EVGA 730a + Athlon64 x2 & AHCI  

I have successfully built an Athlon64 x2 / EVGA 730a motherboard / AHCI enabled Seagate 7200.11 500GB SATA drive. Piece of cake.

Then I build a second one for my son. Same mobo. Same processor. Same model of hard drive with AHCI enabled in the BIOS as above. Only this time the install can't find the driver for the controller.

Differences between the systems:
DVD-ROM drives
PSUs (both Corsairs, one 550W, one 450W)
Memory (AData 2x2GB and AllComponents 2x2GB, both DDR2-800, 1.8V)

First system with AHCI enabled in BIOS - full install no problems
Second system with AHCI enabled in BIOS - hangs up on finding a driver

The second system's DVD-ROM drive is old. I'm suspecting that it is having trouble reading the iso I burned to DVD. I did burn a second copy just to see if the first had issues.

So tomorrow I'll steal the "good" DVD-ROM drive from the PC to test this theory.

Any others I should test as well?

I'll probably find Ubuntu to see how it does.

Try using Imgburn at 4x speed to burn the iso to disk. Better still if you have a large enough usb stick try installing off that.

Thanks for the quick reply. I've tried the slow burn trick with no help, so I'm prepping usb stick now to see if that will work.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Let us know if you get sorted.

Success!

I created a bootable USB drive using the how-to found here: Install Windows 7 From USB Drive/Pen Drive

Thanks again for the suggestions.

Glad you got it sorted.