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Pegatron M2N78-LA (rev. 3.02) freezes on POST with SATA drives attached

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    Pegatron M2N78-LA (rev. 3.02) freezes on POST with SATA drives attached

    Like the title says, I have a Pegatron M2N78-LA (HP P/N: 513430-002) motherboard out of an HP Pavilion PC. The motherboard hard-locks during POST when it gets to the part of trying to detect the SATA devices *only* if there is a SATA device (be it HDD or optical drive) connected to any of the SATA ports. I cannot enter BIOS or do anything when this occurs. Pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del cannot restart the system either. In fact, the keyboard locks up too (Num Lock status LED cannot be toggled anymore.). However, if I disconnect everything from the motherboard's SATA ports, the motherboard can POST successfully and then goes on with the usual message that there is “No Boot Device Found” (which is true.) Also, when I have everything disconnected from the motherboard's SATA ports, I can go into BIOS without problems and change settings as I like. Actually, the first thing I tried was resetting CMOS settings (several times, too) and making sure everything is set correctly there.

    On that note, I've noticed that if I set the SATA device type to either IDE or RAID, the motherboard won't hard-lock during POST, but instead will just sit on the SATA device detection screen and never goes past it. Pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del can restart the system fine and keyboard doesn't lock up. Only when I have the SATA device type set to ACHI (which is the default value, BTW), the board hard-locks

    Unfortunately, the M2N78-LA doesn't have onboard IDE controller, so I can't test with an IDE HDD or optical drive. However, the board does have an FDD / floppy controller. Interestingly enough, that doesn't appear to work either - the motherboard never sees the floppy drive/device as connected. As such, inserting a bootable floppy does nothing (not even an attempt is made to spin it up.) Just to be sure, I did test with two known working FDDs and cables that I used recently, too. Now if I am not mistaken, FDD goes through the Super IO / LPC chip, which traditionally also provides PS/2, Serial, and Parallel port functions (and on this board, at least my test PS/2 keyboard was working fine.)

    With that said, probably first thing I should mention is that the M2N78-LA does use a GeForce chipset / MCP (and I suspect that may be the root of the problem.)
    In fact, there appears to be noticeable heat discoloration on the PCB around and under the chipset, along with a few other hot areas - though that is more or less something I regularly see on these GeForce chipsets, since manufacturers rarely bother to put adequate heatsinks on them (and these suckers run hot too.)
    https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1606626406

    In terms of what I've tested with / so far…
    - I've tried with different HDDs and optical drives - one device or multiple devices at a time, and tested on all ports. Interesting note here: when an optical drive is connected to the SATA ports, the drive becomes locked and trying to eject the tray does nothing.
    - I've tried different and known-good sticks of RAM in different slots, one stick at a time.
    - I've tested with two known good PSUs – one of them being a fully recapped HiPro and the other a partially-recapped Delta.
    - I've tried resetting CMOS (in fact, I keep the motherboard without a CMOS battery, as I can't really use it for a PC build, obviously.)
    - I've tried different CPUs too - both the original Athlon II X4 that came with the HP Pavilion PC and also a known-good X2 5200+.
    - And finally, I did try a quick reflow/reheat of the nVidia chipset. But I only managed to heat it to ~180C, so perhaps it wasn't hot enough. Nothing changed in terms of function (or lack thereof) after this.
    - Oh, and regarding caps - I checked (out of circuit) all of the single ones that filter important rails and even replaced a few, just in case… but still no change in operation.

    So any ideas what else I could try?

    I think I pretty much exhausted most options. Maybe reflow GF MCP again? Otherwise, I was also thinking maybe I can get a PCI-E 1x SATA expansion card (though I feel like that may not be worth the investment, considering this is a GeForce chipset motherboard.) What's your take on that?

    As far as history of the board goes… well, I picked up this PC as scrap, along with 10-12 others, from a PC repair shop that was cleaning up storage. So unfortunately, I don't have any history of when the motherboard failed or how. All I can say is that about 2/3 of the other PCs from that place ended up working. Many just needed minor work, like new caps, working PSU, and/or good cleaning, along with parts (most lacked RAM, HDD, and etc.)

    Anyways, here is a picture of the motherboard, so you can see what I'm dealing with:
    https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1606626406

    Also, here are a few pictures of the chipset, from before the reflow (with gunk thermal compound still on there) and after the reflow (cleaned).
    https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1606626406
    https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1606626406
    The chipset is a GeForce GF8100P-A-A2. Are these affected by the bumpgate? And if so, would you say I'd be wasting time trying to reflow it again? I have a similar Pegatron motherboard from another HP PC from that repair shop. Not sure if it also is an M2N78-LA or not, but from what I could tell when I had it opened, it was the same board, but only with 2 RAM slots, and IIRC also a few other ports missing. It came out of a lower-end HP Pavilion, and thus only packed an Athlon II X2. That PC ended up working fine, though. I added a small 40 mm fan on the chipset / MCP heatsink, and it seems to run adequately cool. I don't remember if that board had the same kind of PCB burn / darkening as this one, though.

    Anyways, thanks for reading and cheers!
    Attached Files

    #2
    Re: Pegatron M2N78-LA (rev. 3.02) freezes on POST with SATA drives attached

    what?! i thought u should know how to fix those by now, man! just give the shitset an mma punch! if it fixes it, 99% its the shitset! no need to waste energy on a reflow if a punch doesnt fix it then its not the shitset.

    Comment


      #3
      Re: Pegatron M2N78-LA (rev. 3.02) freezes on POST with SATA drives attached

      This MCP shouldn't be affected by bumpgate, it's 2009 datecode and has white underfill. Well actually you can't call the underfill "white" anymore… so definitely it got a lot of heat and could still be damaged.
      First thing I'd try is to flash the BIOS though.
      Can you at least boot from USB?
      OpenBoardView — https://github.com/OpenBoardView/OpenBoardView

      Comment


        #4
        Re: Pegatron M2N78-LA (rev. 3.02) freezes on POST with SATA drives attached

        Is that a corroded via or some sort of damage on the back of the board,opposite the SATA connector ?
        Attached Files
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        Comment


          #5
          Re: Pegatron M2N78-LA (rev. 3.02) freezes on POST with SATA drives attached

          Originally posted by piernov View Post
          This MCP shouldn't be affected by bumpgate, it's 2009 datecode and has white underfill.
          Cool, thanks for your input, piernov!
          I guess I should have asked before trying to reflow it, though I imagine I didn't hurt anything given the temperatures reached.
          This also gives me a bit more hope about this chipset if I do get the board fixed that I can use it for a more "worthy" PC and not worry that it will fail (though I do plan on installing a fan on the MCP heatsink if the board gets fixed.)

          Originally posted by piernov View Post
          First thing I'd try is to flash the BIOS though.
          Can you at least boot from USB?
          I didn't try, since I don't have any bootable USB devices on hand (seems like I've put / backed up junk to most of my flash drives, so I have to check which one, if any, I can format to make bootable.)

          However, even though I posted this thread yesterday, I forgot I did actually order a PCI-E 1x to 2-port SATA card a few days ago (found it cheap on eBay.) Saw it in my mailbox this morning and tested the board again. With this card, I can get an HDD recognized in the system (and move past the POST routine), so I may be able to set up an OS for this motherboard to test it out and then flash BIOS too. Will try to do that in the next few days and report back.

          Originally posted by SMDFlea View Post
          Is that a corroded via or some sort of damage on the back of the board,opposite the SATA connector ?
          It was flux residue turned white (perhaps it wasn't fully washed off from manufacturing?) The above picture was taken before I had removed some of the caps to test them. After doing that, I cleaned the area around the caps I had soldered/desoldered with IPA. While at it, I also cleaned the residue under the SATA connector. So there's no more residue and I don't see any corrosion either. Vias look OK, too.

          Originally posted by ChaosLegionnaire View Post
          what?! i thought u should know how to fix those by now, man! just give the shitset an mma punch!
          I actually did try that a while back (when I found the board), though it wasn't so much a punch but rather a "whack". Just didn't mention it here, since I thought it wouldn't be too professional.
          Last edited by momaka; 11-29-2020, 11:07 PM.

          Comment


            #6
            Re: Pegatron M2N78-LA (rev. 3.02) freezes on POST with SATA drives attached

            Originally posted by momaka View Post
            I actually did try that a while back (when I found the board), though it wasn't so much a punch but rather a "whack". Just didn't mention it here, since I thought it wouldn't be too professional.
            Have enough faith.

            I literally fixed a bad SiS southbridge on a Fujitsu Pentium 4 laptop by literally hitting the BGA with a hammer, but just enough that I didn't kill the board and have it still be usable. Machine powered on just fine, and I used to run Win98 alongside XP for a short period of time. Frankly, its death wasn't the southbridge, but rather the mobo end of the LVDS began shooting firecrackers at me.
            Main rig:
            Gigabyte B75M-D3H
            Core i5-3470 3.60GHz
            Gigabyte Geforce GTX650 1GB GDDR5
            16GB DDR3-1600
            Samsung SH-224AB DVD-RW
            FSP Bluestorm II 500W (recapped)
            120GB ADATA + 2x Seagate Barracuda ES.2 ST31000340NS 1TB
            Delux MG760 case

            Comment


              #7
              Pegatron M2N78-LA (rev. 3.02) freezes on POST with SATA drives - take #2

              Alright, a little bit of progress here… or not, depending on how you look at it. Long story short (for now… I’ll leave the long part for another post), I was able to install Windows 7 on an HDD with the PCI-E 1x to SATA add-on card and update to the latest v5.22 BIOS, since the BIOS update package/installer from HP required this to be done through the OS.

              Here is a CPU-Z info screenshot of the motherboard with new BIOS:

              You can see now it is showing v5.22 (whereas before updating, I think it was v3.xx - dang it, I should have taken a screenshot of that. )

              And while at it, here are the memory config and CPU info screenshots in CPU-Z
              https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1607575282
              https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1607575282

              Perhaps there might have been a way to do the BIOS update without Windows and rather through a USB stick… but I figured the HP utility should work once I had the OS set up and all of the drivers properly installed, so that there would be no possibility of something making the system hang and the BIOS update utility crashing midway.

              On that note, the HP BIOS update utility does make the picture on the monitor, the mouse pointer, and even the keyboard (including Num Lock key) freeze / not respond while the BIOS is updating. There is no warning that this will happen when the package is launched, so one might think the motherboard is frozen/bricked. Luckily, I decided to be patient with it and just let it be. After 2-3 minutes of no response, finally a message popped up for maybe 3 seconds max, saying the system and screen might freeze during the update process (gee, HP, thanks for the warning after the fact ), followed by a prompt to restart the PC… so I did. The motherboard went through its usual boot-loop cycle that it does when the CMOS has been reset/erased. Thus, I had to go in BIOS and re-enter some of the settings that got erased. After this, I let Windows 7 start normally again through the PCI-E 1x to SATA card, just to verify that the system is stable with the new BIOS.

              To do this, I ran the system through the same tests again that I did after installing the OS and drivers - basically, I ran a bunch of YT videos (for varying load on the CPU), OCCT CPU tests, and even a GPU + CPU test. All passed the same as before. The only difference that I see with the new BIOS is that now the CPU fan and rear exhaust fan seem to run a little faster than before (maybe even too fast, I should say.) But the more annoying part is that the fans will spin up to high speed every 2-3 seconds for about 1 second, regardless of what the CPU temperature is. This did not happen with the old BIOS, which ran the fan slower, but still provided more than adequate cooling performance. Not only that, but now when I try to run SpeedFan (a software utility used for hardware monitoring), Windows crashes to a brown/gray/black (usually one of the three) -colored screen, whereas before, I had no problems running it. That’s not too big of a deal, though. Lastly, I also noticed the CPU seems to switch between different performance states (and V_core voltages) way too often - almost constantly, in fact. Perhaps the new v5.22 BIOS is optimized for the newer Athon II CPUs better and not so much for the older Athlon X2 5200+ (Windsor) CPU I have in the PC right now. In any case, the new BIOS did not seem to add any positive improvements in system performance.

              But let’s not forget why I did the BIOS update - to try to resolve the issue with the motherboard hanging when any SATA device is connected to its SATA ports. So after the above tests, I decided to take out the PCI-E 1x to SATA add-on card and plug in the HDD and optical drive back into the motherboard again, to see if the new BIOS fixed the issue.
              And............................................................ That was still a FAIL!
              The motherboard hung up exactly the same way as it did before. Again, I tried testing with HDD only, with optical drive only, and with both connected to the motherboard’s SATA ports. No combination of these would allow the motherboard to boot, unless I disconnected both again.

              So in short (after writing the above wall of text ) the v5.22 BIOS update did NOT resolve the issue.

              With that said, does anyone have any suggestions what to check / try next?

              I’m starting to suspect the CMOS memory chip (an MX25L8005m2c)… though wouldn’t that throw a BIOS checksum error when the BIOS is loaded into it? The BIOS is stored on an 8-pin AT24c16b (I think). Both are down there by the SATA / F_Panel area. There is also an HT24LC02 2k serial EEPROM between the CMOS battery connector and internal 1394/Firewire header… though not sure what that is for.

              Another item I noted: there are two crystal oscillators next to the MCP - one being 25.0 MHz, and the other 32.768 KHz. Given that the traces for the SATA ports go directly to the nVidia GeForce MCP and that these two crystals are in the vicinity, could one of them be broken (likely the 32 KHz one?) and causing the SATA ports to not work properly? Or would the motherboard not POST if that was the case? On that note, does anyone know with what frequency SATA ports communicate?

              Anyways, that’s as far as I’ve gone. At least now this mobo/PC can boot an OS, so perhaps I can use the PC for something useful in the meantime. It would be nice to get this resolved, though. I’m thinking to try and buy another CMOS flash chip first, swap it in, and pray for the best. Sounds reasonable?

              Thanks again for all suggestions so far.

              Originally posted by Dan81
              Have enough faith.

              I literally fixed a bad SiS southbridge on a Fujitsu Pentium 4 laptop by literally hitting the BGA with a hammer, but just enough that I didn't kill the board and have it still be usable.
              LOL, nice! I think that takes the crown for the wildest chipset fix.
              I'm guessing that chipset was the older package type with wirebonds? If so, I wonder if this "fix method" will work on a GeForce 4 TI4600 I have. It's artifacting, but I don't think it's a BGA issue (or is it??)
              Attached Files
              Last edited by momaka; 12-09-2020, 10:45 PM.

              Comment


                #8
                Re: Pegatron M2N78-LA (rev. 3.02) freezes on POST with SATA drives - take #2

                Originally posted by momaka View Post
                LOL, nice! I think that takes the crown for the wildest chipset fix.
                I'm guessing that chipset was the older package type with wirebonds? If so, I wonder if this "fix method" will work on a GeForce 4 TI4600 I have. It's artifacting, but I don't think it's a BGA issue (or is it??)
                Yes, I'm pretty sure it was wirebonds - the southbridge I hammered in it was a SiS962.
                Main rig:
                Gigabyte B75M-D3H
                Core i5-3470 3.60GHz
                Gigabyte Geforce GTX650 1GB GDDR5
                16GB DDR3-1600
                Samsung SH-224AB DVD-RW
                FSP Bluestorm II 500W (recapped)
                120GB ADATA + 2x Seagate Barracuda ES.2 ST31000340NS 1TB
                Delux MG760 case

                Comment


                  #9
                  Re: Pegatron M2N78-LA (rev. 3.02) freezes on POST with SATA drives - take #2

                  Originally posted by momaka View Post
                  Another item I noted: there are two crystal oscillators next to the MCP - one being 25.0 MHz, and the other 32.768 KHz. Given that the traces for the SATA ports go directly to the nVidia GeForce MCP and that these two crystals are in the vicinity, could one of them be broken (likely the 32 KHz one?) and causing the SATA ports to not work properly? Or would the motherboard not POST if that was the case? On that note, does anyone know with what frequency SATA ports communicate?
                  The 32.768kHz crystal is used for the system clock, and yes it can go bad, see an example here:
                  https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showth...415#post539415

                  I do not know if the 25Mhz crystal could be for the serial port controller, but I guess it is possible.
                  "The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt the one who is doing it."

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Re: Pegatron M2N78-LA (rev. 3.02) freezes on POST with SATA drives attached

                    the sata ports run at 100 mhz the same frequency as the pci-express bus, so the 25 mhz pll could also be suspect as it can be used to generate the 100 mhz for the sata and pci-e bus.

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Re: Pegatron M2N78-LA (rev. 3.02) freezes on POST with SATA drives - take #2

                      Originally posted by Per Hansson View Post
                      The 32.768kHz crystal is used for the system clock, and yes it can go bad, see an example here:
                      https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showth...415#post539415

                      I do not know if the 25Mhz crystal could be for the serial port controller, but I guess it is possible.
                      Interesting.

                      I do have a few dead motherboards, so I'll check if they have the same crystals and maybe swap them for a test.

                      I might also try swapping the CMOS chip the next time I order parts from digikey, just in case.

                      Originally posted by ChaosLegionnaire View Post
                      the sata ports run at 100 mhz the same frequency as the pci-express bus, so the 25 mhz pll could also be suspect as it can be used to generate the 100 mhz for the sata and pci-e bus.
                      Thanks for the info.
                      Since the system is able to run with the PCI-E to SATA add-on card, I imagine that means the 25 MHz crystal is working... or at least whatever is generating the 100 MHz frequency for the PCI-E bus. Seems like the more I think about it, the more I'm pointed towards a CMOS chip... but we will see, I suppose.

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Pegatron M2N78-LA (rev. 3.02) - the OS installation saga

                        Also, here is the long story of how I got Windows 7 to install on this motherboard... in case anyone wants a long read for whatever reason (you may skip this entire post if you don’t care to know - I’m just posting it for fun.)
                        .
                        .
                        .
                        So how did the OS installation go? Basically, everything that could go wrong DID go wrong.

                        Starting with the PCI-E 1x to SATA add-on card - I plugged in a blank SATA HDD and optical drive. The card recognized them both, but I couldn’t make the optical drive to boot from my Windows 7 DVD. So I had an idea … if I couldn’t get Windows 7 to install from a DVD, then why not clone an already installed Windows 7 HDD? After all, I have a nearly identical HP Pavilion PC, which I originally thought had the same motherboard. Well, my memory was incorrect. That other HP Pavilion PC, despite having the same case and Athlon II / nVidia stickers, uses a Pegatron M2N68-LA motherboard. Close enough, right? So I cloned the HDD from that PC anyways. But upon installing it in the M2N78-LA mobo and trying to boot, Windows 7 crashed like it would when a boot HDD from a completely different system is used.

                        OK fine, time for plan B - start the Windows 7 installation process in the M2N68-LA motherboard (with the HDD connected to the PCI-E 1x to SATA card, but with optical connected to the motherboard’s SATA ports) and hope that I can finish it off in the M2N78-LA once the basic files are copied to the HDD. So I put the blank HDD in the Pavilion PC with the M2N68-LA motherboard, which was a mostly-complete system with HDD and PSU (just noting this for the part that is to follow.) So I plug in a power cable to that PC and instantly I heard a loud whining. All fans spun up (due to CMOS battery being removed while the PC is in storage), but PC didn’t POST. Of course, as soon as I heard the whine, I reached out for the power button and turned the PC off. But the whining noise was still there. Oh no, it’s probably the 5VSB circuit! I quickly unplugged the PSU. The PSU in that PC was one of the last few Delta’s I didn’t recap. And sure enough, just as I expected, one of the output caps on the 5VSB rail - a brown C[r]apXon GL - was starring at me all bulged up.

                        I extracted the PSU and put it on my “to recap” pile to deal with it later. Then I hooked up my other test bench PSU that I know is good (and that has longer wires, because these ass-backwards HP cases will not work with my recapped short-peni…wired Dell HiPro’s. ) After this, I set up all the hardware, thinking all I’d need to do is update BIOS config and off to go. But NOPE! The Pavilion with the M2N68-LA appeared to boot (Num Lock status lit up and responsive), but no video on the monitor. Then I re-read the little sticky note I had written on the side of the case… blah blah blah… “onboard VGA dead / has no output.” CYKA BL-- I dug out a test PCI-E video card and stuck that into the PCI-E 16x, then tried again… still the same. -WTF?! So I stripped it all down to basic HW. Of course, as soon as I removed the PCIE-2-SATA card, video output happily appeared on my monitor. I went into BIOS, and luckily this stripped down POS HP BIOS did actually have an option to choose a primary graphics device (the options being IGP, PEG 16x, PCI-E 1x, and PCI - very surprised with the # of choices here.) So I set it to PEG 16x, then put back the PCI-E 1x to SATA card in the PC and tried booting. This time, the PCI-E 1x to SATA card did not interrupt my GPU and I got video properly on the monitor. Finally!

                        Next, I got my Windows 7 DVD out to put it in the optical drive of that PC. I press the eject button and hear *thump*… *squeak* *squeak* *squeak*… *thump*
                        MOTHERF---! A stuck belt-driven tray, of all things! I get my fancy optical drive eject tool (really just a paper clip with a ring formed in one end ) and popped the tray open, inserted the Windows 7 DVD, then closed it. After this, I restarted the system and finally finally finally was able to start the installation process. What a pain to get there!

                        At least the installation itself went normally without a hitch. As soon as Windows 7 copied all of the basic files and prompted me to reboot, I shut the PC down, and moved all of the hardware back to the M2N78-LA motherboard in the HOPE that I could finish off the install with the optical drive connected to the PCI-E 1x to SATA card. To my surprise, this was a SUCCESS - Windows 7 was able to continue the install on the M2N78-LA motherboard from the optical drive connected to the PCI-E 1x SATA card (it just can’t boot from it.) Not only that, but it picked up most drivers automatically, too… or at least good generic / Windows Beta ones that allowed the system to be fully functional. Really the only thing that still showed up as a question mark in Device Manager was “Coprocessor”.

                        Of course, I wasn’t going to leave it like that, so I went back to my main PC to grab some drivers. Thinking forward, I had this step prepared ahead of time with the right drivers downloaded… or so I thought. Turns out HP is much worse than Dell when it comes to their drivers not wanting to install unless both the expected OS version *and* the HP model # of the system matches. In my case, since I have a Pegatron M2N78-LA motherboard with an HP P/N: 513430-002, search online led me to a post where another dude had the same exact motherboard in a Pavilion p6130y PC. So I had downloaded all of the drivers for a Pavilion p6130y PC. But as I said, HP drivers are just plain retarded if everything doesn’t match up. While I was able to get the graphics and audio drivers meant for the p6130y model to install on my Pavilion p6247c, all the other drivers threw a cryptic error message, saying something along the lines that the OS does not meet the system requirements for the installer… which wasn’t the case. So I went back online… NOT on the HP website, mind you. I probably could write a book on how fucking terrible their website is, constantly nagging me with JS script messages, taking all day to load to finally suggest how to resolve issues with an HP printer on MacOS… as if THAT has anything to do with what I came for. And when I finally punched my PC’s S/N in HP’s website to get the right drivers, it threw me onto a page that had a hundred drivers not related to my PC - things like Intel chipset drivers, which the page still claimed are “compatible” drivers for my p6247c desktop. And of course, at least half of the “driver” entries were for HP Update software and various wireless keyboard drivers - as if these are soo damn important. Needless to say, I had to go to 3rd party websites to get my drivers… which can be a shady endeavor. But I found one place that seemed to have legit drivers, so I stuck with that. And more importantly, the website worked… unlike HP’s giant turd posing as a website.
                        [/rant]

                        Anyways, now that I had all of the “proper” drivers for my p6247c model, I started installing. But really, only the LAN controller worked this time. The Microsoft Host controller drivers and SATA controller drivers still threw the same error message about OS not meeting requirements. And even more amusing was the fact that after I had installed all of these drivers (that I could), I still had an unknown “Coprocessor” device in Device Manager. I figured that must be the chipset/NB. And while HP did not provide any chipset driver packages for Windows 7, it did have a chipset driver package for Windows Vista… which of course, produced the same error as the other packages trying to run it as-is. But that wasn’t going to stop me - I unpacked the HP driver package with 7Zip and tried pointing the unknown “Coprocessor” device to that folder to see if it can find a compatible driver. Sue enough, it DID… and installed successfully without a hitch. After this, the OS was finally complete with no drivers missing and all features working as expected.

                        So that was all for this OS installation saga. Like I said, almost every step that could go wrong did actually go wrong. This hasn’t been the worst install I’ve dealt with by a long shot… but it certainly was one of the worse ones I had recently.

                        Ah well, it’s an HP PC after all - I should have expected this.

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Re: Pegatron M2N78-LA (rev. 3.02) freezes on POST with SATA drives attached

                          About cloning drives from different machines - you could have tried Paragon Adaptive Restore. Saved me a lot of headache of reinstalling Windows if the user wanted to preserve their data and upgrade.
                          Main rig:
                          Gigabyte B75M-D3H
                          Core i5-3470 3.60GHz
                          Gigabyte Geforce GTX650 1GB GDDR5
                          16GB DDR3-1600
                          Samsung SH-224AB DVD-RW
                          FSP Bluestorm II 500W (recapped)
                          120GB ADATA + 2x Seagate Barracuda ES.2 ST31000340NS 1TB
                          Delux MG760 case

                          Comment

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