SOYO Motherboard Question, please

[DarkMedicine]

Several years ago a friend built my disabled daughter a computer to help her rehab from a brain injury. It has a SOYO SY-P4VTE motherboard and a western digital 600 hard drive. I'm fairly sure the hard drive crashed because all it says is that it can't recognize the operating system. Friend is no longer around, can't afford a repairman... can I replace that 60GB hard drive with somthing larger using that motherboard? Sorry for the "blonde" questions.
Pam

 

[darkewaffle]

Yes, though you will need to re-install windows and whatever else you need on the new hard drive. Also your motherboard has both PATA and SATA connections, so you should be able to use pretty much 'any old' drive.

 

[Harvey]

Questions others who want to help will ask:

1. What version of Windows are you using?
   
   From the vintage, I would guess it's XP, but we need to know because this may affect specifics of how to resolve the problem.
   
   
2. Do you have your Windows installation disk?
   
   If not, you will need one. If you lost it, and you still have your serial number, you may be able to use it with another disk of exactly the same version and type (Home or Professional, OEM or Retail).
   
   
3. Do you have the driver installation disk?
   
   
4. Is the hard drive SATA (Serial ATA - Smaller connector on a round cable) or PATA (Parallel ATA - Large, multi-pin connector on a ribbon cable)? Your motherboard supports both PATA and SATA1.

Before you start, if you have access to another computer that supports your daughter's drive, you can connect it as a slave to the other machine and copy any critical files, including data files, downloaded installation files, etc., to restore to your disk when it's working.

When you do this, be sure the temporary host is fully protected against viruses, spyware, etc., and, the first time you boot up, do it in Safe Mode, and scan your drive from the temporary host machine to make sure your drive doesn't infect the host's hard drive.

If you don't have access to another machine, an adapter like this one can connect almost any internal drive to a USB port.

This will only be temporary so you can ask a friend with a machine that can read your drives for help without permanently taking over that machine. You can also check the drive to see if there are any obvious corrupted files.

Even if it's corrupted, your drive may still work so you may not need to buy a new drive, but if you do, a newer SATA2 drive is compatible and will work, but only at SATA1 speed.

Back to your own machine -- If you have your Windows disk, you can try booting to it and trying to have Windows repair the installation. I'm not very experienced in Windows repairs so I'll leave it to others to offer advice on how to do it.

If you have to re-install Windows, you will need the drivers for your motherboard and video card. If you have the original installation disks, they should work, and you can search for updated drivers, later. If not, you will have to download them from the web. You should be able to find drivers for your motherboard at no cost by searching Google for "SY-P4VTE" driver. You can get the latest drivers for your video card from the manufacturer's site.

If you download them, the easiest way to install them is to copy them from the machine you use to download them to a flash drive and, from there, to the new installation. Create a sub-folder for the motherboard, Soyo on the new installation under My Documents\Downloads\. The new folder will be My Documents\Downloads\Soyo. Copy the drivers to that sub-folder. From there, it will be easy to install the drivers. Create a similar sub-folder with an appropriate name, and do the same for your video card drivers.

You will also need installation disks and files for every program you want to run on the machine. As noted, if you downloaded any programs from the Internet, you should save them at the same time you're saving your data files. As with the drivers, you can then copy them to a flash drive and from there to as many other sub-folders as you need to create on the new installation under My Documents\Downloads\ < program name > to keep them separate so you can easily identify them.

It would help to have a local, experienced friend, but if you take your time, and you're careful, you should be able to manage it.

Final suggestion -- Drives are cheap. You could buy a new drive for well under $50 and do a new installation of Windows. Then, you could connect the old drive as a slave to that new installation and save your data and installation files. That would leave you with a spare hard drive you could use for backup.

The same warning about scanning for viruses and spyware applies. Install and update your AV and anti-spyware programs before connecting the old drive to it. Otherwise, you could infect your new installation.

That's a start. I'll come back if I think of more to add.

Hope that helps.

 

[konakona]

totally OT, but way to write a piece to help with troubleshooting! kudos for typing all that out, looks detailed yet foolproof

 

[DarkMedicine]

Thank you all sooo much! I do have the soyo disc and the windows xp pro disc with serial numbers. I tried booting to the xp disc and thought all was going well until it got to the downloading of the video graphics and then it balked and said there had been an error and quit. When you first turn the machine on, it clicks repeatedly until it warms up. It didn't do that before. I don't have a clue what kind of video card it has. Is there anyway to tell with the machine off. Where to look? Thanks for being patient!
Pam

 

[ModestGamer]

Thank you all sooo much! I do have the soyo disc and the windows xp pro disc with serial numbers. I tried booting to the xp disc and thought all was going well until it got to the downloading of the video graphics and then it balked and said there had been an error and quit. When you first turn the machine on, it clicks repeatedly until it warms up. It didn't do that before. I don't have a clue what kind of video card it has. Is there anyway to tell with the machine off. Where to look? Thanks for being patient!
Pam

time to replace the drive.

 

[nenforcer]

Any warranty /RMA on that 60GB hard drive is probably long gone.

I see that motherboard does support SATA hard drives in addition to old PATA drives.

You can still buy 80GB IDE/PATA and SATA hard drives for $40 or less. I would get one of these with Windows XP so you can avoid having to partition the hard drive if it is greater than 124GB.

 

[ModestGamer]

Any warranty /RMA on that 60GB hard drive is probably long gone.

I see that motherboard does support SATA hard drives in addition to old PATA drives.

You can still buy 80GB IDE/PATA and SATA hard drives for $40 or less. I would get one of these with Windows XP so you can avoid having to partition the hard drive if it is greater than 124GB.

I run a 1.5 tb drive with windows xp sp3. Not a problem.

 

[Harvey]

Thank you all sooo much! I do have the soyo disc and the windows xp pro disc with serial numbers.

That's the good news. At least, you'll be able to reassemble a working machine.

When you first turn the machine on, it clicks repeatedly until it warms up. It didn't do that before.

That's the bad news. That clicking suggests your drive is probably dying.

It's readable life may be measurable in minutes or nanoseconds, if that... IF you're lucky. I strongly recommend doing nothing more with it. Don't try to format it or install anything on it. Just put it aside, buy a new drive, now, and hope it still has enough limping life in it to be read as a slave once you've installed Windows on the new drive.

If you need help shopping, here's a start with a collection on newegg.com between $45 - $50 with free shipping. That's without searching a lot of sites for any barn burning sale items.

I don't have a clue what kind of video card it has. Is there anyway to tell with the machine off. Where to look? Thanks for being patient!
Pam

The make and some indication of the chipset and the chipset maker (probably nVidia or ATI) will be on the card, itself. You will have to open the case. If you haven't done so, before, invest in a can of air spray to blow out the dust bunnies and any other resident critters.

Once you install Windows, the machine will boot up with installed a usable default driver. You should then be able to check Device Manage to find more about the model of the video card. That info will also flash briefly on the startup screen before the machine starts to boot. When you see it, quickly hit the < Pause > key to stop it and read it.

 

[bryanl]

The good news: The Soyo motherboard has SATA ports.

The bad news: The Soyo motherboard has VIA VT8237 SATA ports. IOW it won't recognize a hard disk out of the box but require configuring the drive to force SATA 1.5Gbps speed, either with a jumper or a reprogramming. The latter can't be done with this motherboard's SATA ports.

 

[tcsenter]

I run a 1.5 tb drive with windows xp sp3. Not a problem.

You don't have a five or six year-old motherboard.

 

[heymrdj]

I ran a 320GB IDE off of a SOyo 865PE.