SATA hard drive not recognized only when video card installed

[avisioncame]

Hi everybody. I am fixing a computer for a friend, and have been running into a really annoying problem.

Computer is a Compaq Presario SR1550NX Desktop PC

Specs HERE

Windows XP home
512 shared ram
200 gb hdd connected via Sata
Onboard graphics is Sis 760

Onto the problem...

After opening the computer to install a new graphics card in hopes to speed up this horrible slow pc, I noticed something. The heatsink over the onboard graphics chip had fallen off inside the computer. After reinstalling it with new thermal paste, I rebooted, but the computer was still very slow. (I should let you know, I got rid of all unneeded programs, spyware, etc. all the usual things).

So I go to install the new graphics card; a geforce MX 4000. Nothing spectacular, but it was laying around the house and should take a little stress off the PCs other processing components.

I installed the Geforce video card, booted up and got this message: "Hard Disk Boot Failure Insert System Disk Press Enter".

I frantically shut down the computer and checked all the cables and connections, thinking I somehow bricked my friend's HDD!


The BIOS shows NO hard drive...it's just not there.

After taking the video card out of the computer, the hard drive boots right back up, like nothing ever happened!



Things I've tried:

1. changing bios setting from onboard/agp graphics to PCI
2. inserting Windows XP disk to see if windows detected a Hard Drive, it did not.
3. Uninstalling the onboard graphics drivers and software.
4. Switching hard drives sata inputs on motherboard.


Any other ideas?

Thanks
-Andrew

 

[sturm]

It's possible the board got "fried" enough to crap out the agp links which is causing problems on the north bridge. Do you have another agp to test with or even a pci video card?

 

[avisioncame]

No I don't.

When you say the board is fried, you mean the motherboard, correct?

I suppose I could purchase an agp card on ebay and see.

Do you think that the onboard video is not even functioning properly at all because the heatsink was off for such a long time, and that could be why the computer is running so terribly?

EDIT: the gefore mx 4000 is pci I believe.

EDIT2: Oh wait it IS agp...duh.

 

[sturm]

Is it running slow ALL the time or just during certain things? Anything is possible with the onboard video.
Sis is NOT a good chip for any heavy 3d work. 512 MB ram is what I would say is bare minimum for xp. The CPU should run XP just fine.
I would talk with them and see what they think about just getting a newer computer being that it's 5 years old now.

 

[avisioncame]

So thanks for the help, but this is amazing. After having problems all night last night, I went upstairs today to see if I overlooked something, and guess, what? Hard drive is now detected.

Don't ask me why, I have no idea..only thing I can think of is maybe I incorrectly chose PCI as the video card in the bios, when it was actually agp, and then maybe I unknowingly reset it...idk.

Now the nvidia drivers are installed, it's actually supporting my screens resolution where it wasn't before, but it's not as fast as I hoped, even though it is a lot better.

I should mention, before I put the new card in the system was only showing 384 available mb for ram because it was shared with the onboard graphics, while now it is showing 512! That's good.


I will let her know it's time to upgrade

Thanks again!
-Andrew

 

[sturm]

The bios was probably set to use 128 meg of ram for video: 512 - 128 = 384.

I am actually running an Athlon 64 +3200 at home with 2 gig memory and a x1950 pro video card. I still use it as my main game computer all though I am finding some of the new games are quite rough on it- Shift being unplayable on it.

 

[avisioncame]

A lot of new games that were originally programmed to be played on console seem to run like crap on PC I have noticed.