Startup problem

Hi,

I have been having this issue since many years, but it was not so frequent therefore I could live with it, but now, it's more and more frequent and I want to solve this, one way or another.

When I press the power button of my CPU, I hear a first "beep", which is normal and then a second "beep" but different sound, which means my PC is not going to startup.
In fact, I generally get this message:

Verifying DMI Pool Data

If I try CTR+ALT+DLT I then get a second attempt and on the screen I get:

Detecting IDE drives

At this point, I see that it detects as follows:

Primary drive: WD
Secondary: None
Primary: Plextor 16/10/40
Secondarylextor 716A

The I opened the BIOS and in the PC Health section, I can see that the CPUFan is "0", basically no sign of life.

But in reality it is not so, because I have opened the case and done the process several times.
When I switch on the power button, PowerSuply fan is working OK, CPUFan is also working OK, the only think is that the Maxtor seems not to start when I get this failure ( which is indicated in the IDE detection above mentioned).

So, I disconnected the Maxtor and tried again.
No way, same message, same problem.

I must tell that my Power Supply is new (I changed it in order to check if this solved the problem), IDE cable is also new.

At this point, I don't have a clou where to put my hands.

Hope you can help

Thank you
Alex

 

Hi, and welcome to Major Geeks! You didn't really give enough information in your original post. Please check Device Manager and see if there is anything with an exclamation point in a yellow triangle there.

 

Hi Novice,

No, no problems in Device Manager.
My system is very stable and clean, I keep it very efficient, this is to say that I look after it

I think it is a hardware problem and not a software one.
The reason why I'm sure is because 3 years ago I installed XP, therefore I formatted my drives and did it from scratch, but the issue was there also before, but not so frequent.
During these days, every time I power up the PC, I get the problem and I can keep on trying also for one hour before it boots up.

Hope this provides more background.

Thank you

Cheers
Alex

 

Hi,

Nobody can really help me

Alex

 

if you google DMI pool data, you can find lots of sites with suggestions on how to fix the problem. I suggest trying some of the simpler ones first, like cabling or cmos settings. All the sites suggest it is hardware or BIOS related. I don't have time to list them all, but they all suggest different things, so I would check them all out.

 

In that you said the problem has been ongoing for 3 years and that the power supply and IDE cable had been replaced, how are you determining the master/slave relationship on the primary IDE channel? Are you using cable select or master/slave jumper arrangement?

 

Hi Novice,

I use the jumpers, although my cable is inverted, I mean that the Secondary is plugged in the Primary HD and viceversa, but that has no influence, I guess.
The reason is purely because of the position of the HD.

Cheers
Alex

 

I just reread your post and noticed that you list both Windows XP and Windows 2000. Do you dual boot! If so, which hard drive has the OS on it? You said that the drive positions were inverted, does this mean the the smaller Maxtor which is showing as Primary slave is actually the master drive with the OS. I did a lot of reading as the_master_josh suggested, and these are questions that I'm curious about.

 

Novice,

My OSs are both on my WD drive, that is the Master.

My Maxtor is the Slave.

The cable has got a Master and Slave plug, I use them inverted, so the Master plug is plugged in the Maxtor, the Slave plug in the WD.
This cannot have any influence, the only difference is the color of the plugs, grey and black if I well remember.

Regards
Alex

 

One option is to just have it go into standby mode. It doesn't fix the problem. However, you don't have to spend an hour trying to get it to start up.

 

Sorry about the hard drive question, but was trying to rule out any cable select issue. Next question, do you have a bootable floppy laying around like a Win98 or WinME start up disk, and are you comfortable with going inside your computer and unplugging the drives ( hard drives and cdrom devices ), ribbon and power cables. If the answer is yes to all, ( please try the floppy in another computer to make sure that it is bootable ), go into your BIOS and make sure that the boot order is A:/floppy first. Then unplug your hard drives and cdroms, ribbon cables and power connectors. Insert the floppy and see if the computer boots fully. If it does, do this two or three times to make sure that it continues booting. If this was successful, shut the computer down, remove the floppy disk, reconnect your master hard drive connections and go through the boot process same as with the floppy. Do this for all your IDE devices, only connecting the next after the first has been tried two or three times and didn't affect the boot process. You should be able to find a defective IDE device this way if you have one.

 

Novice,

Your procedure sounds correct to me, but the problem is that this is not occurring regularly.
For instance, since I started this thread, it happened ony 2 times.
But there are days in which it happens every single time I boot up.

That's really the difficulty I have to trace the problem, otherwise it would have been easier

I will wait for another "bad" period and try your suggestion.

Thank you!

Alex