I'd appreciate some help with a boot problem.

On the new machine I just built, when I turn it on, most of the time it won't finish booting. It'll get through POST and through the RAID check, but stops right before loading Windows. What's weird is that it didn't do this the first several times the computer was turned on (like 20 times), but now it does it almost every time. To be more exact, the machine will get to the "Verifying DMI pool data" and then all I'll see is a black screen. Nothing. The temporary fix is that by pressing the reset button, the machine appears to boot every time.

I checked the boot.ini file, because it sure seems to be a problem loading the OS. But it doesn't look odd. Besides, even though there was another OS installation on there before this one, when I installed the second OS, I made sure to wipe the partition.

I can post the contents of the boot.ini file if needed.

Could be your drives aren't spinning up fast enough. Go to your bios and turn off "Fast Boot". If this doesn't fix it, put it back.

Shot in the dark, but I've seen linux boxes do similar things if they didn't like the ACPI settings in the BIOS.

-Mike

I believe that it may be a problem with the Management Information Format Database (MIFD) stored by the earlier OS you had installed...The MFID is stored in the master boot record which is a separate partition from Windows. You may need to format the entire disc and do a fresh Windows install. Did you change any major components from that earlier OS install? Maybe the MBR has been corrupted or your HDD has suddenly gone south. Is it new or reused?

I had a similar issue installing WinXP on a laptop HDD connected to my main machine...once the drive was back in the laptop, Windows wouldn't load because it had all of my main machine's hardware settings and couldn't find those components in the laptop...

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll try those out.

The machine is entirely brand new. I had initially installed XP64, but was unsatisfied and installed XP instead. I don't think that should have screwed things up too badly, but maybe it did...

But first I'll try that fast boot option. That's a good troubleshooter.

By the way, does anyone else here have a Raptor drive? I want to know if it's supposed to be this noisy... When it's seeking for info it seems just a little too loud.

I had this happen once in such an amusing way - it prevented me reinstalling XP. Couldn't even use the XP cd to format and install. Had to use a linux CD to wipe all MBR info and then reinstall XP.

(I know, M$ is bad, but I have to have it on one machine for the games which I can't get on Linux yet)

Reset the bios. Really. Just try it.

EDIT: Nevermind...I thought it was sticking on Verifying DMI Pool Data...upon reread, it's failing right after that. Don't reset the bios.

If that doesn't work, boot off of a Windows XP cd, go into the recovery console and run fixboot and fixmbr.

Are there any disks running off add on adaptors? I had the same issu last week, turned out I needed to change the driver and bios for (the not boot drive) adaptor before it started cleanly.

The MIFD/DMI data is in flash and not on the HD. The MBR is the first 512byte sector on the HD and is full of bootloader code and the partition table. Needing to wipe the MBR occasionally occurs if you've damaged the MBR in some way or if you've loaded a replacement bootloader and now no longer wish to use it.

The reason why you're desktop attached laptop drive didn't work when back in the laptop is that Windows doesn't appreciate all of it's hardware changing at the same time. The HAL it uses is fixed as well so if it was using the ACPI one on a non ACPI machine then it'd hang.

Sorry to bring this up from the dead, but this is still a problem. I tried running fixboot and then fixmbr, and nothing at all has changed. When I ran fimbr, however, it told me something like "this machine has an uncommon or non-standard mbr" and warned me that it would make my disk unusable. I ran it anyway.

But it still happens. It still boots up past the "Verifying DMI pool data" and then I just see a black screen.

I've done everything I can see to do within the BIOS to try to force it to the correct drive, but I don't think that's the problem anyway. It's just very strange that if this happens, I just need to press the restart button and it boots up to the old "this computer didn't shut down normally, what would you like to do," then I can select to boot normally and it works fine...until the next time the computer is turned off normally and then turned on again.

Any more ideas? The BIOS is new, the settings in it look fine, I've run fixboot/mbr, and I can't think of what else could be going on...

Is this by any chance a recycled brand name machine (i.e. Dell, HP etc)?

Sometimes they have hidden utility partitions which you can boot from by pressing a key during the BIOS startup.

I'd find and boot off a utility disk (like Hiren's BootCD although it's not exactly legit) and run something like partition magic. Remove all partitions and start again.

Alternately low-level format (which is not like the old days and is perfectly OK) using the drive manufacturers utility. Obviously this wipes everything.

No, everything brand new ordered in parts.

Are you sure of the integrity of your memory? Boot from a CD that will let you run a memory test - most Linux CDs these days have that as an option when you boot off them.

memtest86 would be easier, but I'm not sure that's the problem. I'll give it a shot, though.

It just seems like something else. The fact that pressing the restart button works every single time seems strange to me. I can't figure out what that would be getting around...