SATA Controller issues ?

[KDTHZ]

Hi everyone

 

A friend asked me to help him with is misbehaving computer. He had constant crashes and freezes, and some troubles booting up.

 

The setup is :

- CPU : AMD A10 6700

- MOBO : ASRock FM2A68M-HD+

- RAM : 1x Kingston 8GB DDR3 1600Mhz

- GPU : ASUS GTX 970 Mini

- PSU : 550w Apevia

- Storage : 1x 128GB SSD (boot) / 1x 1TB HDD 

 

At first i was simply unable to boot; even the bios was acting out (not posting, artifact on screen, lagging, etc.)

So i removed everything to troubleshoot.

After some trials and errors, I found that the ram seemed to be bad ( a lot of error in Memtest 86 ) so i replaced it with a 2GB stick i had laying around.

The new RAM stick passed Memtest86 without any error ( so i figured the problem was really with the ram and not the controller )

 

With the new RAM, a was able to boot. I put back the GPU and Did a clean windows install.

So far so good, the computer seems to be working fine. 

 

The i replugged the second HDD, and all of the sudden, the problems are back :  

When i boot into windows, one of these things happens (BSOD) :

1- Windows freeze before loading completely : Critical Process Died error

2- Windows load, but eventually freeze (within 5 to 10 minutes) : Kernel data inpage error

And, then, when to computer restart, i got a no boot drive error and the drive aren't detected in the BIOS.

 

If i shut down the computer, wait a bit and reboot, everything is back in place until i hit another BSOD

 

I ruled the HDD being bad; i put it in a USB enclosure. While hooked via USB rather than internal SATA, everything work perfectly; no more BSOD.

I tried using different SATA ports combination, but I always get the same errors.

 

So it seems like the SATA controller is unable to correctly manage two drive at the same time?

Does anyone know anything about this kind of behaviour ? is it a CPU problems, a motherboard problem ? a bios issue ? 

 

With the age of this computer, and the fact it's mostly used for gaming i won't recommend putting any more money on it. 

Even buying a new DDR3 stick on a machine with no valid upgrade path, seems like a waste of money.

 

But, i'm still really curious to understand what the problems can be, and if there is a way to pinpoint and/or fix the problems

It would be nice If i could fix it and make the computer stable and usable until my friend get some money for a real upgrade.

 

thank you !

 

[Bombastinator]

This likely won’t help but I thought I’d drop it in as a not yet ruled out afaik.

I have recently had problems with my 970.  Am still having them.

They are different sounding though. I’m getting the card turning off in the middle of boot.

My suspicion is currently falling on the new Nvidia 900 series drivers.  It may also just be a bad card or my own failure to detect what is actually going on.