G41MT-S2 Pool Data

[meridius10]

Am having a very interesting start to moving from a history of having had laptops to desktops. 

Having used DBAN (Darik's Boot and Nuke) on Toshiba laptops, I gave this a go and zeroed my HDD yesterday. Unfortunately this process may have been prematurely switched off, so ran it again today.

Am getting the msg at boot up "Verifying DMI Pool Data" "Boot from CD/DVD: Disk Boot Failure, Insert System Disk and Enter".

Something's really messed up here either with the HDD or some BIOS setting. I am getting some error msg's on trying to install W7 (0x80070570, 0x00000050, 0xC000005, 0x00000019 - Bad Pool Header).

I wonder if there is a problem with the HDD now?

[Dark Mantis]

Hi

Try this first:

The next thing to try is to clear the CMOS.

Remove the power cable from the mains supply and then press the power switch on the case for a few seconds just to drain any residual energy in the PSU capacitors.

Once done remove the motherboard battery for at least one hour before replacing it.
 
Next plug back into the mains supply and boot.
 
You will now need to enter the BIOS by pressing DEL and load Opimised BIOS Defaults.

Make any other changes to the BIOS settings to suit your self like disabling the floppy drive, disabling the full screen logo and making the HDD the primary boot device and then press F10 to save and exit.

[meridius10]

Tried this and got the same error msg's.

When starting up got an option msg to select from 'last known good' or 'default'. Picked 'default'. Should I have picked 'last known good'?

[Dark Mantis]

Last Known Good would have been better but you can still do that.

Did you do this first: You will now need to enter the BIOS by pressing DEL and load Opimised BIOS Defaults. ?

[meridius10]

Unfortunately, exactly the same msg's are coming up despite selecting Last known Good and Optimised BIOS defaults.

By the way I used DBAN to try and zero the HDD, although this came up with a non fatal error msg, but I think this may not be the best product for SATA drives. Have you tried anything on Western Digital drives from boot that you know is safe and works?

Not sure I understand the booting process properly and if there is something that needs to be adjusted in the HDD. Could these problems also be related to an HDD error issue?

[Dark Mantis]

Are yopu still getting the same message:

Am getting the msg at boot up "Verifying DMI Pool Data" "Boot from CD/DVD: Disk Boot Failure, Insert System Disk and Enter".

If so I think you are going to have to try booting form your Windows disk and let that hopefully format and recover your drive. It you can't get that far we will have to look at it again.

[meridius10]

Took the following measures which appear to have controlled the problem:

Used Parted Magic's Erase Disk rather than DBAN. Used the Internal option which only gives a message upon completion but an estimated finish time. It was less problematic than DBAN for SATA disks. Changed the boot order to CD-ROM then HDD when installing.

Everything worked with no Windows errors. Time will tell on my next wipe and install if this is really ok, even though I am getting the same msg
"Verifying DMI Pool Data" only, however, this does not appear to be interrupting the boot process.

Just another question. When I had to change the BIOS time, I did this manually. Is there any other way of getting this to pick up the correct automatic time?

[Dark Mantis]

No you need to manually change the time in the BIOS as Windows reads it initially.

The "Verifying DMI Pool Data" message is correct and it should just flash onto the screen normally and then move on.

[meridius10]

Thanks for all your help. I finally have my pc working.

I think the main problem in this case was the first DBAN erase being interrupted, which may have caused some HDD errors. However, this is all resolved now. 

[Dark Mantis]

Yes I agree that it was the problem. These programs are fine until something goes wrong with them or they are not allowed to complete. Anyway as long as it's all ok now again.