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

[DescentFiend]

I just got my HP e9120y working. The Pegatron M2N78-LA in this HP was running 8 gigs of Hynix DDR3 w/ an AMD Phenom II X4 910 CPU. I used a Gigabyte GA-880GMA-USB3 from newegg+ some thermal grease. The CPU power on this board is 8 pin, but just plugging the 4 pin off the stock HP 300 watt power supply worked. I installed XP 32 bit just to see if it's stable - not one crash... time for me to order win7 and see how 64 bit goes. The board holes didn't all line up w/ the HP case: I had to put electrical tape over 2 holes , and put a plastic spacer behind another hole on the motherboard. All the front USB plugs wouldn't fit into this motherboard's 3 internal USB jacks. Also no firewire. If u get this board be sure you have DDR3. Good luck.

[protivakid]

Well I just ran into this issue with a friends computer. I have tried:

1. A Different Power Supply

2. A PCI SATA card w/ a USB CD-ROM (Windows would see the drives but could not install to them b/c the motherboard was not config. to boot from them)

3. Booting with 1, 2, & 3 sticks of memory in.

4. Trying all sata ports on board

5. Downloading the windows based BIOS update to v5.16, extracting the bios file, copying it to a floppy, renaming the file HPBIOS.ROM, booting the pc holding left CTRL+HOME to do a BIOS update (update worked but the same issue remains)

I am now going to have to get a new board for him. At least I was able to use the USB CD-Rom & USB to Sata adapter to boot into Linux Mint and copy ALL of his old data off the existing hard drive. I had to use Linux because when connected to a Windows machine it would not read his existing data, my only option was to re-format the partition.

I am surprised there was no recall on these boards.

[charlyjack]

Please do not just assume the board is bad when you do the search and hit this thread.  My power supply did die and the R/R was a fix for my problem.  I am not saying that is always the fix just that you should not assume it ia the board because of the history here.  I have the m8530f also.

[protivakid]

If you are talking to me charlyjack, with everything I tried above how could it not be the board? Unless you have any other ideas 🙂

[scorpion99]

its the board hp has put certified crap in these pc, mine went out while under warranty, they put in the same crap board again and same thing happened, its not the board as much as the connection for data cables it fries out easy, u could try hooking up a hard drive to the idea controller and the computer might work, mine did but then u have no disk drive either cause its data connection, I bought a new board, windows 7 would recognize it so ima have to put xp on it since windows is stupid now and ur never allowed to reuse ur license number for another pc even though Microsoft actually cost per license is about 5the cents, the rich get richer and us poor folk go hungry

[DescentFiend]

my new board rocks, tight

[Farrowz]

my p6320y crapped out on me.  I/O failure on HDD - So, I bought a new one.  Turns out that the factory installed HDD - WD Carviar Green - are notorious for failure.  

BUT...

the new HDD had the same problem.  Found this thread and determined that my wonderful M2N78-LA mobo was the failure 😞

The recommended mobo listed several times is no longer available.  Fortunatly I was able to grab a Gigabyte GA-880GM-UD2H from MicroCenter today ($70).  Since Christmas is upon us I didn't want to wait for a mail-order.

Hopefully this will work like a dream.  Tonight I will find out when I rip the M2N78 out.  As far as the HDD goes; I am going to keep the new seagate because of the failure rate of the WD greens.

$250 spent thus far 😞  Shame on you HP.  For selling me cheap crap - that I bought in to.

[jgnbaworks]

About 15 pages back I told you all what the problem was...... I will say it again.

The Nvidia chipset is junk and as it gets hot looses its connection intergrity. Being a tech, I have had many of these machines across my bench and am yet to find a stable reflow sollution. For those that still have a working machine, get a fan on the heat sink as soon as possible, but this is still no promise.

Better yet, trade it in and sell it now. It WILL fail.

[Farrowz]

thanks for the comment jgnbaworks - but must of us are here too late. Wish I knew about the problem a while back. I would have slapped a fan on in a heart beat.

[protivakid]

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Welp I bought a new motherboard and all is working well again. I went with a BIOSTAR TA880GU3+ from newegg that got pretty good reviews. This board also has 6Gb/s SATA & USB 3.0! The manual was a little confusing with some of the jumper pin settings but I eventually figured it out. Best of all it was only $49.99 shipped after a $10 MIR. Good luck to the rest of you!

@DescentFiend wrote:

"I installed XP 32 bit just to see if it's stable - not one crash... time for me to order win7 and see how 64 bit goes." 

@scorpion99 wrote:
"windows 7 would recognize it so ima have to put xp on it since windows is stupid now and ur never allowed to reuse ur license number for another pc even though Microsoft actually cost per license is about 5the cents, the rich get richer and us poor folk go hungry"

ME: I had NO problem using the Windows 7 key from the sticker on the side of the case along with a Windows 7 64-Bit DVD. I installed Windows 7 Home Prem 1st w/o putting in any key, once installed opened up the activation screen, typed in the key from the side and hit activate. 1 Minute later I was activated :).

@Farrowz wrote:

"The recommended mobo listed several times is no longer available.  Fortunatly I was able to grab a Gigabyte GA-880GM-UD2H from MicroCenter today ($70).  Since Christmas is upon us I didn't want to wait for a mail-order...

 $250 spent thus far 😞  Shame on you HP.  For selling me cheap crap - that I bought in to."

ME: You are usually always better comparing components and building the pc yourself if you want a desktop. As far as shipping, I have had stuff from newegg arrive in less than 24-hours even with the holidays using standard shipping :).

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