Bad SATA Controller?

[tdcrawford]

Hey everybody, I've got a little issue here. Let me give some background to the problem.. About a week ago, I turned on my computer (no new hardware or software installed prior to shutdown, nor were there any updates for Windows installed) only to have it boot up to a black screen with a blinking cursor in the upper left-hand corner. I've heard of this before and assumed it had something to do with a bad MBR, so I went and got my Win7 disc and popped it in. I went through all the normal steps such as attempting automatic recovery, working with "bcdedit" and "bootrec" commands in WindowsRE, etc., but to no avail. I actually started a thread on TechNet (viewable here) but was unable to solve the problem. I ended up purchasing a new hard drive (a Western Digital WD2500BEVS) and, upon installing it, attempted to install Windows. Windows reported that the hard drive wasn't set to boot from in BIOS. Well, I thought that was a little strange so I checked BIOS myself. Indeed, I had set the DVD-ROM drive as the first to boot. I didn't think that should've stopped me from installing onto the hard drive, but I figured I'd change it just to make Microsoft happy. I set the hard drive as the first boot device, restarted, and "Esc'd" into the boot options. I chose my DVD-ROM drive so the installation would start up, and waited for everything to get going. I got to the same point as last time and, once again, was given the same error. "Alright, maybe I need put a partition on the drive" I thought. I went ahead and set up the partition table and put one NTFS partition on the drive using a GParted LiveCD. Same error. At this point I decided to do some poking around in BIOS. I tried checking the status of the hard drive using S.M.A.R.T., but it failed to initialize.. not a good sign. It was at this point that I decided to disable "Native SATA Support" in BIOS (or at least I think that's what it was called. I can't get to BIOS at the moment) in hopes that reverting back to ATA mode would correct the issue.

It did.

I'm installing Windows 7 as we speak. My question is this- has my SATA controller failed? And if so, what do I do now? I'm sure there's going to be a performance hit by stepping down to ATA speeds, but is it significant enough that I should sent my laptop in to be repaired. Is it even a repairable problem? Did I even correctly diagnose the problem?

Specifications:

I'm using a HP DV6130us with Phoenix BIOS (Revision F.28 I believe), 2GB of RAM, the 250GB Hard Drive mentioned above, Windows 7 RTM, and an extended capacity battery (not that that really matters). Thanks in advance for any help you can provide!!

[Huffer]

Sounds like you did a good job of diagnosis. You have sold me on your conclusion. The only fix is a new motherboard I am afraid. The performance hit by turning off native SATA support is not too big...maybe 10% on the data transfer rate to and from the hard drive. The laptop is still very useable in that mode and you would only notice if you do video editing or something that really gives the disk I/O a workout. Since you have the star-crossed dv6000 series you need to be budgeting for a new laptop. They are dying like WWII veterans right now...thousands a day across the country. I see a couple a week at the small shop where I help out.