Did I kill it?

BetelguesePDX

My PC has an ASUS A8N SLI deluxe motherboard. This morning while trying to install the monstrosity that is the EVGA Nvidia GTX 260, I basically smashed 2 sets of pins. I believe they were labelled SATA 1 and SATA 2. There were 2 wires plugged into these pins. Fortunately there were identical sets of pins just above the ones I destroyed that said SATA 3 and SATA 4. These were unoccupied. So I took whatever was plugged into the (now obliterated) SATA 1 and SATA 2 pins and stuck them into the SATA 3 and SATA 4 pins.

Now when I boot up the PC it does its little BIOS dance and when it comes time to boot up Windows, it says "A disk read error has occurred". "Press Ctrl+alt+del to restart."

Did I kill my 'puter or is there a way to salvage it? I tried getting the pin thingy's to go back in to the SATA 1 and SATA 2 part place thingy but it's borked good so that is not going to work in case someone is going to suggest that.

Thanks.

edit: uh... I dunno how I posted this in the Artist's corner. One of the mods please move it to Help and Advice please where I had intended it to go.

acadia

Just go into the BIOS and tell it where to boot from. It's trying to read the disk, but doesn't know where to look since you've moved it.

BetelguesePDX

Ahh, thanks.

Could someone maybe point me to a walkthrough somewhere on how exactly to do this?

BetelguesePDX

So I'm looking at the BIOS and here is what it says:

First SATA Master [None]
2nd SATA Master [None]
Third SATA Master [WDC WD1600JS-60M]
Fourth SATA Master [WDC WD1600JS-60M]
HDD Smart Monitoring [Enabled]

Doesn't that mean that it the BIOS does know where the HDD is?

BetelguesePDX

So I'm looking at the BIOS and here is what it says:

First SATA Master [None]
2nd SATA Master [None]
Third SATA Master [WDC WD1600JS-60M]
Fourth SATA Master [WDC WD1600JS-60M]
HDD Smart Monitoring [Enabled]

Doesn't that mean that it the BIOS does know where the HDD is?

matt has a problem

It knows you have HDD's attached to SATA 3 and 4, but if you go into the boot menu it's probably still set to boot from 1 or 2. Alternately, when you boot your PC, hit F8 to get to the boot menu, and see what shows up there. If it shows your two HDDs, it means it can see them but just doesn't know to boot from them.

illig

you probably need to change the boot order around

another part of BIOS should have a listing of what the boot order is... something like CD-ROM, HDD0, HDD1, etc.

try changing the options to include the sata 3 + 4 locations where you moved your drives

BetelguesePDX

Sorry for the double post above, laggy laptop.

So I went to the BIOS and the boot order simply has an option to have hard disk as #1. Which I changed it to hard disk. It doesn't have specifics about which SATA to boot from, simply hard disk, CD, removable, etc. I still get the message when I restart: "A disk read error has occured". Press ctrl+alt+del to restart.

Maybe my hard disk is dead?

matt has a problem

When you go into bios under boot, there's a submenu called "hard drives" if I remember right (I have an a8n-sli too). Are both your drives showing up there, and if so, is your OS drive in the #1 spot?

Topweasel

matthasaproblem wrote: »

When you go into bios under boot, there's a submenu called "hard drives" if I remember right (I have an a8n-sli too). Are both your drives showing up there, and if so, is your OS drive in the #1 spot?

It will look a lot like the boot priority menu but obviously not.

I would also recommend in the future finding a friend or relative to help you (not necessarily do it) with computer work in the future. I would recommend researching installation techniques and bios setting (even if your not changing them you should know what they do). This isn't a put down or anything but the smashing of those ports and not being familiar with bios setting can be bad if you are trying to anything more complicated. This could cause you to lose use of hundreds of dollars of equipment if done wrong.