Sata Drives not seen and Bios will not boot

[pscott1955]

Hi, I am having a problem with my Acer x130 running Vista

It has been working fine until recently and I experienced a system crash. The computer will power up but does not see my hard drive even though its recognised in bios. I have pulled the battery out to force a reset, I have adjusted bios, I have checked bios settings against another (Identical) machine that is working fine. I have fitted another Sata drive with XP installed. All to no avail. The system seems to boot but then will attempt to start windows before flicking through a blue screen to reset the display to show 'no signal'.

I sometimes get a screen that asks to start repair or boot normally. neither function works and the repair function returns me to an earlier screen.

I have checked the sata drive (vista) in another machine and can access it so the data is intact. I have tried everything that I can think of and am now at wits end! help!!

 

[Tmagic650]

This is a Netbook?

 

[pscott1955]

No its a small footprint desktop. it should read x1300 not x130. I am wondering if the power supply might cause this problem as swapping drives and resetting bios are having no effect

 

[pscott1955]

Have tried two different power supplies and no difference.
a 'no signal' screen comes up and then it returns to reboot offering 'del' for set up and 'f12'. resetting these makes no difference

I have reset the cmos settings and have pulled the battery / power out a couple of times too.

I tested different hard drives on it in case that was the problem and managed to get as far as a windows 2000 screen on one old drive before it took me back to rebooting and the offer of Del and f12
I have changed a couple of the cables supplying power to the drives.

I am at a loss as to what to do next.

 

[Tmagic650]

The motherboard is probably bad (bios corruption)