Bad SATA Controller - Recovery help

[aem]

I thought the relatively new system drive I installed two months had gone bad. The computer must have crashed sometime overnight and said missing boot media when powered back up. On this first boot the hard drive sounded terrible, like it could not spin up so I assumed the hard drive was having mechanical issues.

I put a different hard drive in to recover a system image created by Windows 7. It gave an error that basically said no suitable drive was found to recreate the partitions. The drive was 500GB, but the partition was much smaller and well below the 320GB hard drive I was going to restore to. The original hard drive size was small and I never increased the partition size after restoring it to the 500GB drive. I was going to try a larger hard drive, but never got the chance.

I think that the 320GB drive was probably not detected by the motherboard. Shortly after when I was going to try a 1TB drive, I could not boot to the CD-ROM drive to try to restore the image. The motherboard now will not detect the hard drive or CD-ROM drive. I tried the current system drive that I thought failed in an external enclosure. It worked fine and passed short self test. It still worries me that it sounded like it was having mechanical issues and could not spin up earlier.

I have to assume that at least the SATA controller has gone bad? Can I boot to Windows with the current system drive on the same model motherboard? It looks like it is not easy to find them on eBay. There are two listed, but both very overpriced and not sure if I want to pay a premium to make restoration easier. I suppose I could buy a SATA controller card, but maybe more than the SATA controller that went bad? It would be good to have one around, so I might go ahead any buy one anyway.

Motherboard is an ECS AM2+ Model MCP78M-A

 

[Christobevii3]

Do you need this system up or data off it? It seems like it would be better getting a newer motherboard and possibly cpu than waste money on an old used motherboard.

You could also virtualize it possibly if you have another system and run it in there and get what you need.

 

[aem]

Do you need this system up or data off it? It seems like it would be better getting a newer motherboard and possibly cpu than waste money on an old used motherboard.

You could also virtualize it possibly if you have another system and run it in there and get what you need.

It is actually not my computer. I help out a local inn with their IT needs. It is the owners personal desktop. If it were my machine, I would not be concerned with just getting a new motherboard and getting everything transferred.

However, it is not my system and his technical knowledge is pretty limited. While I would be happy for him to have a fresh start without junk that is slowing down his system, it might be a hassle trying to get all his stuff back.

If his system was a little older, I might be able to convince him now is a good time to upgrade. It is 3 years old and the hardware is just fine for his needs (or at least it would be without his toolbars and adware eating up resources). His CPU is good enough: AMD Athlon X2 7850 Black Edition Kuma 2.8GHz Socket AM2+. He does not like to put money into something unless it is a necessity, so he will only want to replace non-working parts.

I think the plan is to try a SATA controller card and if that doesn't work, buy another motherboard.

 

[cortexodus]

Motherboard is an ECS AM2+ Model MCP78M-A

I hate to tell you, but that board is garbage. I have one (or at least one that's very similar, I'll check it later and get back to you). It's been RMA'ed twice. Once for a total inability to POST, and once for an inability to detect anything on the SATA ports. I POST-tested the second replacement and it's been sitting in a box ever since

Before I even attempt to use it I'll be removing the heatsink on the southbridge and re-TIM'ing it, possibly putting a different sink on it. As it is, it goes so hot you can't even touch it

You might try re-TIM'ing the southbridge as well but, if it's already not detecting drives then it's probably too late for any band-aids. You need to inform your customer that his mainboard is a bad element and should be replaced entirely. A controller card is just going to make a mess of things and complicate the OS install un-necessarily.

 

[aem]

I hate to tell you, but that board is garbage. I have one (or at least one that's very similar, I'll check it later and get back to you). It's been RMA'ed twice. Once for a total inability to POST, and once for an inability to detect anything on the SATA ports. I POST-tested the second replacement and it's been sitting in a box ever since

Before I even attempt to use it I'll be removing the heatsink on the southbridge and re-TIM'ing it, possibly putting a different sink on it. As it is, it goes so hot you can't even touch it

You might try re-TIM'ing the southbridge as well but, if it's already not detecting drives then it's probably too late for any band-aids. You need to inform your customer that his mainboard is a bad element and should be replaced entirely. A controller card is just going to make a mess of things and complicate the OS install un-necessarily.

Yes I noticed that heat when I was working on it recently lol. Didn't even have it running long, was just doing some testing to see if I could get it to boot.

Sadly whoever assembled the system must have been clueless. The top two places the motherboard screws in did not have spacers. The middle two holes for screws were missing screws. Two of the screws that were in place actually had the other two spacers screwed in on TOP of the motherboard. Board is a little warped.

I do have a controller card being delivered today which I hope will get the system running. I would disagree with you on complicating the OS install, but this is based on assumptions. This is actually the first board I have had to replace that was not bad out of the box.

I am assuming if I switched boards I would have to do a fresh install of Windows. I do not think I could restore the system image created by Windows 7 backup? However, with a controller card I do not think a fresh install would be necessary. I figure I will probably still have to pop the OS disk in and do the system restore with controller card drivers installed.

If it works, I do intend to strongly recommend that this is only a temporary solution and that he go ahead and order a new one. I do not trust a cheap controller card or bad motherboard, especially when a new motherboard would not be too expensive (do have to consider my labor costs too, but he does not pay me much). I am a little doubtful he will want to replace it and reinstall everything though unless he is experiencing problems running through the card though.

SATA devices are still detected upon boot after the system has been powered off for awhile. I get to where Windows says the system was not shut down properly with start up options. However I can't get past that. It is either non responsive or I get an error. I assume the board loses the SATA connection.

 

[cortexodus]

I am assuming if I switched boards I would have to do a fresh install of Windows. I do not think I could restore the system image created by Windows 7 backup? However, with a controller card I do not think a fresh install would be necessary. I figure I will probably still have to pop the OS disk in and do the system restore with controller card drivers installed.

If it works, I do intend to strongly recommend that this is only a temporary solution and that he go ahead and order a new one. I do not trust a cheap controller card or bad motherboard, especially when a new motherboard would not be too expensive (do have to consider my labor costs too, but he does not pay me much). I am a little doubtful he will want to replace it and reinstall everything though unless he is experiencing problems running through the card though.

I'm not sure if you would have problems with a restore or not. I suppose it's dependent on whether windows will properly ID the drives attached to the controller card... Without trying there's no saying. As for the person not wanting to replace... I guess there's no accounting for sheer obstinance

I did check the board I have and it's the exact same unit you're dealing with.

 

[gigaxtreme1]

I hate to tell you, but that board is garbage. I have one (or at least one that's very similar, I'll check it later and get back to you). It's been RMA'ed twice. Once for a total inability to POST, and once for an inability to detect anything on the SATA ports. I POST-tested the second replacement and it's been sitting in a box ever since

Before I even attempt to use it I'll be removing the heatsink on the southbridge and re-TIM'ing it, possibly putting a different sink on it. As it is, it goes so hot you can't even touch it

You might try re-TIM'ing the southbridge as well but, if it's already not detecting drives then it's probably too late for any band-aids. You need to inform your customer that his mainboard is a bad element and should be replaced entirely. A controller card is just going to make a mess of things and complicate the OS install un-necessarily.

+1
Using the board with a controller card is not practical as the southbridge controls everything I/O. Using a new similar board would only require reactivating windows because of hardware change. As it is, the southbridge chip has experienced significant electron tunneling along the fault and is probably limited in functionality. Reapplying heatsink/ thermal paste is mearly a temporary fix, if it works at all.

 

[aem]

Restore went smoothly enough with the controller card. Sounds like it was working fine for the first day and a half or so. Now we are getting errors with Microsoft office. It is throwing errors related to normal.dotm, normalemail.dotm, and msxml 6.0. Been too busy to look at it yet, but probably will check it out tomorrow. Seems to be a common enough error that hopefully I can find a fix or re-installing office will help.

Will bring up buying a new motherboard again too. Maybe he can be convinced.

edit: after messing around with registry, etc briefly with no success, just did in place re-installation of Windows 7 to fix that problem.