No devices found, AHCI BIOS not installed, blue screen issues and problems restarting

[monksy]

I recently bought a computer, in december last year
Dell Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU
5130 @2.00GHz
2.00 GHz, 3GB of RAM
Running on Windows XP professional and with an ASUS EAH4350 silent 1GB graphics card and yes all drivers are installed and up to date

The problem i have is that when i turn my computer on it says no devices found and that AHCI BIOS is not installed, and when i am on my computer (mostly when playing games) my screen (which is an Akura 19" LCD TV/DVD combi) goes to blue screen and says 'no signal' and any music that was playing becomes a loud repeated thumping like when a cd gets stuck. The only option i have is to turn the computer off via the on/off button by holding it in until it turns off. After this my computer wont restart for 2-3 tries and instead when i press the on button a small 4 lights up on the front and it makes a 3 second buzzing noise repeated with a second inbetween and does not load up, so i have to turn it off via the button.

Any ideas whats wrong? and what does AHCI BIOS not installed actually mean?

 

[jdillman1502]

Do you have a single drive or multiple drives setup in a RAID configuration? The message you are seeing is fine (and normal) if you have no RAID. It usually will just pass it so quickly that you didn't notice it was there. How long have you let the pc set at that error message?

 

[monksy]

I have two drives one terrabyte and one 93GB, the 93GB is from my old computer but i had the problem before i installed it, and i haven't done aynthing special other than install the second harddrive

 

[jdillman1502]

Does the computer hang at the message "ACHI BIOS not installed" when it boots?

 

[monksy]

nope it only comes up for about 8 seconds while it loads everything else
the problem is the screen going off and the computer crashing
i thought it was my graphics card because it says that Microsoft recommend not using it on windows XP but on the box it says designed for XP/Vista

 

[jdillman1502]

Ok, do not worry about this message then. I would suggest testing your pc's memory for errors. Do you have access to another pc to burn a cd? If so, download memtest86 from here:

http://www.memtest86.com/memtest86-3.5a.iso.zip

Then follow the guide for using it here:

https://www.techspot.com/vb/topic62524.html

 

[monksy]

Do i need to use another computer to do it?
and thanks, i'll give it a try and post back results

 

[jdillman1502]

It's not necessary to use another pc to do it. You just need to be able to get into Windows to burn the cd. If you are able to do it on your pc, that is fine.

 

[monksy]

No luck, computer is still randomly getting no signal and crashing

 

[captaincranky]

Any ideas whats wrong? and what does AHCI BIOS not installed actually mean?

I'm not sure what's wrong with the computer, but "AHCI" stands for "Advanced Host Controller Interface". This is actually the name for "SATA", specifically SATA not being run in any "RAID" configuration.

Usually, "AHCI" or "SATA" drivers, are "slip streamed" into the computer's "restore disc". So, when an installation is made from a "restore disc", no user intervention is required. When Windows XP is installed from a Windows disc, at a given point, "F-6" must be pressed, the SATA drivers installed. then the Windows installation can continue. Windows XP cannot run ACHI mode natively, aftermarket driver software is require

In a home brew computer, you can choose to run any SATA drive, in "IDE" emulation mode, simply by making a single entry configuration change in the motherboard BIOS. This dispenses with the need to install SATA drivers altogether.

Depending on how Dell configured your machine, the "AHCI BIOS not installed" could mean nothing or everything. I suppose that would depend on whether it just started , or it always did it, and you just started noticing it.

One thing I would point out, bizarre symptoms such as you describe, would normally not manifest themselves in a drive mode conflict, the computer simply wouldn't boot, or would continually try to reboot in what is known as an "IDE loop".

You mention gaming. It is entirely possible that your power supply is either failing, or is simply not up to the task. OEM PSUs are notorious for being under powered and failure prone. At least that's one thing that might easily explain a BSOD / no signal during heavy use.