notebook difficulties

[c.k.]

I am having difficulties with my compaq armada e500 notebook. It recently displayed the error "1280 Hard Disk controller failure" (or something similar) I suspected a worn out HD and swoped it to another machine to test it. Sure enough it was faulty. I purchased a new hard drive from expansys and installed it. I had to swop a little adapter from the old HD to the new one that just pushed on. Originally i just pushed the HD into its connectors on the back of the machine to test it, leaving out a light metal clip and two little studs which fit onto the hard drive. (i imagine they are only designed to keep it in place inside in the machine.) I reinstalled windows and all my software on the new hd with no difficulty. However when i was finishing up, put the metal frame/clip, studs,and screws on to the new hd and refitted it , put back on the door etc. I got the "1280 HD controller failure" error message again! (like this is the new HD!!) So I took off the bracket/clips etc and installed the hd without them again - no problems. I repeated this several times same thing every time. So I installed the hard drive without the bracket etc. and used two little plastic wedges to make sure the hard disk didn't move out of it's slot in the furure, although it was fairly snug without them. Everything worked fine for a few days, now the same thing again intermittently.

Any Ideas,
Loose connection somewhere? Ever seen it before?

Thanks,
Declan

 

[JohnD]

A disk controller is not the same as a disk. I think you have replaced the wrong thing.

Must admit I've never knowingly seen a disk controller - I have several listed in the Hardware Devices of my System Properies/Device Manager/Hardware but don't remember ever having a failure. I assume it must be a chipset on the m/b.

From the way you're describing it I too would have suspected a bad connection.