sata port failure on HP motherboard

If they work right at power up and then fail, that really DOES sound like overheating. Yes, the thermal conductive stuff could dry out or lose good thermal contact. The springy hold down should be fairly easy to unhook, just play with it a bit. They should be able to be unhooked by hand, you should not need tools.

Jon

Before you attempt to remove anything, make sure that's where your problem is. If you can pin down the time it takes for the port to fail and it's rep eatable, then keep the chip in question cool with some freeze spray (or can ned duster turned upside down). You don't have to keep a frost on it just keep it from getting really hot. If the time before failure extends (or st ops failing) with the chip in question cooler, then yes, you could be exper iencing thermal failure.

With any OS XP or later you have to stick with the same model board, and th at is even more true if it has an OEM version of Windows.

I quick Google finds replacements used of refurb of course from abut $ 30 t o 60.

yeah good old 98 you could migrate, I know how. even the local PC store did n't know how, they are out of business. They were trying to sell a PC that I figure they just threw a loaded HD in, can't do that. Need to go to safe mode and start deleting all the system devices, then on reboot windows gets the drivers for the chipset out of its cabs. They didn't do that and the t hing popped up with OE and all kinds of blue screens. Needless to say I did n't buy it, I doubt they would have taken ten bucks for it back then.

To migrate XP or later you have to have a disk, and if you want to keep all your shit, let the disk install, but into a directory you make, like Windo ws2 or whatever. Then copy \system, \system32 and all that into the new OS' directory and when it asks to replace existing files you go "No to all".

But with the same model board you don't have to do any of that - usually. M ight have to anyway with certain OSes, I haven't done this to all of them a s of yet.

Maybe it'll work if you don't find a heat sink problem. And if you do it is more likely in the chip, not the goop. It becomes a cement that is quite t hermally conductive and does not have a tendency to crack until you break i t off. If it is in the chip you might get away with putting a fan right on it.

With Windows now one might as well just chunk the whole thing, install the programs and hope you can load in the data files for the programs off the old hard dirve , or saved backups.

How about a card that goes in an available slot?

I made that suggestion to the owner of the MB. She declined because she thought the MB was no longer reliable.

The system had been running linux for the past several years.

If she's willing to spend the money on a reliable system then that is a reasonable position.

A card is good, but a grossly overheating chip does still in place not make for a reliable board. But it's a very cheap option that will likely work.

NT

We don't know that it's overheating. It could be running at the right temp but still failing thermally.

Or you can get a PCIe - SATA card.....