m8530f desktop PC with a m2n78-la mother board doesn't see my drives [ Edited ]

[davstivers]

Add me to the list of disgruntled m2n78-LA owners.  My P6210f was working flawlessly for about 1 1/2 years, of course long enough for the warranty period to be over.  First I thought it was the hard drive, then as I went through my troubleshooting, I realized that it must be the board.  So, no big deal, replace the board, but that means we also have to replace the Windows 7.  Pretty rough, looking at spending $200 to fix a $500 computer that is less than 2 years old.  And I had just gotten used to buying HP stuff when I used to buy nothing but Dells.  I have an HP printer, an HP laptop, well this leaves a bad taste in my mouth and I will not be buying HP anything anymore.  I'm  shopping for motherboards as I speak and will let you all know what I end up with.

[UnklAdM]

Another bad m2n78-la motherboard here. I actually RECOMMENDED this unit to a customer about 16 months months ago.

Now that it's back in the shop, here's what I've done...

Adding a cooling fan to the NVIDIS chip allowed me to get a full backup of the unit. Great, I thought.

Next I installed a PCI-E sata card and was able to boot from the hard drive, only to end up in a continuous reboot cycle.

Further research indicates that when the OS (Windows 7) loads disk.sys (and probably the associated nvidia drivers) the unit crashes with a BSOD.

After some registry tweaking (with a linix distro, of course) I've only manages to force it into a continuous reboot into the repair partition.

I'm somewhat optimistic that if the right drivers could be disabled I could get the OS to boot and install the new sata card drivers.

Any suggestions? There HAS to be a fix here.

COME ON, HP, YOU'RE RUINING MY REPUTATION!

ANY WORD ON THAT LAWSUIT?

[davstivers]

Well, the way I fixed my p6210f was to install a new motherboard:

Gigabyte GA-MA785GM-US2H Micro ATX Motherboard

As expected, the hd wouldn't even load windows when I installed the new board, so I had to reinstall Windows.  Since the hp Windows 7 backup disks won't work with the new board, I also had to get this:

Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit System Builder 1pk

for a grand total of over $200. 

Everything is working great now, like a (better than) new machine.  The rest of the components in this machine are great, it's just the mainboard is complete junk.  Thanks a lot HP, Pegatron (ASUS's redheaded stepchild -- you should be ashamed selling this garbage!)

I just got on here to let people know something that I figured out.  If you can "borrow" a dvd of OEM windows 7 from someone, you can use the activation code from the sticker on the side of your HP case and it'll work!  Even though I bought a brand new copy of Windows 7, I tried using the code from the side of the computer instead of the one that came with the new Win 7 disk, and it worked.  I just wanted to pass that along, since it could definitely save people with this problem a lot of money if they could get a disk from somebody, that way they're just out the cost of the motherboard.  And the board I got is pretty much a Cadillac, I'm sure you could find a compatible board for cheaper.  So, I would definitely not recommend that people go out and try to find the exact same replacement Pegatron board.  It should be obvious by now that there are serious problems with the original board -- just find a compatible replacement.

Oh, by the way, I thought I'd throw out one other thing.  I keep my computer case in a desk that has a cubby hole that is designed for keeping your computer in.  And then I end up stuffing other things in there over time so the ventilation in there must have been horrible.  I'm thinking that could definitely have made the overheating matters worse.  Just wondering if there could be any common threads among people who are having problems, maybe we're all restricting airflow to the case and that could have exacerbated the problem.

Good luck everybody, and I highly recommed this Gigabyte board, it rocks!

[BigHank]

My son has a P5210Y with the DDR2 version of the motherboard (Violet-GL8E) and he has the same problem after 17 months.  If we allow the computer to cool off overnight we can get to the point that it boots to startup recovery and starts to run, but never completes.  Does this mean that the chipset is not completely fried?  I may try improving the cooling and see if it helps.  An exact replacement of the motherboard would cost $200 with shipping from Digital Anny, and getting a different motherboard and a Windows 7 install would cost about the same.  Has anyone found a workaround for Windows 7 like the tech did (a couple of pages back) for Vista?

[gkdiamond]

Cooling the chipset might make it last a bit longer but at this point it appears to be on its' last leg.

I would guess that the same workaround will work for Windows 7 on an HP and would try it first before purchasing another one.

If you don't need the Windows Operating System you can use the free Ubuntu OS or one of its' many derivatives (e.g. Kubuntu, Xubuntu, etc.) or even Linux Mint or Debian. If you're interested in Ubuntu check out this site too.

[bomberbob]

I am afraid your chipset is not totally dead, but severely compromised. I had one like that for a customer, I put fans and bigger heatsinks on it, nothing lasted. It always froze up eventually. Nothing stable enough that I could give it back and tell them it was fixed. I put in a new mobo, transferred all their memory, CPU, etc and it was right as rain.

The key is for people to cool it like crazy before the symptoms appear, unfortunately nobody knows about it until its fried, and they come here looking for a cure.

[TimmmyGlue]

I am having the same problem with my p6142p.

Has anyone tried the DDR3 verison of the motherboard?  I think they both use AM3 socket type cpus so I think the cpus

are swappable.  Would I just have to replace the DDR2 memory with DDR3?

Tim

[bomberbob]

Yes, you would need to upgrade your memory. What chipset does the other board have? If its the same NVIDIA chipset your are looking at similar problems down the road, unless you plan on intense heatsinking. One of the failed boards I examined was actually brown and discolored around the chip. It must have gotten really hot, for a long time. I abandoned the HP boards and went with a gigabyte. I wonder if anybody has actually made a list of motherboards with this potential failure? I wonder if anybody even has access to this information, outside of HP?

[spacechild]

Hello hotz123: a pocket drive & the personal storage media drives are 2 proprietary drives created by HP to be a backup to the standard HD I first noticed them showing up in the PC's c.2003-05 the former is analogous to a conventional external portable HD & the latter is akin to the external desktop HD the difference is that the 2 of them can only fit in the slots located on the front side of the computers of that era.

as for the 2nd question(btw, quite creatively clever!) the motherboard is called that because it's the component that links the computer to every other part of it. outside of the BIOS & OS(operating system) it's the most important piece of a PC

hope this helps & enlightens you

good luck

                                                                                                spacechild

[seddgg42]

Add me to the list of crashed motherboards.  I have an HPy6720 and plan on purchasing the 

Gigabyte GA-MA785GM-US2H Micro ATX Motherboard, as recommended by others in this topic discussion.  My question to those that have purchased this new motherboard is:  Will it fit my existing case?  Just want to make sure before purchasing. 

Thanks,

Another dissatisfied HP user.

PS.  Purchased a new laptop before I new what was wrong with my desktop, and purchased a samsung, really happy with it at this point.  Probably won't buy another HP, at least for a while.