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

[kiiyt]

The SATA controller I used was this one:

StarTech.com 2 PORT SATA 6 GBPS PCI EXPRESS,

Mfr pn: PEXSAT32

Installed it, connected the HDD & DVD-ROM, booted up perfectly.

PC now running beautifully. Any similar card will work in exactly the same way.

In the UK, I paid £23.50 for the card, plus I had to buy a couple of longer SATA cables, as the original ones were too short to reach the new card.

The computer now has a new lease of life, and will never suffer the same fate, as the SATA controller is now in free air and should not overheat.

It is a really easy fix, good luck!

[iskidoo1]

Ok thank you. I had a Sata controller laying around but it would not recognize it. It's a pci card but I think it only supports 1.5gb transfer speed. Maybe the one you suggest will be seen when booting which should fix my issue. Thanks for the reply.

Best regards, Steve

[ccslmcc]

I've just recovered one of these motherboards with a cheap, £15.99, SATA PCI-Ex controller card from Amazon. It used a "J-Micron" chipset. The system DID boot with the the original SATA hard drive (original WinXP OS "downgrade" license onboard), but it threw a blue screen soon after boot, in safe mode or normal mode. I tried a system recovery using the supplied HP disks but no luck, it wouldn't recognsie the controller. I ended up doing a manual Win7 build which allowed me to install the drivers during the install. Works perfectly now, but it meant I was unable to use the original OS license. Moral of story, make sure you use a SATA controller which is supported by the drivers on the HP recovery disk - but how does one know which are? The post above is helpful (Startech controller seems to work?). My tests conclude you should not use a board with a J-Micron controller.

[quackers111]

It took me a  month to find this thread, but here I am.  My HP with a M2N78-LA motherboard also died in July.  I bought it around 2009, like most of you. I guess I should be grateful that it lasted upwards of 4 years, unlike many of you unfortunate folk.  I needed a new desktop immediately, so I have already bought a new computer.   I am not highly knowledgeable on the inner workings of computers, but my research skills are awesome, so I was able to find the very useful information in this thread. I feel bad for all of the people out there who will never find this information even though they have experienced the same problem.

I first knew something was wrong with this model when I was playing a PC game just a couple of months after purchase and the graphics would run extremely slow every few minutes. After researching I discovered it was a problem with the Nvidia chipset and overheating.  After that I would open up my computer and clean out the dust every couple of months. Perhaps that's why it lasted a little longer. But like I said, I don't know a whole lot about how all of the pieces of the computer fit together, so I could not foresee what was to come.

Anyway, thank you all for the very useful information and I had already decided that I would not be purchasing another HP or Nvidia products.  Now my task is to recover the information that was on that hard drive, which I am not certain about but I think will require me to buy something that connects my old hard drive to my new PC. Does anyone have any advice on a product that does this?

[wb2001]

You can use this to copy data files to your new computer.

Just to clarify, it was a faulty batch of Nvidia Sata controller chips that were the problem. HP did not make the chip. Your comment is unwarranted!  It's like saying the issue with the Firestone recall (circa 1971) would stop me from buying another Ford, just because of the faulty tires.

[Vetteguy63]

Proffesor, I know that HP didn't make that graphics board, but HP's name is on that computer and they could have stood behind their product better. Hense, I won't buy another HP product again either.

[ccslmcc]

I disagree. Firstly, the cooling solution designed and provided by HP was WOEFULLY inadequate. All the systems I retrofitted with fans are still giving service today. Also, if HP had done even rudimentary temperature analysis or reliability testing they would have discovered this fatal flaw. This inadequacy of HP engineering is not what I would expect. Coupled with HP's silence on the matter (why no response on here?). It's why I no longer resell HP and why I tell everyone who asks for my recommendation not to buy HP. Pity, as I thought HP were better than this.

[PCarter]

Here's another confirmation that installing a SATA controller card can solve some of the problems discussed here and possibly rescue a non-working machine from the scrap  heap.

Model: HP Pavilion p6210y with the m2n78-la motherboard. Windows 7 Home Premium.

Symptoms: After a few hours of operation, some applications and windows would become unresponsive. Eventually all applications, the task bar, and the entire desktop, would become unresponsive, requiring forced shutdown. Also, the disk-access light on the front panel would stay illuminated constantly. After cooling down overnight, the machine could be rebooted and the cycle would repeat. If not allowed to cool down, the boot sequence would freeze on the low-res HP splash screen, and none of the configuration keys (F9, F10, etc.) would work.

The product I bought: IO Crest 2 Port SATA III PCI-Express x1 Card (SY-PEX40039) by Syba.

This cost about $20; it's available from many sources; has many positive reviews on Amazon and Newegg.

It uses the ASM1061 Chipset (Asmedia 1061 SATA Host Controller), which is AHCI compliant, which means that a basic driver is included in Windows 7.

My machine, though crippled, was still functioning well enough to boot into Windows from the motherboard (after being allowed to cool down overnight). So I installed the card in one of the free slots and booted the machine. Windows started up, found the new card, and installed a driver for it; and even found/downloaded a better driver after a few minutes of running. So I never needed to manually install a driver.

I shut down the machine as soon as Windows stabilized, then disconnected the HDD from the motherboard, and connected it to Port 1 of the new controller card, then rebooted. It worked fine, and has continued to work for 8 or more hours at a stretch.

Later I also connected the CD/DVD drive to Port 2 and tried playing a couple of audio CDs from it. No problem.

I want to say thank you to the people who discovered this solution and posted to this forum. Prior to reading those posts I had concluded that a new motherboard was needed, which would have required either buying an exact replacement, at high cost, with all its inherent flaws, or buying an equivalent motherboard like the Gigabyte GA-MA785GM-US2H, and then rewiring the various front-panel controls and obtaining a new copy of Windows 7, for a combined cost many multiples of the $20 SATA controller card.

I will append to this post if the machine fails in the future.

[ccslmcc]

PCarter - excellent information which might well help others rescue a dying machine.

Wouldn't have been "honourable" of HP to ship a SATA card with installation instructions to all those affected by this issue? For a few $ they'd have got me and others shouting from the rooftops about HP service and advising people to buy HP (as I used to!). Instead they have created a mass of people who won't risk buying HP again. As a reseller, the two customers of mine who suffered multiple HP tower failures 18-24 months after installation were very understanding of my psoition and stayed loyal - I thought I may have lost them over this issue. With both clients I took remedial action to install extra cooling fans on the other towers before they failed and this seems to have worked. Good job I give my customers better care than HP!

I've switched to Acer and Zoostorm over two years ago and have been very happy, so far, with reliability of these two brands.

Sorry HP, I will say it again, you didn't "do right" by your customers over this issue.

[Sweetdouma]

My HP desktop only lasted 3 months after paying almost $900 for it...HP refused to fix it because supposedly they found insect droppings (spider web) when the tech -  while on the phone-  had me take out  memory sticks, CD drives, change cables back and forth between hard drive and CD two nights before it was ship out to the Texas location. If this was the case, I would have noticed it but it wasnt...I even followed some advices from here escallating it to the big ones... what a waste of time...Still have it with a 1 TB of hard drive and 6 GB of memory sitting in the garage....NO MORE HP FOR ME!!!