PCA Forums

Been working all night getting this AMD 64 setup put together and going. The Antec P180 is one fantastic case, but a little complicated so it makes for a slower build.

Have just the cpu, video card, ram, psu, dvd drive and one hard drive. I sukspect the problem may be that I tried to copy to this new hard drive from my old one. Thought I'd keep my settings without having to start fresh again. So this sux. Used the maxtor utlility which has worked well for this in the past. But can't get past that dirty "verifying DMI Pool" trick.

Tried another video card, reseating 2 different video cards, changing the jumper on the hard drive. etc.. Tried clearing cmos, various bios settings. The drive is a maxtor 200gb which I partitioned to a 60 for c drive and 140 for the rest. Perhaps that may be a problem?

I figure to try a repair install next, unless a better solution presents itself. If that fails, then format and start over.


Me will try later. Suggestions are most welcome.


Man, the cooling setup on the P180 case is most awesome! Comes with 3 3-speed 120mm fans and I added another 120mm and a 80mm which it has places for. And it's still fairly quiet with the fans on high. Though the YS-Tech 120mm I added is a bit loud on top speeed. A fan controller fixed that. It's the real "silver & black" attack with the cool color scheme.

sounds like a repair install or a fresh install is in order....wait mebbe it's the case - pull all your stuff out and send it to me before it infects the other systems in your house

Well, getting stuck at Verifying DMI Pool has nothing to do with Windows. That's a BIOS message. At that point POSTing is not complete yet.

You usually get that message when BIOS hangs on detecting the primary boot device.

Make sure the boot order is correct in BIOS (floppy->CD->IDE0 or SATA). Remove any device from the boot order that aren't being used.

Make sure the HDD is jumpered properly (I would recommend using the CS jumper setting).

Try putting a bootable floppy in the floppy drive and see if it boots from it, then try a bootable CD.

You might also get that message if the hard drive is not bootable. How did you copy the old drive? If you used a partition copy instead of a whole drive copy it's possible that the boot partition is not active (boot partition must be set to active). You can that with Partition Magic or even with FDisk.

You WILL need to do a repair install of Windows if you want to keep your old installation so what I would suggest you do is see if you can get it to boot from a WinXP install CD. If you can, go ahead and do a repair install. Instructions here: http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

Be aware that you may need to install drivers for the hard drive controller, depending on the mobo. If so press F6 when prompted when the CD starts booting and have your drivers ready.

Hope this helps...

Not using a floppy anymore. As for boot order I have it as the main maxtor, then cdrom. Tried using it as a sata drive with an adapter and it never recognized it no matter what I tried in the bios settings, so I went back to using it as ide.

Hard drives are jumpered correctly. But did not try CS.


Like I had said, I copied the drive from my older drive using the maxtor utilty that lets you copy contents from a previous drive. It has always worked well in the past.

You might also get that message if the hard drive is not bootable. How did you copy the old drive? If you used a partition copy instead of a whole drive copy it's possible that the boot partition is not active (boot partition must be set to active). You can that with Partition Magic or even with FDisk.

With no floppy, how can I do this? During maxblast setup it did format and partition the new hard drive. Then copied all files from the C drive.

thanks guys

Maxblast should have made the partition active.

Definately use the CS jumper setting on a modern mobo. Some mobos don't like the old legacy settings.

Have you tried booting with an XP Install CD yet? You'll need to make the CD-Rom first in boot order (should be anyway). Hit Next at the first menu, then F8 to get pasy the EULA then at the 2nd menu select "Repair". It should show you the existing Windows install on the drive and ask if you want to procede.

This will prove that BIOS is seeing the drive just fine. At that point I'd go ahead and do the repair install. You need to anyway, and it may be that the reason it's not booting now is because the boot partition needs to be repaired (which the repair install will do as well as wipe the device manager and re-detect all devices).

Afterwards install all the latest drivers starting with the mobo driver, then perform a Windows update.

Tried all that FP, it'd still go back to that dag nabbit "verifying dma pool".

I tried and tried, then I got revenge! The ole format trick. Ah, starting over is such sweet sorrow. Something must of gone wrong either during the copy, or perhaps drivers needed to be installed first. Just as well, I was due for a fresh format anyway.

Thanks for all the help guys. 'preciate it very much.

Got it all up and going. Still have some apps to install though. The Orb II ain't bad at all for cooling. But haven't tried ocing yet.

send it to me before it infects the other systems in your house

Ok John. I'll do that in 2008, Hope that's cool with you.