Comp hangs at Verifying DMI...

[russ]

Hi,

Bit of a weird problem with my comp...

First - Specs...

Soyo 6ba +IV
PIII 700
384mb RAM - (128 generic & 256 crucial)
Geforce 2 Ultra
IBM 20GB

Ok. so it's pretty old, but I thought I would put another HDD in there as I had a 40gb maxtor spare.

That went fine apart from it was only recognised as 18gb (both in the BIOS and windows). Tried various things, but ended up flashing the BIOS, this didn't help the 20gb problem.

But after this the comp hangs at Verifying DMI. I've removed the maxtor so the comp is back to the original config but it still does it.

Things I've tried:

Repairing the XP partition - asks for Admin password (there isn't one and it fails when I leave it blank.

Create new XP install on the maxtor - It says my XP CD is damaged even before starting the install. (haven't managed to get hold of another one yet, but the CD seems to work ok until this point, and I can browse it in windows)

Changing various BIOS settings, when this didn't work I have reload defaults and tweaked it back to how it was (i think...)

Fdisking the /mbr with a win98 boot disk.

I have managed to get back into windows by leaving the XP CD in the drive and when it says "press any key to boot from CD" I leave it and it boots to windows. However, when I get there my graphics card isn't recognised anymore, Nivdia drives says it doesn't support my graphics card and I can't access any display properties. Everything else seems to work though?

I'm stumped. Any words of wisdom from anyone?

Thanks

Russ

 

[luminous]

Take out one of the sticks of ram,just use one stick,if same trouble try the other or any other.I`ve had the same nightmare with an old p3 933 trying to fix up.Random Bsod on xp boot up,not installing or partitioning xp,cd errors etc and it was one dodgy stick of ram although it was telling me it was the hd.

 

[FunkyCowie]

I was having that trouble with a 30GB Western Digital drive I checked the jumper settings, cables, ram, everything... it it was confuzzling the heck out of me then I looked at jumper settings again, it was on master the other possible settings were Cable Select, Slave and Single... so I tried cable select and still had the trouble... It wasn`t in the right position on the cable for slave... so I tried single... after all there was only one drive on the cable and it worked... any help at all?

 

[russ]

Thanks for the replies.

I've tried the suggestions but neither have worked. I have managed to reinstall windows from within windows, which seems to have solved the graphics card problem (although nvidia drivers still don't install, even though XP see's it as a geforce 2 ultra again.)

The computer still hangs at verifying DMI.... unless I have it set to boot from CD-ROM and have the XP disc in there and then I don't 'push any to boot from CD'.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks