So... the other day my computer conked out i woke up and checked it out and the screen was black with the words "Disk read error" i figured my HDD must have just exploded... was pretty freaked out, but i managed to connect the HDD to my bro's computer and recover all my data to an external. I figured the HDD might just have a bad sector, so i ran Chkdsk on my bro's comp on the HDD and tried hooking it back up to my comp again. No go. Disk read error again. Then i said screw it, and i reformatted the drive then hooked it back up to my old PC. No go. disk read error again. I then checked out my Bios seeing if maybe there was a setting in there that was f'ed up. After spending a few minutes i realized that the bios was not detecting my SATA drive at all, only my optical drives. At this point i figured i might just have a bad drive, so today i went out and bought a new WD 500 gb drive and installed it. AAaaaaaaaand..... No go. Disk read error. Going back into the bios i see again that the computer is not recognizing that i have any HDD hooked up. Fuuuuuuuuuuccccccccck. I then tried entering the hard drive settings manually, inputting the amount of sectors and shit. No go. still not detected. I could only think of one more thing.... so i tried resetting the CMOS by removing the watch battery from the motherboard, but still no go. Iv basically come to the conclusion that something is wrong with my motherboard... i cant think of anything to do with software that could be causing this issue, but if anyone has had this problem and found a solution id be happy if they could provide some insight. Right now its either take the thing into futureshop and hope a tech there can figure this shit out, or buy a new computer for 600 bucks... which is something i dont want to do, cuz im perfectly happy with my current system. I need a computer though... its sad how i realize my whole life is on my computer, without it i have no streaming media, no entertainment... no pr0nz. Its been like 3 days and im pretty sure that if i didnt have my bro's computer to use in the interim, id be going through serious internet withdrawal.
might be a dead cable or motherboard.. time to get a new cable to try on it.. lol if not then probably motherboard problem or just get a new computer..
what about the pwoer cables? check does that one work for yoour hard drive, keep trying each power cable.. maybe theres no power to the hard drive..
yes, power is fine too lol, im not a noob. If there is a solution to this problem its probably a highly complex one
either spend a few hundred on letting people check it out for you and fix it for you.. or get a new computer or a motherboard (mobo is a try).
a few hundred bucks to get it fixed..... sounds about right. futureshop tech is gay. i asked them to take a look at my laptop's rj-45 slot, and they were like.. ok fork us 40 bucks. fuck that. you know it's a mobo problem (you swapped hd, checked cables and power and considering you hooked your old one to your bro's pc and works), don't bother going to futureshop tech. get a new mobo for under a hundred. you'd save yourself almost half of what it takes for gay futureshop to LOOK at your computer.
If you don't want any hassles in fixing this, then you have already suggested a solution to your problem:getting a new machine. You said your bios/motherboard doesn't recognizing the SATA hard drive. How many SATA ports do you have on you motherboard? Have you tried all of them? Your optical drive, is that IDE or SATA? What is the jumper set to? Boot sequence order? Hard drive jumper set to Master and all other optical drives set as Slave? Next time, instead of blowing away the OS, try booting from the Windows CD and trying a Repair. From that Repair/Recovery Console, could have run the FixMBR command. Knoc
SATA drives dont have master and slave configurations on jumpers... it does it automatically so its not that it sounds like a motherboard error to me too... unfortunately i do not have the technical know how to tell you how to fix up your motherboard... buy a new one? its not THAT expensive... that way you can just keep upgrading your computer too
Yes, as a default, SATA drives do not require jumper settings. However, since this is in the trouble shooting stage, jumper settings can be on the list to check here. Knoc
I think you already identified the problem, the motherboard. Also, If you go into futureshop or w/e they're are just going to do the same things you just did but probably sloppier.
i basically already did everything you said knoc. boot sequence order and stuff isnt an issue because it wont even recognize my HDD. Iv also tried both sata ports, and i dont get a result on either. thx for the suggestions though
did you try both sata ports with the known bad drive or with the new hard drive? i'd say try the sata ports with the new hard drive and see if the computer will recognize them. Do you have any other types of sata devices like a cd-rom drive or something? i'd plug those in also see if the system will pic those up to eliminate the sata drive or the hard drive. but just based on everything you've done it sounds like the sata plug on the motherboard is friend its probably cheaper to buy a replacement board than a new computer, unless the puter is old and its time for an upgrade
have you checked the pins on the motherboard connector? could have burned out or tarnished one of the pins... either way a new mobo is what you need....=\
Have you tried reflashing the bios? It may also be that the SATA controller on the board is having problems. Install a PCI SATA controller and give it a go?
I THINK I HAD THE EXACT PROBLEM!!!... lol I bought a new HDD, same problem and the computer shop exchanged another for me XDXD Then seeing the 3rd HDD didnt work, I played with bios for about 6 hrs... (cause i know nuthing about it, but a friend told me about itbeing the most likely cause) then i somehow got teh Sata HDD to not have "read error" after altering the settings with some sata setting stuff.. lol... cant remeber the details. happened to me about 6-8 months ago Good luck with it though *thumbs up*
wow... that was a useless post tell me you had the problem but you cant remember the solution? why even bother posting lol, got my hopes up for nothing -censored ah well, thanks anyway
