d346bus.sys Boot Error

[joeyroland]

Hello All,

Unfortunately, I'm completely lost.

Earlier this morning, after turning off my 2nd PC for the evening, my 2nd computer wouldn't start. Well, that is to say it wouldn't boot. It's a few years old so I began some troubleshooting, (removing the graphics card, each stick of ram, disconnecting the drives, and even using a backup PSU to boot). But nothing worked.

Since the specs were similar to a Dell Dimension 8200 I had around, I figure I'll just use that. But that's where I ran into some issues.

After only connecting the HD, keyboard, & graphics card, I can't get my blasted thing to boot into Windows - even in safe mode. When it gets to the point where it loads the file d346bus.sys, it restarts. While I was able to find some things using just Google, I can't actually try any of the solutions I found. That is, my CD-Rom, while found in BIOS, won't load my WinXP CD. Each time, I get an error message stating that it's not a bootable device or whatever. Additionally, when I even tried using an old Win 98 startup disc to ensure the CD-Rom would be fine, I'm getting the same thing when trying to boot from that.

At this stage, I'm completely clueless and was curious to see if there's anything I can do?


Also, I did an image backup of my WinXP CD and even tried booting from that thinking the CD itself was a failure. I've tried about 4 CD or DVD roms and 2 floppy drives as well. And I've also tried just removing the HD and only having the rom connected. Still no luck.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

[Rocketmech]

Confusing ... I can't tell which motherboard or parts were switched. Test the hard drive and ram. You can test the HDD using a working pc.

[BipolarBill]

Sounds like bad capacitors.

www.badcaps.net

[joeyroland]

Hello All,

Sorry about that. I just reread what I initially posted and I think I left some stuff out.

Originally, the 'frankenstein' PC didn't boot when I went back to turn it on this morning. Then, since I had a barebones Dimension 8200, I figured I'd just throw the drives into that one since it was almost the same PC, (spec-wise). However, after putting in just the graphics card and HD and connecting the keyboard only, I'm unable to boot the thing even in Safe Mode. That is, when it loads all the drivers, it hangs for about 5 seconds at the "d346bus.sys" and restarts. When I searched Google, it looks like this is from Daemon. On the results, a lot of solutions were to just insert the WinXP disc and get to the command prompt and type:

disable d346bus

followed by:

exit

Unfortunately, I'm not at the point where I can't even do that. When I connect a CD-Rom, Dell's BIOS will recognize it but, even after making it the first boot, it gives something saying it's non-bootable. I tried a couple different CD-Roms, (and DVD roms), but continued getting the error message. Additionally, I through in a couple different floppy drives along with the Win98 startup disk just to see if I could manually add support for the CD rom. However, that also resulted in the exact same error.

Do you think it could be bad capacitors on both MoBo or just the original one that died?

Thanks!

[BipolarBill]

It's never as simple as moving drives to another PC. Even minor hardware differences can prevent startup because the "HAL" (hardware abstraction layer) is different. This a bad diagnostic technique - period.

Yes - Daemon Tools is the source of this driver. Disabling it may or may not help. I have seen the boot process stop at that point more than once, but it was never actually at fault. The problem was the next process after d346bus.sys.

Not being able to boot from CD is scary. That would normally indicate a hardware problem like bad caps, but you need to carefully configure the boot sequence in BIOS setup to rule that out. Remember - each and every PC BIOS is at least subtly different. If you can't get to boot from CD, you're basically dead in the water and it has to be a hardware problem.