Motherboards Dead motherboard and replacement issues

So a few weeks ago my PC stopped booting. It wouldn't even get to post. Fans come on full speed and the CPU error light blinks like it normally does when you hit the power button, just every 3 seconds or so instead of once.

I unplugged everything that wasn't necessary, including SSD and HDDs and still nothing.
Tried PSU and GPU in another machine and they worked fine.
Tried PSU and GPU from other machine on my machine and still nothing.
Borrowed an old motherboard and CPU from a friend and tried my CPU and RAM on the motherboard and it worked.
Put spare CPU and my RAM into my motherboard and it didn't work.

So from that I figured my motherboard has passed away.

Now my friend has said I can keep the motherboard as long as I need it as it is pretty much worthless to him. I have put everything together including all my drives but for some reason this new motherboard locks up at post whenever my SSD is connected.

My first thought is that it has something to do with the motherboard SATA controller not being in AHCI mode. Does this sound like a valid reason to you guys?

For some stupid reason this motherboard has no option to switch to AHCI so if this is the cause I may have to do a reinstall on an HDD.

Replacement motherboard is a PoS from an old HP Compaq DX7400 slimline desktop. I have looked up bios updates but it doesn't look like they ever added AHCI if that is even possible.

What do you guys think? Could there be anything else that I have missed?

EDIT: System is in sig.

 

Quick check, you did try resetting the BIOS on the old board right? (unplug it and pop the battery out is the quick way).
Otherwise, yes, it does sound like an AHCI issue with the new board, or possibly just wrong SATA drivers. You could try running Startup Repair off the Win7 install disk, it might fix the problem. Worth a go as a last resort before reinstall anyway.

 

I hit the CMOS reset switch on the old one and that didn't fix it.
Unfortunately I cant even get into the bios setup menu when the SSD is connected. I will try and boot the SSD on another PC that does have AHCI, remove any old drivers and modify the registry to get Windows booting in IDE. Will have to wait until the end of the week as I have two uni exams before Friday.

Windows 8 Pro 64 btw. Had it on my desktop since the beginning of September.