Dv9700 primary disk drive not recognized

Your system should boot up regardless of which slot you place your hard drive in.

You really need another hard drive so you can test your SATA ports. Any hard drive will do.

Install any version of Linux of Windows to a hard drive attached to a slot. If the installation works that proves everything you've connected is working.

If that works, then shut down the computer, switch the hard drive to the next SATA port and boot up. It should simply boot into Windows (or Linux) like normal.

*You should install the latest BIOS and drivers for your motherboard on the first install. It's best to deal with Windows for that reason.

On this laptop if I place the disk drive in the secondary slot the PC powers off then back on...must not like an empty slot in the primary.

I do not understand why I can run diagnostics on drive in secondary slot and the drive passes the diagnostic test but in the primary slot the diagnostics just give an error of "no IDE Device".

In the meantime I will attempt to locate a disk I can use as a crash and burn to load Linux.

Sorry to dig up this old post. Strange enought I have the same issue, and same model number dv9925nr.
When the drive is on IDE port 1, the notebook doesn't pick it up. No error or anything, it is as if it's not installed. On port 2 it boots, until exactly after the machine is supposed to boot on windows, then reboots itself.
Some other strange... I haven't use the computer for some time (about two years), last week I turned it on, and it booted right into windows on port 1... after a few hours (maybe less) it hanged and returned to the former state, ide not detected.

I tried other HDD, same results. I tried removing the DVD drive, it flashed something briefly after detecting the hard drive on post but I could only read "incomplete..." and the machine rebooted. I wasn't able to get back the same message again.

Botting from USB does the same thing as booting from second drive, machine reboots itself after POST.

Did you ever find a fix. I have the same problem. I'm thinking about replacing the motherboard

No, I haven't.

- I checked the hdd to be working ok
- dissasembled the notebook and reassembled completely hoping to find something loose
- replaced heatsink and thermal compound on coolers

I'm hoping to get it to boot to something at all so I can try re-flashing the bios.

I'm also considering replacing the motherboard but will be as the last resort since it's over 100 usd. Probably not worth it since the notebook is already outdated.