acer ax3400 sata controller

smos585

Can any techies answer this query.

I have an Acer Aspire AX3400 sff pc running win 7 where neither of the SATA devices are recognised in BIOS, and consequently won't boot. Checked the BIOS and is set to SATA rather than IDE; tried reverting to default settings same issue. (checked the hdd on another PC and is fine)

So I assume the motherboard sata controller is awol. Am I right in thinking that if I put a PCI-E sata controller on that wouldn't work either as the BIOS won't recognise it; further ,chicken and egg, no way of loading the drivers anyway?

Any thoughts other than changing the mobo? TIA

robmar0se

Try another PSU and see if it makes a difference..........

TakeThis

Have you installed the correct Chipset Driver?

Typical contents:

Ethernet Driver (v65.55) WHQL
SMBus Driver (v4.60) WHQL
Installer (v5.40)
IDE SataRAID Driver (v9.31) WHQL
IDE SataIDE Driver (v9.31) WHQL
RAIDTOOL Application (v9.31)
SMU (v1.23) WHQL

smos585

robmar0se wrote: »

Try another PSU and see if it makes a difference..........

thanks, just tried that, makes no difference..........

smos585

TakeThis wrote: »

Have you installed the correct Chipset Driver?

Typical contents:

Thank you for your idea/suggestion. Unfortunately, since the system won't boot, I can't get in to check - I did look on the Acer website, and it gave absolutely nothing, I was really looking for a BIOS upgrade. I have also tried removing the CMOS battery, but nothing is giving me an alternative to a new mobo. Very frustrating as system is less than 2 years old.

TakeThis

I should have read more carefully.

So did you install the latest BIOS(P01.B3)?

Which settings have you chosen?

smos585

TakeThis wrote: »

I should have read more carefully.

So did you install the latest BIOS(P01.B3)?

Which settings have you chosen? /QUOTE]

Thank you. - wonder why I couldn’t find this Acer site?

Anyway what I have is a system that will not boot beyond the BIOS via HDD, DVD or flash drive, as BIOS says there are no SATA devices. The BIOS settings are SATA enabled, using AHCI; I have tried changing the latter to IDE, I have also tried resetting to default setting just in case, I have also changed the boot sequence to see if I could get the system to boot at all.

Next I tried a SI PCI_E SATA controller card; I followed the RAID BIOS setup instructions, for a single hdd, the RAID BIOS shows the HDD and DVD. However If I try to boot with any DVD loaded I just get a flashing curser. Without the DVD the system attempts to boot into Windows, I get the MS screen, and then it just reboots. If I boot into the win 7/64 repair option, it loads what I assume is the recovery partition as drive X. None of the recovery options work, it is interesting that in the command prompt, I can see the C & D drives, but these are referred to as removable and are not accessible.

As I have a hdd with linux on it I wonder if I download the new BIOS onto it whether I could update the BIOS from there? My only query is whether the Acer BIOS download can be run from within the Linux system?

TakeThis

Included in the downloaded BIOS is the option to update via DOS/MS-DOS.

smos585

Upgraded the Bios as suggested - in the end had to use a hdd booting via DOS, still no joy, so unless I can find a pci-e sata card that allows access to a dvd, it'll have to be a new mobo or a new machine.........

Thanks for your support.