BSOD after recent HDD replacement

[falc0ne]

Hi all,
I'm work with many people, I admin their PCs and I have a particular case that I've met a couple of times: HDD diagnosed as bad after surface test with Seagate Sea tools-> HDD replaced-> BSOD in short time after->1 case I found that a faulty SATA cable was the issuue(too late- changed the MB also...).
This time ...only, the first faulty drive was HDD was IDE, the second one is SATA2 drive, Hitachi 160GB SATA2/3gb/s-8M-7200rpm.
Operating sistem was fresh installed after HDD replacement and lasted for about 1 month. The man claims he got BSOD and reinstalled OS, after that getting again BSOD.
He claims...I couldn't check it for sure yet.
My question is....1)Could be this because of sata300 vs sata 150 compatibility issue? The MB supports only SATA150 operation. The MB is a MSI K8NGM2 for the record ,socket 939.
2)Could the MB be deffective? How could I eliminate it for sure as a factor? What tests should I do?
3)How can u surely tell that a SATA cable is faulty? How can u test that?
PS Any other suggestions are welcomed.

Please help - the client is angry because it's maybe the 5th time he contacts me with issues concerning his PC and is starting to lose confidence in me.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

The actual code can be helpful, have him write it down if possible. The error code may point to a driver issue or bad ram. It can be so many things, and just bad timing/coincidence.
Try another SATA port if you have already swapped cables, and swap or remove 1 stick of ram at a time, the usual troubleshooting steps. Running memtest86 can be helpful too. Good to check the bios for any odd settings and set it for fail safe defaults. Some boards and/or bios had bus speed bugs too, for instance, just changing the PCI Express speed to 101mhz would resolve it.

 

[AstroGuardian]

Check whether the SATA-2 HDD has SATA-1 compatibility jumper. If it has, set is to SATA-1 mode. I guess it is easier to just replace the SATA cable since you do that kind of stuff rather than testing the old one.

Memory can be faulty, I/O controller may be faulty too or it's drivers. Try running PC-Doctor for controller or memory defects.

DAPUNISHER, why are suggesting setting the PCI-E speed to 101mhz instead of 100mhz? Please share that information with us id it's not a typo.

 

[falc0ne]

interesting...PC doctor. I was once in a dilema as what test could you do to eliminate controller problem. thanks.

@dapunisher -I know the issue with 101 mhz, it's on AMD 939 motherboards And the troubleshooting steps help -thank you too.

I will keep you posted with update