Random controller errors, two drives, SATA ports and PCI SATA card

Hi,

I have a MSI P55 (BIOS v1.6) motherboard. The DVD drive and (occasionally) HD seem to throw controller errors. The most common one is a string of "cannot access \Device\CdRom0" ID 15 errors from source cdrom followed by "the driver has found a controller error in \Device\Ide\IdePortX" ID 11 from source atapi after which the DVD drive disappears from Explorer. But once in a while I also get "the driver has found a controller error in \Device\Harddisk1\DR1" ID 11 from source Disk and a short Windows freeze.

Connecting the drives to a different SATA II slot appears to make a difference, but it could be a placebo effect - HD errors are fairly rare in any case (once every two weeks) but the DVD drive conks out after two days max, usually a few minutes after boot or wakeup, no matter which port it is connected to.

So I tried getting a cheap PCI SATA II controller card and connecting the DVD drive to it. The only thing in common between the two drives is the motherboard SATA controller so if that's broken, it should work reliably with the controller card, right?

Wrong. The DVD drive did appear in Windows. Clicking on it caused it to eject. Seconds later, the system faceplanted with the usual ID 15 cdrom error and locked up for a minute, several times straight, until it recovered long enough for a clean shutdown.

Tldr: both the HD and DVD drive randomly cause controller errors, no matter which SATA port they are connected to, or even a PCI SATA card!

......

This is a fairly new store-built PC; everything is under warranty but I'd rather not the store keep it for weeks until they figure it out. They did this with my previous PC and they didn't actually manage to fix that one despite replacing the motherboard. The problem? HD controller errors.

Am I cursed?

......

Some more details:

- I did use different cables each time.
- Corsair HX620W.
- Trying the PCI SATA card, the DVD drive didn't show up in the BIOS but it did appear in Windows.

are you overclocked? I would run memtest on the RAM to rule that out as well.

I only say that because sometimes memory errors take the form of other evils.

This box has all new parts? Have you tried running without the DVD drive connected at all?

I would return it for a replacement.

hope you found the culprit, good luck.