drive status?

[Quantax]

After the booting up got stuck at the "Verifying DMI pool data" statement, I corrected by inserting a Win98 Startup disk and simply used the A:> Sys C: command to correct. Then I used the WinXP CD to get to the Recovery console so as to use the "fixboot" command to re-create the multiboot screen during the POST.

Curiously enough, when checking the hard drive status in the CMOS setup, there were some unrecognizable letters and numbers meaning it wasn't being detected as a "normal" drive(at least that's how I would interpret it). Also about a week ago I had some problems with this drive and likewise used the fixboot command to correct as noted above.

Might this indicate the drive is in a dying state?

[pave_spectre]

It certainly sounds abnormal.
The easy way to check would be to get the manufacturers diagnostics and run those.

[Paleo Pete]

Also sounds like something the Chernobyl (CIH) virus would do. April 26 is its primary activation date every year - 2 days ago - and it can overwrite both BIOS and MBR. Run a good antivirus scan if possible, if the drive is partitioned NTFS it might not be possible, you might have to fix the MBR and reinstall, and there's the chance the drive is hopelessly corrupted or dead too.

[Quantax]

Funny you should mention that(the virus that is)because when I subsequently ran a virus scan it picked up a virus right away. And as I recall it had an unusual sounding name, not something I've seen among the more common names out there.

And a check with the hard drive manufacturer's diagnostic(WD)showed the drive to be fine.