconnected the other drives? Regardless,
if the old XP installation won't boot on the new system then
the current goal is getting the motherboard bios to properly
detect the drive then to just boot to the new drive, new XP
installation and proceed to copy the data off the other
drive.

If the other/old drive is unresponsive in windows and/or not
properly detected in the bios then it is time to run the HDD
manufacturer's utilities. Having "repaired" XP would not
have done away with your data, it should still be on the
drive as before the repair... unless you really meant you
did a new clean install which included formatting the drive
(chosing specifically to do so) right before beginning that
install to that drive and partition.

 

[Ghostrider]

I know of no particular issues with your motherboard or
chipset, it should've been fairly straightforward to install
and boot XP. I also wonder if the drive label shows the
jumpering in a confusing way and the jumpers are still
wrong.

You wrote that you booted the XP CD, it saw the drive and
existing XP installation on it, and it seemed to do a repair
on that installation and complete successfully, but still it
does not boot? Had you yet rechecked the jumpering to be
"single" and disconnected the other drives? Regardless,
if the old XP installation won't boot on the new system then
the current goal is getting the motherboard bios to properly
detect the drive then to just boot to the new drive, new XP
installation and proceed to copy the data off the other
drive.

If the other/old drive is unresponsive in windows and/or not
properly detected in the bios then it is time to run the HDD
manufacturer's utilities. Having "repaired" XP would not
have done away with your data, it should still be on the
drive as before the repair... unless you really meant you
did a new clean install which included formatting the drive
(chosing specifically to do so) right before beginning that
install to that drive and partition.

These are some pretty broad assumptions that would have no consequence
had the error reported by the "verifying DMI pool data" message. But the
mis-detection or the wrong detection of the track arrangements of a hard
drive stems from the corruption of the bios tables. In the plug-and-play
bioses, the corruption is so much easier due to the Windows OS being able,
in particular, to write to and update the bios tables through the data
management interface (DMI). Whilst there are conventions established by
the DMTF, an improper write to the bios tables, including a 1-bit frame
shift, is enough to corrupt the tables. Think that the PnP Windows OSes
are that perfect when sending device data to the system bios?

The precaution written by GHalleck should have been taken into advisement.
If the bios table data for the hard drive is missing or incorrect, then
imagine what the Windows repair did to the drive's existing geometry.

 

[kony]

These are some pretty broad assumptions that would have no consequence
had the error reported by the "verifying DMI pool data" message. But the
mis-detection or the wrong detection of the track arrangements of a hard
drive stems from the corruption of the bios tables. In the plug-and-play
bioses, the corruption is so much easier due to the Windows OS being able,
in particular, to write to and update the bios tables through the data
management interface (DMI). Whilst there are conventions established by
the DMTF, an improper write to the bios tables, including a 1-bit frame
shift, is enough to corrupt the tables. Think that the PnP Windows OSes
are that perfect when sending device data to the system bios?

The precaution written by GHalleck should have been taken into advisement.
If the bios table data for the hard drive is missing or incorrect, then
imagine what the Windows repair did to the drive's existing geometry.

The entirety of what you have written is exceedingly
unlikely if not impossible. DMI does not generate a drive
table used to access the drive before
booting/causing-failure, DMI is a reporting function
separate from the main bios functionality.

The message comes up on any system whose bios is designed to
display it, then simply stays on screen when nothing boots
to cause the screen to display something else instead.

There is zero evidence there was even windows running when
the non-booting drive was installed, then subsequently a
different drive then works to install and boot windows.

There might be a bug in the motherboard bios having nothing
to do with DMI, that has misdetected or was not set to
auto-detection and has thus misunderstood the drive
parameters, but given that this variable then became static
and XP was writing it, that static variable should allow the
drive to then be equally accessed upon next reboot attempt
if it were the only problem.

 

[Ghostrider]

The entirety of what you have written is exceedingly
unlikely if not impossible. DMI does not generate a drive
table used to access the drive before
booting/causing-failure, DMI is a reporting function
separate from the main bios functionality.

The message comes up on any system whose bios is designed to
display it, then simply stays on screen when nothing boots
to cause the screen to display something else instead.

There is zero evidence there was even windows running when
the non-booting drive was installed, then subsequently a
different drive then works to install and boot windows.

There might be a bug in the motherboard bios having nothing
to do with DMI, that has misdetected or was not set to
auto-detection and has thus misunderstood the drive
parameters, but given that this variable then became static
and XP was writing it, that static variable should allow the
drive to then be equally accessed upon next reboot attempt
if it were the only problem.

The DMI is just an "interface". That is all it is. The issue is what has
happened with the data pool, or the built-in tables that comprise the bios
and its ability to function. I still have my original e-mails with the
original DMTF, when it was known as the "Desktop Management Task Force",
after a particular manufacturer's bios revisions were bringing down all
of our computers of a specific make in the mid-1990's. And the solution
was to shut down the write ability of Windows PnP and stick to the built-
in bios tables and parameters for hardware and avoiding any translational
changes through interpolation by the PnP OS.

Once the corruption has been introduced into the HD bios tables, then it
is not going to be corrected if the hard drive fails to boot, should the
boot sector remains unlocatable. Interesting conumdrum. Even Windows 98
systems were affected but Windows NT systems and their derivatives were
not. We replaced a lot of bioses and, unfortunately, threw away a lot of
good hard drives until someone realized that Windows NT was a non-PnP OS,
meaning that it did not write back to the DMI data pools.

Daddy Jim's motherboard and bios evidently came from a time period when
Windows was being debugged to near-perfection and the DMTF truly came
into being as a significant force for interoperability in computing. This
is why the outcome did not surprise me, especially when a stripped down
bios (? HP) might also have been involved. Been there...seen that.

 

[kony]

The DMI is just an "interface". That is all it is. The issue is what has
happened with the data pool, or the built-in tables that comprise the bios
and its ability to function. I still have my original e-mails with the
original DMTF, when it was known as the "Desktop Management Task Force",
after a particular manufacturer's bios revisions were bringing down all
of our computers of a specific make in the mid-1990's. And the solution
was to shut down the write ability of Windows PnP and stick to the built-
in bios tables and parameters for hardware and avoiding any translational
changes through interpolation by the PnP OS.

Once the corruption has been introduced into the HD bios tables, then it
is not going to be corrected if the hard drive fails to boot, should the
boot sector remains unlocatable. Interesting conumdrum. Even Windows 98
systems were affected but Windows NT systems and their derivatives were
not. We replaced a lot of bioses and, unfortunately, threw away a lot of
good hard drives until someone realized that Windows NT was a non-PnP OS,
meaning that it did not write back to the DMI data pools.

Daddy Jim's motherboard and bios evidently came from a time period when
Windows was being debugged to near-perfection and the DMTF truly came
into being as a significant force for interoperability in computing. This
is why the outcome did not surprise me, especially when a stripped down
bios (? HP) might also have been involved. Been there...seen that.

There is no evidence that DMI has done anything to any HDD
tables. There is however evidence that the 2nd drive
connected did work before windows booted fully again.

This just isn't going to be any kind of DMI issue, the DMI
message seen is just a generic message always displayed
momentarily before the boot device boots. What problems you
might have seen with some boards, and NT in the mid-'90s is
not applicable to this board and XP today.

The OP can try a few things to determine the problem still,
like booting the other drive, which was reported to work
then trying to access the old drive to read from it, or
moving this old drive to another system for subsequent read
or boot attempts.

Frankly I still suspect the drive is jumpered wrong.

 

[~misfit~]

Somewhere on the interweb "Ghostrider" typed:

These are some pretty broad assumptions that would have no consequence
had the error reported by the "verifying DMI pool data" message.

I've snipped the rest of this as it follows a false assumption; That the
"verifying DMI pool data" is an error message. It's not, it's just the last
thing shown on screen before the machine locks up.

Talk about broad assumptions.

 

[DaddyJim]

Thanks for all replys and info on this motherboard and hard drive issue I'm
having. Thought I would give an update on whats happened. The computer I'm
building for granddaughter, I put an entirely different drive in, installed
win xp, and everythings fine. The drive that I was having trouble with came
out of pent 4, HP pavillion which takes a small power supply that I don't
have. I took one of my bigger power supplys, hooked up and left outside case
( HP case that drive originally came from), put hard drive back in, and to
my surprise it picked back up on the repair operation with the HP recovery,
and is now working. Working that is with the original motherboard. My guess
is that with XP and HP recovery stuff being preinstalled at factory, this
drive just didn't want to work with another motherboard unless a format was
done. However I really have no idea, but it's working, just not in system I
wanted it for. Thanks again.