I Could Use Your Help Because I've Got Those "Acer 5580 Laptop ~ New SATA Hard Drive ~ Can't Re-Install My O/S" Blues

Arghhhh.

Some days I find that notwithstanding my best intentions, I just dig myself deeper and deeper into a technology hole. (If you want my whole sorry tale, start reading at the next paragraph. If you just want to see my question, jump to the “My Questions” section at the bottom.)

Last weekend I decided to clean up my Acer 5580 laptop by using the recovery disks to go back to my factory fresh set-up for Vista Home Premium. Somehow during the refresh process the hard drive password got set (yes the hard drive password that really really locks you out if you don't know the correct password) and of course since I didn’t set the password, I couldn’t enter it when asked and thus I could not get back into my hard drive.

I tried to solve this problem on my own without success and after a couple days I emailed Acer Support who eventually advised me that my hard drive was now basically an expensive paper weight. Grinding my teeth I set off to buy a replacement hard drive. (For what it’s worth, I tried to make a full backup of my HD before I started the original refresh process, but the backup ground to a halt when it couldn’t get past some files in my default Sandboxie folder so I just copied off the files I wanted to keep. (Besides, I didn’t need a full backup because I had the recover disks, right? – okay, I know understand the error of my ways and I have learned my lesson)

Now everyone likes buying new computer hardware, so I figured that there was at least a bit of a silver lining to my difficulties. I decided to replace my 120 gig Hitachi SATA HDD with a 320 gig Hitachi SATA HDD (7200 / 16 mb cache) – as an aside, it’s actually quite a nice little drive, it’s fast, quiet and relatively cool. However, as we all know, the technology gods are a jealous lot and to punish me for being so happy about upgrading my hard drive, they decided to make my life a little more complicated.

Getting home after my visit to my friendly neighbourhood computer store, I open up the hard drive bay on my laptop and installed the new hard drive. I closed the bay back up, plugged the laptop back into AC power, popped in my Acer Recovery Disk and turned it on. I got lots of spinning and grinding but no installing. Finally I got an error message saying something like ‘no o/s found’ or something like that (I apologize for the lack of specificity on the precise message – I know that this info can be very important diagnostically, but I’ve seen an awful lot of error messages over the past week and they are all starting to blur together).

When my recovery disk seemed incapable of fulfilling the purpose for which it was created two years ago, I though “No problem, I’ll just swap out the Acer Recovery Disk for my retail XP Pro Disk”. So out comes the Acer Recovery Disk and in goes the XP Pro Installation Disk. More spinning and more grinding and then finally XP started to install . . . life is good eh?

It turns out the answer is “no”. XP said that it formatted my drive as I asked it to and had also loaded itself as I had asked it to – unfortunately after that it started doing things that I did not ask it to. Saying it was finished loading and it was going to reboot, it commenced a reboot cycle where it would say that it was loading but never load and then after a couple reboots, it would simply spin down and leave me with a greyish/black screen (which I thought Acer had kindly provided a nice variation on the traditional blue screen of death). On other attempts, depending on what o/s I was trying to load and how I was trying to load it, I’d get a nice bright blue screen with a helpful message advising from the system advising that it was shutting itself down to protect itself because something about the install wasn’t going quite as it expected.

I won’t bore you further with the details, but after lots more research and lots more trial and error attempts to get an o/s (any o/s – windows xp / windos 7 beta / fdos / ubuntu 8) to load to the hard drive, I came to the following conclusions:

1) The Phoenix Bios (identified by some system analysis tools as Phoenix PCI PnP (03/03/07 V4 Release 6.1 but mostly as v 1.3503 or occasionally as Acer v1.3503) will not recognize the SATA drive, even though the original 120 gig drive was a SATA drive. While the Phoenix Bios can’t recognize the SATA drive, most system info tools can see that it’s a SATA drive and they correctly report its name, size and serial number etc.

2) There is no advanced option in the Phoenix Bios setup screen to enable the SATA drive.

3) I can’t plug the new laptop hard drive into the motherboard on my Acer Desktop (An AM5620 – Q6600 Quad Core where the new laptop hard drive is recognized and works just fine) load XP or Windows 7 onto it, reinstall it in the laptop and then start up the laptop that way.

4) I can’t clone the hard drive from my Lenovo Laptop running XP onto the new laptop hard drive and then reinstall it into my Acer laptop and start it with the cloned copy.

5) I can’t load from the laptop’s CD  XP Pro, Win7, Ubuntu 8 or Vista Home Premium (Retail Disk – I borrowed from a friend in desperation and for testing purposes only - - seriously, just for testing purposes).

6) There are new Bios updates and an Intel Chipset update available but my attempts to use with Bart PE, nLite, FDos, etc to get those updates and the SATA Driver INF files to a place where I can run them by booting from CD/USB Flash Drive/USB IDE Drive have failed miserably. I’ve even tried creating a bootable DVD with the XP o/s, the SATA Drivers, the Bios updates and the Chipset update all residing on the DVD, but that didn’t work either. (By the way, the processer is an Intel 945 Express. The Chipset is referred to as ‘Calistoga’ and the controller hub is id’d as an 82801.)

The only clue that might reveal to a more technically adept person some addition detail about what is going on, is the fact that when I load Ubuntu 8 from a CD and try to run it from the CD, it loads to a point but it doesn’t bring up the desktop. It stops and dumps me to a “ubuntu@ubuntu:~ $” prompt. When I put the same CD in my Lenovo laptop it boots me right into the Ubuntu * Desktop. By way of summary, I can get FDos to load and run from disk, XP/Vista/Windows7 all say they are loading, but then just cycle through an unending reboot cycle and Ubuntu seems to load but never gets to the desktop.

My Questions

A) Any suggestions on how to load the SATA drivers, the Bios update and/or the Chipset update given that I have not successfully been able to get them onto any medium that is accessible during any installation process?

B) Since Acer isn’t exactly generous in their s/w update descriptions and there seem to be several to Bios updates etc to choose from (see ftp://ftp.work.acer-euro.com/notebook/aspire_5580/) how does one best decide which Bios update to use?

C) As between a Bios update and a Chipset update, does it matter which one is updated first?

D) Any suggestions on what I’m doing wrong either in general or in particular?

E) Any suggestions on other solutions to try?

F) Any recommendations on the type of wine that will most successfully make this acer-induced pain go away?

In all seriousness, this has been a frustrating week. I was trying to do a good thing by cleaning up my system so that it would work better. At this point it is not working at all and it has caused me a week of increasing frustration. I don’t come to this forum having only spent 15 mins trying to solve this problem. I have researched this issue for many hours and I tried many possible solutions – all without success. At this point I have exhausted my troubleshooting abilities and as such any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Todd

 

Welcome to NBR.

This looong post was hard to read

A) SATA drivers can be loaded either with external floppy or slipstreaming them into Windows installation. This is NOT your problem though because Vista/Win7 should install without problem - they have SATA drivers integrated already. Chipset driver is not needed, you need to install this when Windows is already installed. BIOS - without currently installed OS your only chance to flash is using the DOS method. I doubt BIOS flash will help here so I'd advice you NOT to do that.
B) You should always go for the newest version unless there are known issues with it. The latest BIOS for your laptop appears to be 3508.
C) The chipset driver and the BIOS has nothing to do with each other, so this question cannot be answered. You update your BIOS in certain situation and you install the chipset driver when needed.
D) Not sure, your actions seems fine
E) Is there an option into the the BIOS which let you switch from IDE to AHCI mode? What do you mean "the BIOS doesn't recognize the drive"? What does it show under the "Information" tab? Did you try to "reinstall" the hdd - remove it then put it back on? I suppose the answer of this question will be "No" but here goes - what does the blue screen say? What is the error message?
F) Not needed for now, let's try to fix this, shall we?

 

you shouldn't need any sata drivers as the BIOS loads up the system in IDE compatibility mode and nowhere to change that in the BIOS that I have found.
If the BIOS cannot find the drive, there's another problem going on. Even if the OS doesn't see it, the BIOS should always see the drive.

 

Thanks for the input folks.

ATG, I especially appreciate your speedy reply. I took a break for a cup of tea and I came back to a thoughtful, informative and helpful response. It has taken me a while to get back to you as I had to run some install attempts to get the error messages.

In answer to ATG’s questions:

Q1 = Is there an option into the BIOS which let you switch from IDE to AHCI mode?
A1 = No. The Phoenix Bios has no options around IDS vs AHCI.

Q2= What do you mean "the BIOS doesn't recognize the drive"?
A2 = Sorry, I should have been clearer. BIOS doesn’t recognize the SATA drive as a SATA Drive. It identifies it as “IDE1 Model Name: Hitachi HTS723232L9A360” – the System Info from the Ultimate Boot CD almost always correctly id the drive as a SATA drive. From my perspective it’s the o/s that either doesn’t seem to pick up the drive as a SATA drive or can’t proper copy files to it when it tries to install itself.

Q3 = Did you try to "reinstall" the hdd - remove it then put it back out?
A3 = I’m assuming that you mean a physical reinstall (i.e. pull it out, plug it back in). The answer is yes – it’s been in an out over a dozen times, both into my desktop and into an external SATA-to USB enclosure. If you meant a s/w reinstall rather than physically removing the HDD then the answer is no. (The last time I mucked around this deeply with hard drives on a new system was about 5 years ago. At that time I seem to recall there being s/w that was run to ‘install’ the HDD. No such s/w came with the new laptop HDD and I couldn’t find an installer app on the Hitachi website. I did find a Hitachi Drive Fitness Test which I ran and it said the HDD was fine.)

Q4 = What does the blue screen say? What is the error message?
A4 = The error messages vary with the install attempt. Some give blue screen errors and others give black screen error messages

BLUE SCREEN ERROR MESSAGES

When attempting to load Vista on a freshly wiped drive:

It goes through its installing, copying process then the install or create/delete partition process then it tries to restart. On restart if I do nothing at the ‘press any key to boot with cd’ prompt it tries to load from the hard drive and just hangs. If I hit a key, it loads goes back through the installing, copying process then the install or create/delete partition process with the additional option here of attempt to recover. Going to Recover takes me to a C: prompt where I can execute the usual basic DOS commands like chkdsk, bootcfg,format, etc. At this point if I power down and then boot through the CD, it goes through its regular installing, copying etc processes and then it gives me an error message. The errors vary each time and I can’t see why they change as I think that my process is identical on each attempt. The blue screen errors all start with ‘A problem has been detected and have instructions about first time errors and continuing errors on restarting and trying a safe mode restart. The full text (more or less) is in example “A)”. For examples “B), C), D) and E) I just included the info that changed.


Example A

A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer

PAGE_FAULT_IN_NOPAGE_AREA

If this is the first time you have seen this error screen the restart and if it appears again then make sure new h/w & s/w is properly installed and if it is a new install ask your manufacturer for any windows updates that you might need

If the problems continue then disable or remove any new h/w or s/w disable BIOS memory options like caching or shadowing. If you need to use safe mode select F8 on restart (note from todd  f8 doesn’t work when i try it on restart)

Tech Info

*** STOP: 0x00000050 (0x0000000003321BA8, 0x0000000000000000, 0x000007FEFBE4FD8F, 0x0000000000000008)


Example B

MEMORY_MANAGEMENT
*** STOP: 0x0000001A (0x0000000000041284, 0x 0000000002E80001, 0x0000000000000000, 0xFFFFF700010800000)


Example C
MEMORY_MANAGEMENT
*** STOP: 0x0000001A (0x0000000000005003, 0x 0000000002E80001, 0x0000000000000000, 0xFFFFF700010800000)


Example D
MEMORY_MANAGEMENT
*** STOP: 0x0000001A (0x0000000000041790, 0XFFFFFFA8002401650, 0x000000000000FFFF, 0xFFFFF700010800000)


Example E
IRQ_NOT_LESS_ OR_ EQUAL
*** STOP: 0X0000000A (0XFFFF6801236490, 0x000000000000000, 0X0000000000000000, 0xFFFFF8000A4D6D84)


NON BLUE SCREEN ERROR MESSAGES

When I was trying to reinstall XP or another ro/s I got scenarios like:

1) For an attempt to do an XP install from the CD on an freshly formatted hard drive - It spins up and says it’s loading and installing files. Then it asks about install/create partition/delete partition etc. Next it copies the files and says it will reboot. It then cycles through a reboot with the XP is loading splash screen etc. After that it alternates between CD Drive activity and HDD activity (at least the light that indicates HDD activity is flashing) about 4 times over 10 mins, reboots again and is back to ‘press enter to load from CD’. If I do nothing it just hangs with no further CD Drive activity after about 1 min and no further HDD activity after about 5 mins. If I hit enter at the ‘press enter to load from CD’ then it starts the whole process over again with the only exception being that at the install/create partition/delete partition screen it tells me that a previous version of Windows is installed.

2) For an attempt to do an XP install from the CD following an attempted XP install - It spins up and says it’s loading and installing files. Then it asks about install/create partition/delete partition etc. Next it copies the files and says it will reboot. It then cycles through a reboot with the XP is loading splash screen etc. Then it came up with a No NTLDR error message

3) For an attempt to do a Vista install from CD after an attempted XP install - It spins up for about 3 mins with a blank screen and then it reboots. On reboot it shows the XP is loading splash screen and the goes blank and stays blank.

4) For an attempt to do a Win7Beta install after an attempted XP install - It spins up, says it’s loading and the screen goes blank. Nothing else happens no matter how long I wait.

5) For an attempt to do a Win7Beta install on a freshly wiped disk - It spins up but nothing happens – it’s just a blank screen and it stays blank. The CD spins up 5 times and then stops after 15 mins with no CD or HDD activity (based on the blank HDD activity light on the laptop) I pop out the CD. Then I power off and n powered on with no CD in drive and I got an “NTLDR error – click ctrl-alt-delete to restart”. When I did that (i.e. C-A-D) I got the same message.

6) For an attempt to do an install from a FDOS usb key after an attempted XP install - it says “remove any disks or other media – press any key to restart” and it won’t do anything else

7) For an attempt to do an install with the Acer Recovery Disk on a drive following an attempted XP install - It spins up , loads the RAM Disk, says ‘Please wait’, then the screen goes blank, the CD spins down and nothing else happens.

8) For an attempt to do an install from an nLight disk with XP and added SATA drivers - it spins up installs files (including the SATA files which show up in the loading info bar at the bottom of the screen during copying) then it asks which partition to install on. Next it says it’s installing and then takes about 10 mins copying files. After that it goes through the XP start up splash screen and then the screen goes blank and stays blank.

I have to admit, these error messages pretty much have me stumped. I still not 100% convinced that it’s not a BIOS and/or Chipset issue because the Chipset Controller spec talks about it not having SATA functionality enabled and its Option ROM needs to be updated so that it can pass appropriate instructions to the BIOS. In addition the Intel sight indicates that o/s install problems related to SATA drives on the 945M Express mobo and using the 82801GBM Chipset should make sure that the most recent BIOS is obtasined from the h/w manufacturer and installed so that the o/s can do the proper install for the SATA HDD. The fact that Acer has a BIOS update for this specific model makes me think that it might be BIOS/Chipset related.

That said, I’m less than anxious to try flashing my BIOS as I see that as an action of last resort.

Any thoughts or suggestions are welcome.

Cheers

 

Ok are there any partitions on the new hdd? How did you create them? I'd try to wipe out the hdd, delete all partitions. Then create a new one(s) - and format them using NTFS file system(NO quick format but full format!). Then try to install Vista(not XP!). I'd use GParted to do all that.
Are you 100% sure your original hard drive is a SATA drive? Is it detected into the BIOS as SATA?

 

how much memory do you have installed in the system?

 

Hi Folks

Thanks for the follow up questions. Here are my answers:

Re Partitions
There was a partition on the drive when I was doing the testing. I’d create a partition a 20 to 30 gig partition as part of the install process and every 3rd or 4th attempt I’d blow everything away with a full format that I ran from FDOS. Sometimes I’d create the partition using one of the tools from the Ultimate Boot VD. Also, I’ve tried both NTFS and FAT partitions.

Re SATA vs IDE
Yes I’m certain the original was a SATA drive. I took it out to replace it and it said SATA on it. The new drive is a SATA drive and it fits the only set of connectors in the hard drive bay of the laptop (and if I recall correctly the SATA and IDE connectors are different and not interchangeable)

Re SATA detected in BIOS
In the Bios setup screen (via F2 during Phoenix splash screen) it describes the drive correctly as a Hitachi drive with the correct size and serial number but it places this info in the IDE1 description section of the screen. However, system analysis tools from UBCD correctly id it as a SATA drive. As a side note, the Phoenix V 1.3503 BIOS doesn’t offer the option of a SATA drive – it just has an entry for the IDE drive. (This is why I think that the Acer BIOS update #3508 might be required.)

Re Memory
I have 4 gig installed and I’ve tested it several times over the last few days to confirm that it’s working fine.

Re Results of recommended - format / gparted ntfs partition / vista install.
I downloaded GParted and burned the iso to a disk. The system wouldn’t load so I used KillDisk (Build 2380) to wipe the entire 320 gigs and then verify the wipe (that took a little over 6 hours).

After that I retried GParted again and it still wouldn’t load so I took the drive out of my laptop and formatted it in my Acer Desktop (connected directly to mobo – not via usb etc). It formatted up fine in NTFS and I did some tests on it to make sure it was running normally.

I could install Win7 and Vista and XP just fine on the laptop drive when it was in my Desktop, so I don’t think the problem is in the drive.

I went back to the laptop and with no hard drive installed, I tried to load Ubuntu and Kubuntu as Live CDs but I couldn’t get past terminal mode (i.e. the ububtu@ubuntu:~ $ prompt).

At this point I think it is definitely a h/w issue (and I'm thinking that a hammer might be the solution) .

Todd

 

To be perfectly honest, thank you for the detailed post ^_^.

A few pointers for you that might have already been mentioned or might not (so I'm covering them anyway).

#1. If you are downgrading from Vista to XP you will need to locate the mass storage drivers for your particular chipset. You can either load them during F6 of the initial boot cd loading.



#2. Being that you have a Windows XP Disk you have the options of configuring the disk to auto insert the needed drivers for you during the install process.

Check my signature to get started if you need more help in this department.

#3. As mentioned previously do a FULL HDD WIPE PRIOR TO INSTALLING WINDOWS XP. This means you will want to do a 1:1 HDD image before blowing anything away. I recommended Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image.

Nice programs to wipe a hdd are Dban - http://www.dban.org/download It's used by the goverment.... a bit overkill but it will for sure wipe that drive clean. (as mentioned previously do a backup of your data before running it)

#4. Vista uses a different configuration of the SATA features in your bios. You may need to enable or change the bios settings to allow ATA functions. By default on the dells I work with they come with RAID enabled and not ultra ATA.

#5. If you think it is a hardware problem we need to narrow this down a bit more

Please be a bit more descriptive as far as what leads you to believe this.

Some common tools to check hardware problems are the following

Memory - http://www.memtest.org/
HDD - Find out who makes your HDD (probally seagate or hitachi and download their disk diagonstic tools... google it)

 

remove 2GB of memory. I had some weird installation issues when trying to install with 4GB of memory installed. Don't know why that is, i just stayed with 3GB seeing as how the system only allows around 3.34 usable regardless of OS (chipset limitation).

 

Hi Folks

Thanks for all the input and sorry for the delay in responding - I got called out of town and didn't get back until Fri.

Yesterday it was back to the troubleshooting and wonder of wonders - I removed two of the four gig of ram and the recovery disks worked like a charm.

I can't for the life of me figure our why two gig vs four gig that would make such a diference, but it did and I'm a happy camper once again.

I really appreciate all the prompt assistance that was offered. It's worth noting that this is the only place that I saw any type of a suggestion related to memory and instalation problems.

Thanks a ton

Cheers

Todd

 

Great good for you.

So goofball nailed it then. I can't explain it either, it's beyond me how an extra gigs of RAM can affect the recovery process...