Strange occurence and comp wont boot

Precizion · 22 Jun 2010 at 14:30

Had a strange occurrence last night where i loaded winamp and suddenly ping.exe kept trying to access the net (constant zonealarm popups until i set it to remember the setting) and then after I had no sound coming from my computer. So rebooted and then found that the computer will now no longer get past "Verifying DMI Pool Data" in the boot up screen.

Tried a load of stuff to get it working again, from clearing the cmos (when i did this i thought i fixed it as it did something different, only to hang again at "verifying DMI Pool Data....Update Success"), to unplugging over drives and disabling everything but HDD in the bios boot options. Even tried using /fixmbr and /fixboot from the recovery console (all drives are showing up find from there btw), but all to no avail.

Any suggestion on what to do next? The only thing I can think of is a format, but hopefully someone can recommend another option first.

thingemajib · 22 Jun 2010 at 14:40

if ping.exe was running all by itself (ie, you weren't trying to test your connection or something), then its sounds like a nasty has downloaded itself onto your system and is trying to use it (trying to connect to a master?).

have you tried botting off the windows disk and running a startup repair?

Precizion · 22 Jun 2010 at 15:39

thingemajib said:
have you tried botting off the windows disk and running a startup repair?

As i said, i used the recovery console (by booting from xp disk) and tried /fixmbr and /fixboot (and chkdsk which came back ok). Is there something else that can be done from there?

Precizion · 22 Jun 2010 at 16:48

Seems likely it's not a disk problem now. Just hooked up the main hdd from another computer and it wont boot from that either. It either goes to a blank screen after getting past the place it was hung before, or says "A disk read error has occurred".

Sound like a problem with the motherboard?

Kyo · 23 Jun 2010 at 08:20

EDIT - sorry misread above

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Admiral Huddy · 23 Jun 2010 at 08:44

I would certianly eliminate other components before pointing to the Motherboard.

Try booting with one stick of RAM at a time in different banks and swap the RAM over. Use memtest86+ on each stick.

If a single stick fails in both slots - Faulty RAM, if a single stick works in one slot, but not another, then it could be a faulty mobo/memory controller.

Check your PSU is suppling the correct voltage - See here for my PSU guide