Member Avatar for SergioEspaillat

I have no one else to turn to and the community of Daniweb is always solving my problems So thanks. My Computer Is Acting Odd, I do Not Know What it is. Mobo not Reading HDD's Sometimes
My Computer is about 4 years old
Mobo : AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4200+ 2.20 ghz
4 GB Of Ram 64 Bit Windows 7
500 Watt PSU

I have two Hard Drives.
225 GB Western Digital
500 GB Hitachi
GeForce 9800 1 gig Video ram

To Narrow it down, I was running before on my HDD 225 GB western Digital however it began to act up and I could not boot from it anymore. It gave me
- Error Reading Operating System
- There was an error starting up

So I bought a 500 GB Hitachi and plugged it in and installed windows 7 no problem. I still can see my 225 GB western Digital and can access it from my 500GB Hitachi however today windows started acting funny so I decided to restart it, when I did. Both HDD's Weren't being read. I pop'd in the Windows 7 Disk Hoping it would let me boot into windows and it did. so here I am. I am wondering what is going on? If its my MOBO failing? (but I have heard Mobos dont begin to fail they just do) My PSU? I don't understand what's causing all of this.

Thank you in Advance.

Edited by SergioEspaillat because: Added Video Card
  • 4 Contributors
  • 3 Replies
  • 199 Views
  • 2 Days Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by benmar

Dani AI

Generated

As reported by , the system had an older Western Digital drive that started showing "Error Reading Operating System", a new Hitachi was installed and worked, then both drives later failed to be detected until the Windows 7 DVD was used. That pattern — drives accessible sometimes and then disappearing entirely — points first to hardware-level issues (power, cables, or the SATA controller) rather than Windows file corruption alone.

Start by isolating hardware: power the machine with only one drive connected at a time (the boot drive first). Swap the SATA data cable and use a different SATA port. Move the same drive and cable to another PC or a USB-SATA adapter to confirm whether the drive is consistently visible. If a drive vanishes from the motherboard BIOS during these tests, the problem is almost certainly physical (cable, PSU rail, or the board).

Following suggestions from and , check memory and drive health without repeating earlier single-line advice: run a long memory stress test (multiple passes) and test each RAM stick alone; any errors require replacing that module. Read SMART attributes with the drive manufacturer diagnostic tool and run their full surface/extended test — a failing SMART result or bad-sector map indicates a dying disk and immediate backup is necessary.

If the BIOS consistently sees the boot drive but Windows still fails with boot-manager errors, repair the boot records from the Windows Recovery Environment using these commands:

bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot
bootrec /rebuildbcd
bcdboot C:\Windows

Finally, if both drives repeatedly disappear even with known-good cables and alternate power connectors, suspect the PSU or the motherboard SATA controller. A low-cost sequence: replace SATA cables, test with a different PSU if available, or add a cheap PCIe SATA controller as a workaround before replacing the motherboard.

Recommended Answers

All 3 Replies

Member Avatar for Rik_

Google and get memtest and use it to test your ram as bad ram can write bad data to the hard drive making it look bad!

Member Avatar for mjdodd

it may be worth running a disk analyser program like checkdisk to see if the integrity of the disk/s is OK.
M

Member Avatar for benmar

in that case your HDD is not recognize the by your MOBO or in the BIOS try repairing your windows. but before that before booting up your MOBO try to go BIOS set up then goto boot priority look their if your is HDD is recognize if so try repair your windows... hope it will work for you...

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.