Stuck during boot after AHCI change

Hi all,
I recently installed an SSD. I was running it on SATA, and it was pretty slow. I googled around, and discovered I should have had it on AHCI. I made a couple of Regedit changes to ensure I wouldn't have to format, and I changed to AHCI.
Immediately, it refused to boot, and I'm stuck at:
SERIAL ATA AHCI BIOS
-------
CONTROLLER BUS#00 DEVICE#1F FUNCTION#02: 06 PORTS 05 DEVICES
PORT-00 HARD DISK, SCANDISK ##########

THe cursor is blinking and it's stuck at 23.



I googled and removed the rest of the hard drives and it booted fine, still on AHCI. How can I get the other hdd's to be operational?

I've also adjusted the sata port 0-3 native mode to enabled, and onboard sata/ide ctrl mode to AHCI. No changes.

The mobo is a gigabyte xd58-ud3r

Please help

Could you clarify your post for me please? I think there are some terms used that need to be defined.

SATA is the configuration of the hard drive interface. There are currently 2 configurations in play: SATA and PATA. SATA uses the modern small data cable, PATA uses the older wide ribbon cable. PATA has been obsolete for about 10 years now.

The SATA interface can then be run in 3 modes: legacy IDE, AHCI, or RAID.

When you start a computer, there are two major steps: BOOT - in which the systems BIOS is initiated and tested, followed by STARTUP - in which the operating system is started and loads.
It is very important for us to know whether you mean the system does not BOOT, or if Windows will not STARTUP.

Are you having a BOOT problem or a STARTUP problem?
When you went into the BIOS and changed the SATA controller mode to AHCI, what was it set on before?
Is this a homebuilt PC or a store bought PC?
I am assuming it is a desktop.

Thanks

Sorry for any confusion. I'm having startup issues.

Before I changed to AHCI, it was set to IDE. It's a home built PC.

OK. Thanks. This is a very common problem and relatively easy to fix. Hang tight while I gather some info.

Thank you. Much appreciated

When you install Windows on a new PC the installer will recognize what mode the SATA controller is in at that moment and it will use the appropriate drivers for that mode. Yours was set on IDE, so Windows installed IDE drivers.

In order to switch to AHCI mode (which is highly recommended for an SSD) you must get Windows to switch to using the AHCI driver instead. Here is how:

AHCI : Enable in Windows 7 / Vista

Now, it has been my observation that often people who have problems like this tend to "thrash" about in the system before getting help. I suggest you try and remember any BIOS changes you made in trying to fix this problem and undo those changes. These can complicate things. The only settings change you need to work on is AHCI.

You may have a different problem regarding the startup and multiple drives. Particularly if you installed Windows with more than one hard drive installed. If you did, it might make sense to fix that before AHCI conversion. Let me know.

Thank you. I installed windows while everything was set to IDE. I amended those values in Regedit before changing to AHCI, and unfortunately the problem still occurred.

I did install windows with 5 hard drives installed, a few days ago. It's not an inconvenience to format and reinstall, this time in AHCI if that will fix the issue.

Yes, if that is not a problem that is the best way to do it: Install Windows fresh on an AHCI controller.

Always have only one hard drive connected when installing Windows. What happens often if you have more than one drive connected is that Windows will install the Boot Files on one hard drive, and the System files on another. This is why you can get startup problems if a hard drive is disconnected. This is a completely separate problem from the AHCI one. Sounds like you have this problem also.

I suggest checking all your other drives to look for the Microsoft System Reserved partition, or partitions marked ACTIVE. Do this before reinstalling Windows.

The easiest way would be to connect everything the way it was (IDE mode too) and starting into Windows. Then go to Disk Management and look at all the drives to see what is there. If you can post a screen shot of the (expanded) Disk Management window here I can take a look and tell you what I see.

Are the other 4 hard drives new and empty, or do they contain data?

Two of them had random data on them, one had an old install of windows (now formatted) and one was empty. I didn't notice any partition in the brief time everything was working, but I'll run disk management tomorrow and double check before reinstalling.

Thank you very much for your help. I've been scratching my head for over a day now. Can't thank you enough

No problem.
If you find a System Reserved partition on one of the other drives you can just delete it, but be aware that Windows will not start up after that. Not a problem if you do it just before reinstalling.

If there is a partition on one of the other drives marked ACTIVE, then you must remove that Active flag before installing Windows (or before installing that other hard drive in the system). Windows will choke if there are 2 partitions marked ACTIVE in a system.