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I'm trying to help a friend out. He's got a Dell XPS that's several years old. A week or two ago, he shut it off when leaving the house. When he came back, he turned it on and got a BIOS message saying "SATA 0 not found." I had him pick up one of those USB drive adapters so he could try plugging it in to another computer to make sure the drive wasn't hosed. He was able to do that and navigate the files on the drive using another computer that also has WinXP on it.
So based on that, I figured it was probably the disk controller on the motherboard. He found a place selling the same model motherboard and purchased it. We put it in and it was doing the same thing. Ok. The disk controller on the motherboard isn't the problem.
So then I tried a bunch of stuff to see if I could narrow down where the problem lay. Here's what I did:
I'm trying to figure out what could be the problem. The only thing I can think of at this point is there is a problem with the CPU. What do you all think? What else could be causing the problem?
So based on that, I figured it was probably the disk controller on the motherboard. He found a place selling the same model motherboard and purchased it. We put it in and it was doing the same thing. Ok. The disk controller on the motherboard isn't the problem.
So then I tried a bunch of stuff to see if I could narrow down where the problem lay. Here's what I did:
- Connected his drive to another machine via SATA interface - worked fine,
- Connected another SATA drive to his machine via SATA interface - not found by BIOS,
- ...using different SATA cables - not found by BIOS,
- ...using external power from USB drive adapter - not found by BIOS,
- ...using other SATA ports on motherboard - not found by BIOS,
- Connected a PATA drive to his machine via IDE interface - worked fine,
- Checked BIOS settings, and they all look correct/wasn't able to find any that made SATA visible.
I'm trying to figure out what could be the problem. The only thing I can think of at this point is there is a problem with the CPU. What do you all think? What else could be causing the problem?