[mjbyyz]

Hi, again!
Have cloned a working Hard Drive (Norton Ghost) and now, whatever settings I change in BIOS, I can't get beyond the 'Verifying DMI Pool Data' message.
OS is WinXP Home, Pentium 3 m/c. 80GB drive, formatted etc in FAT-32 system.
I've reinstalled WinXP several times and formatted the disk several times also.
Have attempted most of the suggestions found when I looked up the title above on the Web. All to no avail.
Anyone got any positive suggestions - this has taken me THREE FULL DAYS so far!!!!
John (mjbyyz)
Mon May 16th 2006 - 00:41EDT

[Rollin' Rog]

We are likely to give you all the same suggestions unless you enumerate what you have tried.

Have you tried booting with the XP CD into the recovery console and running:

fixmbr

Have you tried removing all peripheral hardware -- including the drive itself, and reloading the setup defaults or physically resetting the CMOS configuration?

Have you confirmed that there are no problems with the ram?

[mjbyyz]

Have you tried booting with the XP CD into the recovery console and running: fixmbr

No, I have not tried 'fixmbr', but did do the 'fdisk /mbr'

Have you tried removing all peripheral hardware -- including the drive itself, and reloading the setup defaults or physically resetting the CMOS configuration?

Yes and No - have not reset the CMOS since I can't find the jumper(s), but have extensively done all the other things you mention.

Have you confirmed that there are no problems with the ram?

RAM - removing the suspect system (cloned drive - which incidentally was 'my' HD and working fine. I cloned it to a larger HD no problem at all - on another m/c) and replacing the original HD- it works just fine. Of course I have to switch jumpers and change the BIOS settings each time I do this. So, I think the RAM is working OK.

Sounds like I should locate the CMOS for sure and reset it???? I will try the 'fixmbr' though, first. I take it this is on the XP start-up disk I downloaded from MS?

Thanks for your help, so far! Rollin' Rog.
Mon May 15th 2006 - 10:15EDT

[Rollin' Rog]

Fixmbr is the Recovery Console equivalent (for XP) of fdisk /mbr -- and one of the common suggestions for this issue. Doesn't sound like it's going to work though.

There is also "fixboot" which is somewhat similar and should be tried.

You may need the motherboard manual to identify the CMOS jumpers, but typically they are near the battery itself. Removing that for a couple of minutes has the same effect.

When you "reinstalled" XP did you do it on the same motherboard or a different one? If the hardware is different on one board, it may not boot on the other if Windows identifies different hardware during the reinstall.

>> I'm going to move your topic to the Hardware forum where you are likely to get more experienced answers from the system builders.

[mjbyyz]

Hi, again, Rollin' Rog - (is your name Roger by any chance?)

I found and manipulated the CMOS reset jumpers, and tried the fixmbr in Recovery Mode. Neither worked.
I will try 'fixboot' too.
For some reason, I have TWO systems listed in Recovery, 1-'Windows' and 2-'Windows.098'. I can access 2 but not 1 - it asks for an administrator Password for item 1, and I haven't a clue what that is - I am the only person registered and didn't think I had/needed a password (if I recall on setup). However, it is my wife's m/c.
As to installing ON THIS m/c - yes, I have REinstalled several times, but I see what you are getting at here. Perhaps I didn't do a complete/proper reinstall on this m/c. I will try once more, keeping that in mind.
Where do I find the moved posts for this? Under 'Hardware' from now on?
Thanks for your speedy reply - I really appreciate it.
John
Mon May 15th 2006 - 12:21EDT

[mjbyyz]

Up-date:
I tried 'fixboot c: harddisk0' (with back slashes - I can't find them quickly on this UK keyboard!!!) - no go.
I have just removed the CMOS jumper and am about to do a complete reinstall of Windows XP Home.
Wish me luck!
John
Mon May 15th 2006 - 12:36EDT

[Rollin' Rog]

Yup, it's "Roger".

You are in hardware if you are reading this.


When no Administrator password has been created, you should only need to hit "enter" to proceed.

While you are in the recovery console also try running:

bootcfg /rebuild

This may fix the boot.ini file if there is something amiss there. You may be asked to choose your default OS.

But it sounds like this problem is at the hardware detection level in the BIOS. I don't think you even get into the boot selection until you have passed the "verifying DMI" phase.

[mjbyyz]

I did the CMOS reset thing again, went into Recovery and did the bootcfg /rebuild thing - something happened here and it seemed to be successful - and I reinstalled WinXP Home on this m/c once again.
STILL not getting past the 'Verifying DMI Data Pool' stage.
This is v confusing, and I have never come up agaist this before, having done several Norton Ghost Clones over the last few years.
I am a v patient man, but this is getting ridiculous!!!! 3 and 1/2 days fooling around is worth what, $350 minimum by anyone's standards!!!
Any more suggestions before I have to pay for another window!!!!?
John
Mon May 15th 2006 - 13:06EDT

[mjbyyz]

One further thing in my quest to get this *$"£"*%£ thing sorted out -
WHY have I got a reference to Windows 98 'Windows.098' as well as the current Windows XP Home installation? How can I eliminate 'Windows98' which I haven't used for years? In Recovery, I might have a fighting chance at figuring out which is which if I could get rid of all references to this edition.
John
Mon May 15th 2006 - 13:19EDT

[Rollin' Rog]

Do you just want to reinstall XP clean on this hard drive without any preservation of the previous partitions or data?

If yes, you can boot with the XP CD and as part of the setup program delete all existing partitions, create a new one or as many as you want, and start over that way.

Deleting all existing partitions, and then repartioning -- will rid you of the Win98 OS.

This might help you with the screens involved:

http://www.petri.co.il/install_windows_xp_pro.htm

See step 7 on deleting partitions.

[mjbyyz]

Well, what I am trying to do is merely clone my wife's last HD - a 6.4Gb drive - onto my old one, which I just up-dated on my own m/c. It is an 80Gb drive (although it always read half of this for some reason). I just copied all my stuff from this 80Gb drive to a new 100Gb HD - using the Maxtor CD that came c it. Absolutely NO PROBLEM. I then inserted my 'old' HD (80GB) into my wife's m/c and proceded to Norton Ghost Clone her stuff onto this disk. I've done this a few times in the past, successfully.
So, you see, I want to preserve all her stuff, but I just want a larger HD for her (80GB is considerably bigger than 6.4Gb, right?).
I re-formatted this drive and attempted to Ghost copy as I have done several times in the past, all her stuff onto the 80Gb drive from the 6.4Gb drive. (The latter still operates perfectly, but is running dangerously low on space, thus the need to increase her usable space.)
So, yes, I really do just want a clean copy of WindowsXP Home (mine is XP Prof) and no reference to Win 98 at all. I can't understand why I have what would appear to be TWO OS's - or at least two files containing two OS's - on her hard drive.
John
Mon May 15th 2006 - 14:03EDT

[mjbyyz]

I asked about your name because I have a son, Roger, who is trained in computers, but is of limited help to me in Windows!
John
14:06EDT

[Rollin' Rog]

Ok, I'm probably going to need to let others try to sort this out if possible as this area is a little out of my depth since I don't do cloning.

But maybe this will help clarify.

1 > were all previous partitions on the 80 gig drive deleted and was it repartioned before cloning the smaller drive to it?

2 > does the 6 gig drive with the two OS's have multiple drives or partitions -- or are you seeing two different operating systems on the same drive? The latter really shouldn't happen unless XP was installed incorrectly on a previous Win98 installation.

3 > how old is the Norton Ghost application that was used to do this? If very old, it may not have adjusted the fat32 cluster size of the 6 gig drive to properly match the 80 gig drive.

[mjbyyz]

1 > were all previous partitions on the 80 gig drive deleted and was it repartioned before cloning the smaller drive to it?
I re-formatted this drive completely (several times!). I used just one partition to 'Maximum size'. However, even though it is an 80Gb drive, it told me that 10.xxx was all there was available (I may have the wording wrong, but this is the gist of it), instead of the expected 80Gb. However, when it reads in 'My Computer' (at one time or another since re-formatting) it says it's 78Gb or so, so as far as I can see, this is not a problem. However, maybe this is where it is going wrong?

2 > does the 6 gig drive with the two OS's have multiple drives or partitions -- or are you seeing two different operating systems on the same drive? The latter really shouldn't happen unless XP was installed incorrectly on a previous Win98 installation.
From what I said above, you will see that there is/should be only ONE partition. Where and why this Windows.098 FOLDER (I guess) comes from, I don't know. This info was cloned from a Win98 disk several years ago. I would like to get rid of all references to Win98. Like you say, this shouldn't really happen, and I don't know where the two 'systems/folders' came from.

3 > how old is the Norton Ghost application that was used to do this? If very old, it may not have adjusted the fat32 cluster size of the 6 gig drive to properly match the 80 gig drive.
The Norton Ghost program is only 2005, so it should be OK. I had several attempts at doing this, since it wasn't installed on this disk. I installed just Ghost and found that copying disk to disk wasn't an option. I installed the whole thing and then it became operable.
One other point - at first I formatted as per 'format c:/s' and then realized that, since I was using a Win98 floppy disk to get into the program, I was copying Win98 sys info to the HD. Subsequently, I omitted the ---'/s' part, but still I couldn't get any further.
Does that clarfy the problem a bit better?
John
Mon May 15th 2006 - 14:54EDT

[Triple6]

Well, I've been asked to take a look at this but I'm a little confused.

So let me just get the facts straight.
You've cloned a working drive with Windows XP onto an 80GB drive? But you can't get it too boot? But you keep mentioning Windows 98.

I don't seem to get why you use both the Maxtor and Ghost software as they both do the same thing.

Anyway you did say that the 80GB drive wasn't recognised at its full size, and that may be the source of all the problems. If the BIOS of any computer in question does not see the full size of the drive then you'll almost certainly never get the drive to work properly. Older computers need a BIOS update to use drives over 32GB in size.

Next, you mention FAT32 but you are using an 80GB drive and Windows XP. Windows XP does not let you format a drive over 32GB in FAT32, it forces you to use NTFS and it is very correct in doing so. NTFS is a much more robust file system. If its given you the option to format the drive in FAT32 then the drive must not be recognised as 80GB. You should never use a Windows 98 disk to partition and format a drive for use with Windows XP.

And if you are moving WIndows XP from one system to another it won't likely work if the hardware is different.

If you want to wipe the hard drive clean of all data, formatting, and partitioning and start over then I suggest you use Killdisk to wipe the drive clean: http://www.killdisk.com/