1796-SATA CABLING ERROR

[billlyte]

I Have (1) 500GB SATA harddrive, a DVD, and another DVD all connected to the SATA ports on the Motherboard.

THe harddrive is connected to the Dark Blue(SATA 0), the the DVDs are connected to the White (SATA1) and the LightBlue (SATA3) connectors.

They have been this way since I installed the second DVD a year or so ago.

There have never been a 'boot' beep and SATA CONNECTION ERROR until this evening(04/26/2017).

THe 500GB SATA drive is partitioned with Windows 7 on one partition and Windows 10 on another partition, and I mainly use the Win10 partition.

I got this error for the first time after doing some updates on the Windows 7 partition that required a RESTART and that is when the first 'beep' sounded off and has every boot since!

NO AMOUNT OF SATA PORT CONFIGURATION HAS HELPED!!

I tried putting the 2nd DVD on the Orange(SATA3) connector, but still got the 1796-SATA CABLING ERROR when starting the PC.

Any clues as to why this is happening AND why it is happening after months of NOT haveing the 1796-SATA CABLING ERROR!

BTW Boot sequence is set to CD/DVD, Then USB, then HARDDRIVE and has been since I got this machine up and running.

TIA

Bill L

[billlyte]

I would still like some experts input.

I unplugged all of the SATA cables(one at a time starting with the hard drive) from both ends and plugged them back in and things now seem to work.

Wish I knew why!!

DarkBlue  = hard drive

White         = 1st DVD

LitheBlue  = 2nd DVD

Orange       = Empty

[Grzwacz]

Hi billyte

Sounds pretty bad.

I am not an HP expert.

I have found running two or more versions of Windows on the same HDD or SSD is a recipe for bad stuff.

I have not made this mistake since 2003. I run Win 7 Pro and Win 10 Pro on different drives. Never have both drives connected to SATA or PCIe at the same time.

Windows 10 boot manager will, under certain circumstances, kill or corrupt the Windows 7 boot manager.

My recommendation is to not run both operating systems on the same HDD or SSD.

Good luck

Grzy

[billlyte]

Thanks for the reply. 

I would still like one of the HP experts to weigh in on this!

I don't think it is the 'windows boot manager'. I know folks with 1TB drives that have WIn7 Win8.1 and two versions of Win10, and don't have boot problems. The Windows boot manager has come a long way since XP and Vista!

This seems to be something with the mobo 'Intel Boot Agent' which is way before the Windows boot comes into play.

FOr what ever reason, unplugging each SATA cable one at a time, and plugging them back in has 'helped', and by helped I mean I don't get that scary BEEP during the post up.

I am investigating the Intel Boot Agent, and also going to check to see if the silly CMOS battery needs replaced(although I have had not indication of that via the clock and date being out of whack)

Again, thanks for the reply.

[mdklassen]

> Sounds pretty bad.  I am not an HP expert.

The problem, and the error-message, occur during the POST ("Power On Self Test") -- a long time before anything is read from the disk-drive(s).  So, it does not matter whether there are more than one disk-drive, more than one operating-system, nor which operating system(s) are installed.

Power-off the computer.

Disconnect the AC power.

Press the ON/OFF button for 10 seconds, to force a "hard reset".

Disconnect each of the SATA cables from the motherboard.

Connect only the DVD drive.

Reconnect the AC power.

Turn the computer on -- ignore the fact that it will complain about "no boot device found".  Does it still give the error-message?

Turn the computer off.

Disconnect the SATA cable from the DVD drive, and connect it to the primary disk-drive.

Turn the computer on, Does it still give the error-message, and then boot normally into Windows?

[billlyte]

Thanks for your response and suggestion.

SInce the error message was a POST message regarding the SATA connections, I did as I said earlier. I turned the machine off, disconnected the power cord, then removed AND THEN reinstalled the SATA cables in the same ports they were in.  

I have no idea why after a few years of using this HP machine it started POSTing the SATA cable error.

But since I did what I did, the error hasn't returned.   Will keep fingers crossed that it was a 'glitch' and will go another few years without a POST up problem.

[mdklassen]

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