Unable to Kick it!

[msa969]

Good afternoon from the UK or morning in the States.
It’s been awhile since my last visit.
I am experiencing a problem with booting my computer. (I am unable to kick it!)
I get the following message at the bottom of my screen

Verifying DM Pool Data …
Boot from ATAPI-CD-Rom failure …

A disk read error occurred
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart computer

When I press the above key sequence a splash screen appears and the same message appears again. Please help me to boot computer.

[david eaton]

It looks as if the computer is trying to boot from the CD drive. Go into the BIOS. First, see if the hard drive is detected and recognised by the BIOS. Next check what boot options are selected. Put the hard drive as first choice, and see if it then boots.

[msa969]

Went into BIOS
changed the boot sequence to
First boot device [HDD-0]
Second boot device [Floppy]
etc...

and saved it.

Now when boot takes place it gives the following message at the bottom:

Verifying DMI Pool Data ……..

A disk read error occurred
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart

[Sylvander]

See this http://www.qdi.nl/support/dmipool.htm

[Paul Komski]

We know you have set the bios to boot the HDD first but are you sure the HDD itself is detected OK in the bios setup.

If so then grab the HDD manufacturer's diagnostic utility and check the HDD for errors from the floppy it will create.

If no errors then which OS? - if its WinXP you could try booting to the installation CD, choosing recovery console and then running fixmbr from the command prompt.

[msa969]

I have not made any changes with hardware; the incident happened whilst downloading software.

However I checked all connections and cables - no luck.
Tried BIOS "PNP/PCI configuration" to "Enabled" save and exit – no luck.

Then tried Paul suggestion:

check HDD through
BIOS/Standard CMOS feature/ IDE primary master/etc ...
here it detects
80 GB hard disk
head 16
etc ...

saved F10

then using WinXP CD-ROM
F2 for auto-recovery

This computer appears to have a non-standard or invalid master boot record
...

Are you sure you want to write a new MBR? Y

writing new master boot record on physical drive
\device\harddisk0\partition0

The new master boot record has been successfully written

However when I reboot I get the same error

What can I do?

[Quantax]

Then perhaps a repair/install might be in order failing all else.

[Paul Komski]

Assuming you have no data you want to backup or retrieve first - suggest you clear the mbr and partition boot sectors using wipeout from http://www.lurkhere.com/~nicefiles/index.html

Add it to a dos/win9x boot floppy and run wipeout c: /p /q from the command prompt.

Then boot to the installation CD (with bios set to boot to CD first) and windows should autorun its installation sequence since it will believe the disk to be a brand new unpartitioned drive.

[Sylvander]

If you have an "AVG Rescue Boot Disk" made [if you don't then make one when all's well], then you could use it to rebuild your Master Partition Sector [just to make certain it isn't corrupted].

[msa969]

Sylvander
I don't have a AVG master boot disk
Paul Komski
Wouldn't this suggestion using 'wipeout' do as per se moniker?
What are the alterntives?

[Paul Komski]

Not sure what you mean by "as per moniker".

When one uses the /np switch with wipeout all that basically happens is that the mbr (the first 512 bytes) of the hdd are zeroed. It is thus very quick and makes the disk appear as if it is brand new to software accessing it. You can of course write zeros to the whole hard drive but this takes time and the main reason for doing this is to make any data on it virtually unrecoverable.

Alternatives:- Well you can individually delete any partitions on the drive using fdisk or 3rd party partition managers. What this actually means is that the partition tables (the 64 bytes from 447 through 510 of the 512 bytes that make up the mbr) are zeroed but all other code on the mbr is essentially unchanged. Totally zeroing the mbr (or the whole hdd) ensures that all the boot code on it must be written once again from scratch once the drive is partitioned.

[msa969]

I have just zerod the MBR and its partition
I want to be certain of what I am doing.

Shall I use the Win9? bootdisk to do the following?
I know I can ran Fdisk and another command to create a new MBR but not sure exactly?

Please help

[msa969]

I have just tried the following:

Booted the computer with WinXP CD-ROm
chose the option: repair.

This time I get the message

The recovery console provides system repair and recovery functionality

The path or file specified is not valid.
c:\>


What shall I do?

[Paul Komski]

After "zeroing" and booting to the XP CD just go ahead with a new installation. If nothing has been installed there is nothing for the recovery console to find or repair.

[msa969]

Would I need to backup files and folders?
Because haven't I only Zeroed the boot-disk?
This means all my files and folders are in tact?
So thus a new Win XP installation would only install the boot sequence and WIn XP OS etc on the zeroed part?

Thank you in advance

[Paul Komski]

Zeroing the mbr makes the drive appear to be brand new because there are no entries in the partition tables and so no software (apart from recovery software) will be able to find any of the underlying data, which is still there until it gets overwritten. If you prefer, the partition tables are card indexes (that tell the operating systems where the partition or partitions are and what size and what format they are) and which have been torn-up/erased. Without that "card index" information the various versions of Windows will think that the drive is completely empty and behave as such.

[Fruss Tray Ted]

Seems my first try would have been a barebones boot. Depending on findings thereof, I may have installed an OS on a smaller HDD and booted to it to see if the original drive was still functional. Maybe Knoppix if the cdrom checks out ok.

At first glance my thought (they don't even travel in pairs in my brain.. :rolleyes: ) was to pull the cd-rom first, but rereading your thread (singular thinking again), it seems to be the harddrive (one more tyme). It's amazing how invaluably handy an old 2~6gig drive can be for viewing problem drives when added to a system and booted to, used to operate cd-burners to recover/back up files from those drives. Then, if the drive has errors,try the manufacturer's repair software and if it survives and is still useable, reload it.

Or am I just being too practical? :confused: