Troubleshooting a bootup error

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Sneezer

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I used to build systems quite frequently, but that was in '00-03, and in the 7-8 years since then I've kind of lost touch with the hardware side of things. But when my stepdad called last year and asked for my help, I didn't want to let him down and I didn't want him spending unnecessary money on a pre-built box (for what he wanted/needed, there was no economical option).

Much had changed over 7-8 years, and I didn't get much of a chance to research and catch-up, so I closed my eyes, hoped for the best, and this is what I came up with:

GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD3R LGA 1366 Intel X58 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX
Intel Core i7-920 Bloomfield 2.66GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core
COOLER MASTER Hyper 212 Plus RR-B10-212P-G1 "Heatpipe Direct Contact" Long Life Sleeve 120mm CPU Cooler
(2x - 12GB total) G.SKILL 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Triple Channel Kit Desktop Memory
EVGA 512-P3-N871-AR GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB 256-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support
(2x) SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s
ASUS DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS Black SATA 24X DVD Burner
COOLER MASTER HAF 922 RC-922M-KKN1-GP Black Steel + Plastic and Mesh Bezel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-bit 1-Pack for System Builders - OEM
CORSAIR Enthusiast Series CMPSU-650TX 650W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Compatible

It was a real beaut... a real beast, too, weighing in at 37lbs!

The bummer is, though, that he didn't get to use it. A year has passed now (built 7/2/10) and he dropped all this cash (I refused to take anything for doing it, but still feel bad) but it has gone to waste up to now.

When I put it together, everything was great. I had everything set up and loaded and copied his files over from his old PC (which had actually crashed, so I had to extract the data from a sketchy HDD). It was running so well, in fact, that a performance test ranked him in the top 3% of the world (all those components were practically just off the trucks at that time). I got it to him and he let it sit around for a couple months for some reason or another (he was in the middle of some projects (a self-employed architect) and didn't want to stop to transfer everything to the new PC), then when he got around to setting it up he got a boot-up error, where it was hanging at 'Verifying DMI pool data'.

So it sat around a few more months before he got it back to me to look at, and I ended up letting it sit in the corner of a room for a couple months myself, forgetting about it, until my mom asked about it this weekend. Now I need to knock it out and get it right and back to him, because his current PC is on it's last legs and he's talking about buying another one, and I'm gonna feel rotten if he does after spending money on this one (he's an architect, but in a blue collar-farming community of 10k people on the OH/WV border where there's no work for him... so he doesn't have the money to spend). I want to do him right and get this fixed, stat!

So I'm trying to troubleshoot it and when it hangs at 'Verifying DMI Pool Data....", it returns the error "Disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter". When I press Enter, it does nothing.

I went into BIOS to check the boot order and it was showing both HDDs, but for some reason the CD drive was listed 2nd, between them, so I moved it up to the primary spot (and set 3rd boot device to USB HD), thinking I could boot to the Windows 7 disc. When I restarted it wouldn't boot to disc, and still came up with the same error. I rebooted again and went back to BIOS, but now neither of the drives are showing up.

And the BIOS is so much different than what I remembered, I'm a little overwhelmed. There are so many options and settings that I don't know where to start.

If anyone is familiar with this hardware and this error, I would most certainly appreciate some assistance in walking through the steps I should take to rectify this problem. I didn't mean to ramble on, I was just trying to paint an accurate picture of the situation. If there are pertinent details that I omitted, please feel free to request them from me.

Thank you, kindly
 
The most common causes of this issue are the connections to the power supply being loose or internal connections being loose in my experience. Beyond that, there are a number of things that can cause the issue. Since you said you had it working perfectly at one point, the boot drive may be faulty. Another cause could be a corrupt BIOS. Has anything about the computer been changed since he had it and gave it back to you?

Regards,

Draco
 
try to flash your bios.

try unplugging all the drives except for one and moving forward from there.

if he hasn't used it at all, pull the drive that you transferred files from and do a clean install on a different one, or you can't even get to that point?
 
If you're getting a diskboot error, first make sure your boot order is set to the primary HDD first.

If it still isn't working, try getting the boot off of disc problem working, and boot off of the Win7 DVD (it's a DVD drive you have installed, right?)

Next, click "repair my computer" and then open the command prompt and type the following (without quotes): "chkdsk c: /f /r"

Let that run; it may take a while for it to complete depending on the size of the drive.
 
Thanks for the responses, folks. I'm gonna look into those options now. While I do, let me state that I have checked the physical connections of all cables. I don't think anything about the system - hardware, software or configuration - has changed since I initially had it up and running.

I'm back in the BIOS now and, I don't know what changed since yesterday, but the drives are at least showing back up in Standard CMOS Features. But this is how it's showing up (as I said, this was my first experience with SATA, and part of the confusion came from connecting the SATA drives to the motherboard):

IDE Channel 0 Master - Samsung HD103SJ
IDE Channel 0 Slave - ASUS DRW-24B1ST
IDE Channel 1 Master - Samsung HD103SJ

Should the second drive be slave to the same channel as the primary drive? I thought that's how I plugged them in, so maybe the controller is assigning them like this. Could that be a problem?

Again, I thank you for the help. I really appreciate it.

I also got it to *say* it was booting from DVD... that is, I went into the boot menu and selected to boot from disc, then it prompted me to 'press any key' to boot from CD/DVD, except that it would respond to my keystrokes. Then it brought up the 'Windows did not shut down properly' error (which I've gotten several times) and I had a couple boot options to choose from, except that 'Start Windows Normally' was highlighted and I couldn't get it to respond to keystrokes still (which is what I've experienced every time I was at this screen). It eventually brought up the Windows splash screen and hung there for 4 or 5 minutes, then BSOD'd and rebooted.

Now I select the disc drive from the boot menu and it hangs at Verifying DMI Pool Data and returns the disk boot failure error. So I'm right back to where I was last night. Now, I bet, if I go into the BIOS it won't see either of the drives...
 
Try clearing the CMOS. Unplug power from computer, press power button a few times to drain excess power, and then remove the silver coin battery from the motherboard for about 30 seconds. Replace it and try booting back up.

You could also try switching around the order of the SATA cables on the motherboard while you're down there to see if that makes a difference. I would also try unplugging everything except for the disc drive and main HDD, to make sure its not trying to boot from the secondary HDD that has no OS on it.

Also check in your BIOS settings for an option to enable USB keyboard if you have a USB keyboard; otherwise, try using a PS/2 keyboard if you're using a USB one right now.

If you can't boot off of the disc, but get back to the screen that has the option "start windows normally" you should be able to see a "repair my computer" option, or something similar...choose that option and let it run it's diagnostic. If it finishes and says it was unsuccessful, click the link for advanced options, and then click the command prompt option on the next screen and input the command I posted earlier.
 
There's a "Clr CMOS" button on the back of this motherboard on the I/O panel. When it's plugged in but powered down, that button stays lit up. I unplugged the machine and pressed it a few times but I'm wondering if it needs to be plugged in (and lit up) to be effective. Do you know anything about these buttons?

And thank you for your suggestions so far. I will try them, but was curious about that button.
 
This is getting frustrating. I've wasted several hours this week and this entire day (been up since 5, so going on 11 hours now) trying to resolve this issue and I've gotten nowhere.

- I tried unplugging the other drives, but received the same results (could boot into Windows but after 8-12 minutes it would blue screen, reboot, and then return the disk boot failure)
- Tried to flash the BIOS (downloaded FH1 from Gigabyte site; stock BIOS on this mobo is FA) but Q-Flash refused to see the thumb drive I loaded it on (despite it showing up in the BIOS)
- Was able to get it to boot from disc and ran chkdsk on both HDDs with no problems; ran startup recovery and found no problems; ran memory tests and found no problems; etc
- Rebooted and tried to reinstall Windows; it hung at 'expanding Windows' during the process and then errored out, stating that no such file existed (paraphrasing; it's been a long day and I got little sleep so I'm starting to go mind-numb and forgetting the details of each message). Tried to install on the 2nd drive (thinking I could go into BIOS and change the boot order), but it refused to even try on that disk (I forget the message for that one; didn't appear to be hardware related, though).
- Rebooted (keep in mind, every time I reboot it halts with the disk boot error and shows no drives in BIOS, so I have to shut down completely and wait 10-15 minutes before restarting again) and deleted the partitions from the primary drive to start from scratch. Tried to install Windows and this time the 'expanding Windows' step got to about 40% then returned that same message about the file not existing, but it didn't say what the file was. Tried disk #2 again but got the same message as the first time. Deleted that partition and tried again, but it didn't change.
- Rebooted (including the disk boot error, etc) and deleted the partitions again, and tried to install again. This time it got all the way through those steps and as it was finishing up, it returned an error that it couldn't update the registry and cancelled the whole installation...

And that's where I'm at now. I may have missed a few details, but that's the gist of it. I've been through all the suggestions here, and everything else I could Google (BIOS/CMOS settings I was uncertain of; error messages; possible troubleshooting measures; etc) and it's all been for naught.

I'm getting discouraged. To make matters worse, I just spoke with my mom and she asked about it, because they'll be here in 5-6 days, and now she's worried that he's going to have to buy a new computer...

:sad:
 
Have you tried different cables to the HDD?

Could you maybe try a different PSU to make sure that's not the culprit?

Also, do you have any add-on cards (PCI cards) installed in the system? Remove them, just to make sure they're not conflicting with something for some reason.
 
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