Bad hard drive controller?

[Obiwanshinobi900]

So I'm trying to fix a pc for a friend. He said hes been having all sorts of blue screen crashes and errors. And it wasn't a software issue because it was happening on xp and vista.

So far I've concluded its not the ram, video card, processor or dvd drive. (or the case for that matter) And I'm using my own corsair 550watt psu that has been running fine in my old rig for about a year.

What I've noticed is, when I start the pc up, the hard drive I put in it sounds like its trying to start up. It goes *spin spin spin* opposed to *spiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin*. But when I unplug the sata cable from the hard drive it spins right up and sounds like a hard drive should. I've tried also a PATA drive too, no such luck. But the pc will boot if there is just a dvd drive installed with no problem except the fact theres no OS to load without the hard drive. But when I turn the pc off and then plug the hard drive sata cable back in, it boots into windows just fine.

However, when I turn the pc off for say 4 or more hours, I come back and hit the power button and the hard drive wont start up properly. It will though as soon as I unplug the sata cable, and I know the hard drive works just fine because I just pulled it out of my spare pc.

Does this seem like a hard drive controller issue to anyone else? Are there some bios settings that should be changed? What can cause something like this to happen?

Its a gigabyte am2 board by the way. Not sure what the model is, I couldn't find it on the board.

 

[OldMX]

Hard to tell, but i never had a disk controller gone bad in many many years

 

[gigaxtreme1]

Check the area around the southbridge for damage, bent pins on SATA connectors, IDE headers, bulging/leaking capacitors. Check the southbridge heatsink for overheat while operating. Heatsink may be loose. Optical disks have a slower data access rate so throughput may not be affected. Of course make sure there are no screws, etc. underneath the board shorting it out. May have to take the board out and try it on an insulated surface