dell 9150 freezing issus?

ufc pro

hey guys not sure if this is the right place to post this but here goes!
firstly im not great when it comes to this so be gentle, recently i bought a pc from adverts a dell 9150, my problem is it keeps freezing up on startup, it will boot into windows then a couple of second later freeze, somtime it will work ok, on startup it always says sata paralell ide master not found,but give me an option to press f1 continue but only works sometimes, this always happens, i think th upgraded it with windows seven,because i think that model comes with xp im told and an extra 500gb drive, it was already booted up when i went to look at it, rookie mistake i know, but is this f*cked or is it something simple, any help would b great! thanks

The BIOS error is because with Dell machines, you must disable any unused IDE or SATA ports in the BIOS. It could also be that a drive attached to that port has failed.

ufc pro

thanks for the quick reply, how would i go about fixing or at least checking what your saying? there are four sata ports on the motherboard and three of them have a sata cable attached, 2 are hdd and one is a disc drive does this help, and i noticed the ports are numbered 0-1-2-3, should a certain drive be in a certain port? thanks again

Press F2 to enter the BIOS, under one of the categories you should see SATA-0 SATA-1, etc. On the right, see which ports are On - on those which are, check if the detected device is Unknown. If it is, then turn off that port (press Enter and the left arrow key to turn it off). Press Escape and choose to save settings.

ufc pro

i have done what you suggested, and it does not give the sata error on startup, now it boots to windows logo and goes to startup again saying startup repair is recommened, while doing that it asks to restore, i did not do that as i have some very important documents i cannot lose, will restore totally wipe everything or will i still have my files?
thanks for your help so far!

Press F8 on startup (before the Windows logo appears) and choose Disable Automatic Restart on System Failure. Do you get a blue screen? If so, post the STOP error code.

ufc pro

i will try that now! no blue screen just boots to logo and restarts, then recommends startup repair!

ufc pro

after doing that i do get a blue screen with this,
0x0000007b (ox80786b50 0x0000034 0x00000000 0x00000000
does this make any sense?

That means that Windows can't detect your SATA controller or hard disk. There should be a SATA Operation Mode option in the BIOS, set to either AHCI or IDE. Try changing it to the other one.

ufc pro

i do not use this word much, but you my friend are a GENIUS! that worked perfect, it just starts as it should,
you are on my christmas list, thank you very very much for you time and patience, have a great christmas!
thanks again!