Digital Art Zone

The notebook screen said;

AMIBIOS (C) 2006 American Megatrends, Inc.
BIOS Date: 12/03/09 Ver 206
CPU : Pentium (R) Dual- Core CPU T4400 @ 2.20GHz

The MCH is operating with DDR2-667/CL5 in Dual-Channel Mode
Initializing USB Controllers . . Done.
4096MB OK

Auto-Detecting AHCI PORT 0 . .SATA Hard Disk
Auto-Detecting AHCI PORT 1 . .ATAPI CDROM
SATA Port0 ST9500325AS 0002SDM1
SATA Port1 Optiarc DVD-/-RW AD-7580S FD06
Auto-detecting USB Mass Storage Devices . .
00 USB mass storage devices found and configured

AHCI Port0 Device Error
Press F2 to Resume

I cannot get pass that screen.  Does anyone have any ideas what that could mean?

Also if it needs new parts, would it be better to save up and replace them or save up to get a new notebook computer?

I thought I had a topic about this but it must have been on the old forum as I could not find it.

Looks like a hard disk problem; can’t tell exactly what from that message.  What, if anything, happens when you press F2?

Pull the hard drive and see if it gives you an “OS not found” type error.  If it does, then the drive is probably the problem…if it doesn’t then it’s probably the drive controller.

Before pulling the hard drive I would try simply removing all power.  i.e. Completely shut down the computer. Unplug the AC power connector. Remove the battery for a minute or two.  Then reinstall the battery and the AC power and power up the computer normally.  Complete loss of power should force a reset of the hardware.  The clock should be OK it usually runs off a tiny battery on the motherboard.

Might work.  Easy to do.  Can’t hurt.

LeatherGryphon - 14 October 2012 06:18 PM

Before pulling the hard drive I would try simply removing all power.  i.e. Completely shut down the computer. Unplug the AC power connector. Remove the battery for a minute or two.  Then reinstall the battery and the AC power and power up the computer normally.  Complete loss of power should force a reset of the hardware.  The clock should be OK it usually runs off a tiny battery on the motherboard.

Might work.  Easy to do.  Can’t hurt.

I removed the battery a bit after when I read this post and left it out all night.  I am going to put the battery in tonight after I get home and try it.  Will that be enough time?

The only way to reset the hardware settings is to disengage power from the bios as it is this that holds the settings for the hardware. However this doesn’t necessarily always work with laptops as the settings can be written to an EEPROM chip so that removal of the button battery doesn’t always work when it comes to erasing the bios.

In this case however this is unlikely to resolve the issue as it looks like a hardware failure, either the hard drive has gone the way of the dodo (one easy way of checking this would be to get a sata/usb interface, something like this - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812232002) or the controller has gone belly up. If the former is true then it’s a new hard drive and an easy (if lengthy, as far re-installs go) fix if it’s the latter then ebay it as parts and get a new machine as it would mean a new motherboard and having had more then a few laptops apart it would probably be better to get a new machine as the costs involved (new motherboard, repair, etc…) might be prohibitive (plus a shiny new machine would have all new hardware to play with).

One thing you may want to check before you go any further is you may need to reset your BIOS or make a few adjustments. Your BIOS could be corrupt or just needs to be reset (which is done from the BIOS itself), but another possibility is the SATA controller is set wrong in the BIOS itself.
If you have a digital camera I suggest going to each page of the BIOS and taking a snapshot so you have a record of what it was if you need to go back.
Now boot into your BIOS (usually hold down F2 or DEL as the computer turns on)
and look for the following settings

HP or Compaq Computers
• Check your setting for SATA Native Mode and make sure it’s off.

Acer
• Switch the SATA Mode to IDE (if it’s on AHCI)

save your settings and reboot.
If it doesn’t work, set them back, no harm done.