SATA Connection Questions

[Stoney]

I am trying to help someone with an 0x9C error issue without actually being able to see his PC (he lives in Turkey and I live in the States). We have narrowed it down to his harddrive SATA connection. The harddrive passes all diagnostic tests and it works in another computer but when it is attached in his PC he is getting contant restarts regardless of the SATA ports he is connected to.

His mother board is an MSI MS-7360 P35 Neo-F and it has 7 SATA ports.

Numbers 5 and 6 are ICH9R only and SATA 7 is controlled by Marvell 88SE 6117.

Pardon my ignorance but what is the significance of ICH9R and Marvell 88SE 6117 as compared to the standard SATA connections? If he happened to connect to 5, 6, or 7 what would be the result or issue.

Thanks for the help. It is much appreciated because I need it.

[Paul Komski]

Numbers 5 and 6 are ICH9R only and SATA 7 is controlled by Marvell 88SE 6117.

These relate to different chipsets controlling different groups of SATA drives attached to that chipset's host controllers. This in not unusual on many boards. 1 through 4 are probably on another chipset that might support higher levels of RAID and are kept discrete from the one on 5/6 and the lone one on 7.

With just one hard drive in a system it should make no difference which port it is attached to as long as the BIOS sees it and it has the correct options configured.

That said, constant reboots are more commonly caused by such things as malware, bad memory, overheating and loose connections or an inadequate power supply. Blue screen stop errors can also be both hardware and software based so trying things in SafeMode is always worth a troubleshooting attempt.

Which OS?

[Stoney]

Paul, your response is most appreciated; his OS is XP. Here is what we have done:

I had him run Memtest for 7+ Passes. He ran it on individual sticks as well. They passed.

I had him run a harddrive diagnostics. He ran SeaTools S.M.A.R.T., Short DST, and Long DST tests and the harddrive passed all.

I had him switch out SATA cables and he still had restart issues.

So since 0x9C errors can be due to any hardware I had him do the old tried and true and sometimes tedious work of uninstalling every piece of hardware except PSU, CPU, and RAM. It started up and remained so without restart. (I have been wondering if it might not be his PSU as you point out but everything else is running and there is no way I can explain to him how to use a multimeter; I may need to reconsider the PSU as a strong possibility).

I directed him to shut the system down and add another piece of hardware and restart and so on. So far from what he reports the restarting begins when the harddrive is attached to the motherboard.

Now I've got to walk him through the BIOS, as you also mention, to see if his SATA is enabled and to have him set up the Boot Sequence.

[Paul Komski]

So far from what he reports the restarting begins when the harddrive is attached to the motherboard.

I guess this is a function of the Operating System and is likely to be software related rather than anything else.

If it does the same thing in Safe Mode then maybe try booting to a CD. If a troubleshooting or live CD works that would almost certainly take the hard drive itself out of the equation.