SATA Card - unable to boot

Ok, some concise as possble history.

- HP model p6404y
- Stopped booting some time ago, just getting time to fix it.
- Extensive internet searches revealed many many users with identical issues with the cause being a bad SATA controller on the motherboard.
- Suspected cause was an over heating onboard graphics card.
- Symptoms were that neither the SATA CD/DVD or SATA HD were being recognized by BIOS.
- Booting would show message asking to insert a bootable disk and press any key.
- 1 in 50 reboots would show the HD for about 10 seconds before it disappeared.

Trying to fix this by . . .

- Installing a SATA controller card so that SATA drives can be read by the system.
- Install a dedicated Graphics Card so that the over heating issue is mitigated in the futture.

The card I bought today is the Vantec UGT-ST310R. This has RAID ability but I'm only using it as a SATA controller.

- Installed the Hardware attached te 2 drives.
- Both the CD/DVD and HD are now detected in the system BIOS.
- Both drives are also detected by the Vantect Card's Bios.
- I have not created any RAIDs

The system starts, shows the HP splash, shows hte SATA card bios stuff, then shows the Windows Error Recovery. I lauch the Windows Start Up Repair option. This is further than I got before installing the SATA card.

I get to the System recovery Options screen. The systems OS is not listed. I click the Load Drivers button. I have used my laptop to copy the contents of the CD that came with the SATA card to a SD card. I did this because the CD/DVD is not readable just like the HD drive at this point. I navigate to the folder on the SD card that has the drivers for my card \UGT-ST310R\XP_2003_Vista\64bit. It is looking for a "System Information" file. If you select the wrong file it will say "this file does not contain information about your device" or similar.

In the directory there are two System Information files. I select "si3114r5. the "Add Drivers" screen comes up. There are 23 entries all say "Silicon Image SiI 3114 SoftRaid 5 Controller". I click the Add Drivers button. A status box comes up saying "Adding Dirvers . . ." for many many minutes. When it stops it returns to the System recovery Option screen. At this time it is my understanding that I should see an OS entry listed. But there is nothing.

That's my story. Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Thanks Pooch. I iterated through each folder on the install disk and loaded all files of "Setup Information" type.

My drive did not appear in the list, still.

I also am in the tedious process of going throught the Driver Store in System32 and loading all those System32 "Setup Information" files. My theory is that may if the Manufacturer drive is not working then another one shipped with Windows 7 will. Or perhaps that some drive needs to be loas for hte PCI slot itself, just a guess.

I think your right. I should be able to put the SATA drive into a USB enclosure and move the contents off. If I do so I might as well replace the motherboard at that time. I was trying to avoid the total pain of re-installing the whole OS, all my software, all the configuration, etc., etc.

Before a total rebuild, what about trying a different SATA card? Maybe try one a little more simple with no RAID? MircoCenter said I could return this card if it did not work.

Ok, got back from the store. Returned the old card, bought 2 different cards to try out. Put the first one in. Noticed that when I was copying the drivers onto he SD card, that there was a AMD Floppy 64 folder.

Loaded drivers. Now teh Windows OS is listed in the Start Up recovery options. I am not running the tools to try to recover.

THANKS!

I was able to load the drivers into the temporary Windows OS that is loaded when you go into system restore. This allows the system drive to be seen. Within System Repair I can even restore a System restore point from earlier. I was able to successfuly do a CHDSK and repair. I can also see the drive/volume using DiskPart from the command prompt within the System Repair OS.

But it seems that the load of the drive is only impacting that temp OS used by Startup Repair. It is not saved. If I re-boot the changes are not saved to this temporary OS. Nor are they saved to the main OS on the HD from which I ultimately want to boot from.

So question is, from the command prompt in Startup Repair, can I install drivers into the OS on the system volume so that when the computer boots up normally, the drivers for this new card are loaded and allows the OS to load normally from the system volume????

You may need a IDE jump drive for the boot files.

OK, getting one step closer.

Called my boss, who happens to be a byopc super genius. He walked me through installing the drivers manually.

With the driver finally loaded into the System Recovery OS (SROS) environment . . .

1. Copy the SATA diver SYS file from the SROS ..\windows\system32\drivers to the volume on the disk that contains the Windows 7 boot ..\windows\system32\drivers

2. Inspect the INF and other files in TextPad to get an idea of where the registry entries are.

3. In the System recovery environment, open the Command Prompt.

4. type regedit to open the registry editor.

5. at the command prompt load the drive's system's OS registry into the reg environment. Note: all my reg entries for my driver were in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM

reg load HKLM\OLD_SYSTEM h:\windows\system32\config\system

6. Switch to the registry editor. Find the locations where your drivers entries are. Export REG files for each entry folder.

7. Open each REG files in notepad. Replace "SYSTEM" with "OLD_SYSTEM". Save and close.

8. Back in the reg eidtor, Choose file import for each REG file.

9. at the command prompt unload that registry seciton.

reg unload HKLM\OLD_SYSTEM

10. Restart the machine.


This has worked for me. Now, I have had to do a system retore and repeat this process again because on the first load some other drivers failed to install and botched everything up. So I took out some hardware (not the SATA card) and reset the BIOS to factory default. Then system restore and repeated the steps above.

The drivers installed correctly this time when I logged into Windows.

I now installed the SATA card drivers like a normal person from the disk using the install program.

rebooted.

The system tried to re-install the HD drivers, which it did and rebooted. The shutting down froze forever and then BSOD.

I was able to boot in Safe Mode, and then reboot normally.

Everything works now and I saved a System Restore point.

My next step is to install the new Graphics card to take load off of that on board card.

I hope this help HP owners with p6404y model comptures with M2N78-LA version 6 motherboards. When i first had this problem I found hundreds of users with the same issue. Mine was actually under warrenty at the time, but shipping it to and from HP for repair was a risk in itself. Some other users were claiming that HP rejected the warrently claim and asked for $400 to replace the motherboard. Again the general consensus is that the north bridge graphics card is overheating and burning the SATA controller on the mother board.

I would recommend to anyone that they install dedicated Grpahics Card in their system to avoid this problem before it happens. Even the $30 ones are better then whats one the motherboard. The one I got has a gigantic heat sink about 6 times the size as the north bride.

This solution cost me $25 for the SATA card, and $30 for the Graphics card.