Wondering if my Mother board is dead

[Tahoenite]

I have a

ASUS M3A78-EM Socket AM2+ Motherboard, with a Western Digital SATA 160 GB HD.

Over the years I have had trouble with the computer where it would just stop working properly, take a long time to boot/load pages.

I have reformated multiple times, replaced with NEW hard drive and the errors will eventually begin returning.

I run a full system DISK CHECK, which will usually find some bad sectors and fix them, this has happened on both hard drives.

Recently I tried reformat again but the system cannot locate the hard drive. I tried with my second hard drive with the same problem. I have tried using XP and Win 7 neither have located the drives.

I pulled the hard drive and tried to load in another computer, XP loaded just fine, when I put the same hard drive in the original tower it is still not recognized.

Is there a way to confirm it is the mother board without completely replacing it?

Thanks in advance,

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Hey there, Tahoenite!

I'm very sorry to hear about your issues. Good job with the troubleshooting and putting the HDD in another system to rule it out as a possible cause!
I think that this might be a failed SATA port, if you could plug a different HDD and see if it will get detected that'd also be a way to determine where the issue is.
This might also be caused by an outdated firmware or drivers on the motherboard. Check for any updates on the SATA drivers and BIOS on your mobo manufacturer's website. It wouldn't hurt to reset BIOS as well. Here are 3 ways how to do that: http://www.wikihow.com/Reset-Your-BIOS

Keep me posted! Hope this helps!
SuperSoph_WD

 

[Tahoenite]

Thank you I reset the board, still having similar issues

I used an almost identical tower, both built at the same time, to reformat the hard drive, I used an old HD that I thought had issues and was able to load Win XP and 7 no problems.

I then down reformated the current HD I am trying to used. Win XP loaded just fine, enough where I could load XP main page and would have been able to get updates on.

I then moved the HD to the tower that with the questionable motherboard. hoping to upgrade to Win 7 on the correct machine since that is what the install message advised to do. When I first turned it on it began to start Win XP, then gave me the option page to start in SAFE MODE, I opted for safe mode, it then stopped and the screen began to show a sequence of errors all ending in 32. then it began a reboot cycle.

I then attempted a full fresh reformat with Win 7, it worked better than before by actually acknowledging the HD. It did get to some error then fixed it itself I did not catch what happened, only that it had a problem and had resolved, install then went relatively normal.

I have downloaded and updated Windows, and graphics drivers. and Everquest 2 and Minecraft (the computer is primarily used by my son)

Minecraft appears to have worked OK,

Everquest gets up to a point then has an issue actually loading the game.

It appeared to be a graphic issue again, so I attempted to due another Nvidia driver update, but did not acknowledge the Graphics card or CPU.

I then went to the device manager-display adapter on both computers, everything is the same except under device file details. On the tower that is working everything looks like it is saved to the C drive, on the one that is not it shows 5 seperate files.

3 are linked to Win 32
2 are linked to 64.

Can you please tell me how to isolate the problem and fix it?

I am not sure if this is the right forum since I initially thought it was the mother board, which I am not sure it is not, but could also be storage or graphics.