I have four sata ports inside my emachine desktop and my bios says not installed

There are four USB ports on the back of your computer. They are all identical. As long as you have a USB Printer you can plug it in to any one of the four USB ports.

Your hard drive is missing from the system. Or, just does not recognize it. The obvious - Remove any USB devices like drives and any media from disc player. Its trying to load, but can't find bootable hard drive, CD, or USB... Remove the hard drive and reseat (reconnect). Check BIOS by pressing an F key during boot. Look on the screen for correct Function key. Might be F2 key. Verify BIOS recognizes the drive. It must be listed! There is no going forward if it's not. Check boot order and make internal hard drive first. Save and restart.

E machine website for issues,,with ur model,,and support,,,they can help u out

This computer has a IDE and SATA port inside it so you can either install a IDE or SATA drive on it, but what it came per built is a IDE drive.

bad news there is no chance this is a realy old machine with

• Installed Memory: 32 MB (SDRAM)
• Operating System: Microsoft Windows 98 SE
• HDD Size: 7.5 GB if you are still using this ancient machien then It realy is time to upgrade
  

Look up the specs. on the mb and find out if it supports sata1 or sata2 drives.
Your motherboard should have four sata ports and you may want to change to another port.
Also, you may need to format this sata drive, booting from the ide drive. Windows takes a long time to format but may be the only answer.
Last, make sure your bios settings are sata as raid.
Hope this works for you, its a pain.

Be sure that SATA is enabled in your BIOS settings. Sometimes if the computer ships with an IDE drive, the company that builds them will disable SATA in the BIOS. Also, while you are in your BIOS, if you decide to use just the SATA drive, you need to disable your IDE and set the bios up to boot the computer from your new drive on the SATA connector.

Have you tried to enter BIOS? Are you able to enter BIOS?? There may be an option you have to hit to enable SATA, and to select the boot device order, which may be messing things up.
Also, remember that STATIC ELECTRICITY is your enemy! Ground yourself when working inside the case.

enable "auto" in BIOS for drive #0 and drive #1. you can select IDE or SATA drive. restart the machine.

Go inside to your BIOS menu then set the BOOT sequence to CD as the first boot so when your PC with the operating system installation disk inside it will load the installation wizard.
Good luck hope that helps........