DV7 6166NR Will not recognize any HDD

I recently allowed a buddy to pay back a debt by taking an HP Pavillion DV7 series laptop in lieu of cash. He and I both thought that there may be an issue surrounding the SATA cable though there were no signs of wear. So I picked up another one expecting to plug in a drive install the OS and drivers and have an extra toy around the house. I have tried all I can think of to get the stupid error messages to go away. I went into the bios to have it only look for USB where I has a bootable ISO waiting, that wasn't going to do it, tried a dvd, again no luck, I don't believe that the drives even make an attempt to spin, I tested four different ones. Anyone have any clue what I could try?
 
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