PC help...

[Condor]

My personal PC @ home looks like it blew the main board.. It will not detect any of the drives.. I verified the HDD & memory DIMMS are good... It looks like the controller chip may have gone out.. Someone mentioned there is serial ATA card that may be able to be used to make it work???.. If not I will need to buy a new one as board is just as expensive as PC... Input appreciated...

[Anubis]

If your main board is cookd then a SATA card will not be recognised when pluged in. The card is relatively cheap (about 20 bucks). If you know the folks where you by one it is worth trying it and if no go then return it. Otherwise you are on the hook for a new main board.

[Bigpineguy Retired]

Did you do anything , or change anything when this happened ? check to make sure that the Bios is still set to auto detect drives.. What OS ?


BPG~

[Condor]

If your main board is cookd then a SATA card will not be recognised when pluged in. The card is relatively cheap (about 20 bucks). If you know the folks where you by one it is worth trying it and if no go then return it. Otherwise you are on the hook for a new main board.

Thanks... I will give it a try... I found one locally for about 15 bux..


Did you do anything , or change anything when this happened ? check to make sure that the Bios is still set to auto detect drives.. What OS ?


BPG~

It's Vista and I just found it like that when I got home from work last Friday... I tried all Bios settings and it will just not detect any drive at all.. Even in Bios... So again I think the controler chip fried.....

[Bigpineguy Retired]

C/P:
make sure there are no blown capicitors on the mainboard. Since I cannot see it, I cannot be sure. If the computer was hit by lightning, it could have blown caps on the board. They are the cylindrical components on the board. They should all be flat. If there are any with puffed tops or goo coming out of the tops of them, they are blown and it is time to replace the mainboard or send it out for component repair. Depending on the quality of the mainboard, replacement is usually more cost effective.


Presuming board has a bios reset jumper

Try the following:
a. Turn the computer off, unplug the power cord.
b. Pull all drives and all cards and disconnect all cables from the board. (Don't disconnect the power supply)
c. Move the bios reset jumper to the reset position.
d. Plug the power cable in and turn on the computer. It may not turn on, this is ok. If that is the case, push it in a couple of times. Hold the power button in, let up. It may power up fine. This is ok as well. It may power up and nothing appear on the monitor. This is ok as well. Let it sit there for a couple of seconds and then pull the power cord.
e. Move the jumper back to the original position.
f. Connect only 1 hard drive.
g. Go into the BIOS and see if it will detect.

If it doesn't detect, it certainly does sound like the SATA connectors just died.

[Condor]

Thanks BPG... I appreciate that... I am a technician by trade so I have been there done that as far as the components go... But the other hints are good..I will try those and see what happens... I just cant see all SATA cables going bad either... I just picked up a SATA controller card along with a cable just in case.. I hope it reads the card if not I am O.L... lol..