Need help installing a SATA controller card

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Camulus9

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Oct 6, 2013
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10,510
I am working on a HP Pavilion p6101f desktop pc that has a problem with the motherboard. It's a friend's computer and had stopped working for an unknown reason about a year ago. In that time someone had removed the HDD, RAM and optical drive. I have been working on rebuilding it for my friend but encountered an issue getting the motherboard to recognize any optical drive or HDD that I plug into the SATA ports on the board. Through other posts and troubleshooting efforts I determined that the SATA controller on the board was bad/deffective (apparently a common issue with this particular board) so I am trying to install a SATA controller card to work around that issue. I put in the hardware and connected the optical drive and HDD, but when I boot up I'm encountering the same issue: it doesn't recognize that there's an HDD or optical drive attached. I can't install the drivers with for the optical drive because it uses the SATA connection on the card which I can't get the drivers installed for because the optical drive doesn't work. Catch-22! I've tried installing them via USB but keep encountering errors. I'm not sure what I'm missing here or what to try next. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

The new HDD is running Windows 7 64-bit if that is any help (though the drive isn't currently being detected).

I'm a newbie tech in training (been working on systems in my spare time) and am about to get my A+ certification.
 
Solution
drtweak
1) You can't just toss in another Sata controller unless it has the same exact controller chip and just expect windows to work. If the driver was never installed before the only thing to do is a fresh install of windows.

2) Some older SATA controllers you can't boot from the DVD rom on them. I know some of the other Sata I controllers you can't.

Now since you installed the Sata controller you should see the Sata controller screen after the computer Post screen. There it will tell you if it had detected anything on there or not. Also you may have to set the Bios to add the Raid card to the boot menu. It may not even allow it to be added or boot from an raid card though since its a name brand home PC the Bios can be very limited.
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drtweak

drtweak

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Sep 17, 2012
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1) You can't just toss in another Sata controller unless it has the same exact controller chip and just expect windows to work. If the driver was never installed before the only thing to do is a fresh install of windows.

2) Some older SATA controllers you can't boot from the DVD rom on them. I know some of the other Sata I controllers you can't.

Now since you installed the Sata controller you should see the Sata controller screen after the computer Post screen. There it will tell you if it had detected anything on there or not. Also you may have to set the Bios to add the Raid card to the boot menu. It may not even allow it to be added or boot from an raid card though since its a name brand home PC the Bios can be very limited.
 
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Solution
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Camulus9

Honorable
Oct 6, 2013
6
0
10,510


Thanks for the feedback. I did just end up re-installing Windows 7 Pro and that allowed me to load the drivers I needed to get around the problem and move forward.
 
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