I sill think it would be wise to clear out the BIOS and make sure there is nothing that is preventing it from seeing the disk clearly. I'm not just talking about drive parameters, I'm talking about the BIOS in general. The fact that the system is hanging on "Verifying DMI Pool Data" means that the BIOS is having a problem with some of the hardware. This could be caused by one of two things: the hardware is faulty or the BIOS is faulty. As improbable as this is, it is still a possibility. With all my diagnoses, I like to eliminate as many possibilities as I can and that makes finding the real problem quicker and easier. The other point I'd like to make is that starting with a fresh BIOS will not adversely affect the system. I wouldn't go with the bleeding edge version as it may have bugs that have not been discovered, but I would certainly upgrade if possible. At the same time though, I would take a copy of the current one in case a later version introduces an incompatability with the OS. Again, improbable, but not impossible. |