D510MO

Does yours actually boot from the CD?

If you do boot from the CD, do any of the Admin tools see the HDD and let you format/partition/mount/whatever it?

Yes I can get it to boot from the CD but when I do, it can't find the hard drive.

The main pattern I see is that if I disconnect the hard rive and reconnect it, soemtimes the boot will go quickly and will respond to F2 in about 2 seconds.
If I don't change anything and boot it again, it will take a few minutes to respond to F2 and it won't find the hard drive.

Possibilites, maybe the power supply isn't working properly and not letting the HDD turn off properly?

Maybe the hard rive is faulty?

Maybe the motherboard is faulty?

Not sure what to try next.

I brought the HDD to Frys on the way to work, and the tested it on a bench computer, it worked fine.

Unless I'm missing something this narrows it down to the mother board.

I think I passed 30 days so I will probably have to buy another one.

Have you a way to run a memory check?

TarHeelTom wrote:

Have you a way to run a memory check?

There was some kind of memory check when I was starting ubuntu from the CD, I let it run for about 15 minutes and didn't see any problems so I stopped the test, it looked like it could run for a long time based on the % indicator.

I was able to run ubuntu and EMC2 from the CD so I assume that the memory must be working OK.

BigJohnT wrote:

Does it "see" the HD in the bios setting screen?

John

That is the strange thing, it does see the HDD the first time it is connected and booted and I go to the BIOS page, but if I boot it again without touching anything else and go to the BIOS page the HDD is not shown. It says something like "no hard disk drive".

BigJohnT wrote:

What if you plug the HD into the other SATA port does it still disappear on you? Just trying to do some hillbilly diagnostics...

John

Tried that, too, same result, also tried switching cables, reveresed them end to end, same results.

BigJohnT wrote:

That does sorta sound like the motherboard to me then... but you don't have another HD to eliminate that possibility so could be either at this point.

Is the CD drive found every time no matter what port you plug it into?

John

Thanks for suffering through this with me.

I don't have another SATA drive, this is my first SATA computer. Might be worth buying one to troubleshoot with.

I think the CD is found everytime, about 90% sure of that.

Looks like the next move is another mother board, I don't have a good feeling about this but what else can I try?