Windows 7 - AHCI : Enable in Windows 7 / Vista

Hey BFK

I'm aware of the dangers associated with AHCI. I've been trying to find the BIOS update but haven't so far. If possible could you please send a link to update my BIOS.

Thanks

There aren't any dangers with AHCI, BFK was talking about the potential dangers of a failed BIOS update. Just make sure you get a BIOS for your exact motherboard and make sure your PC doesn't lose power half way through the update. It's not likely to happen as the flashing process doesn't take that long on any motherboard.. But if you have access to a UPS it'll be safer.

If you go to the Asus site (ASUSTeK Computer Inc.-Support-), type in your motherboard model number in the top left (where it says "Input Model to Search") then select BIOS from the category just below that, you'll get to the downloads. Took me about 2 minutes to find the list of BIOS files..

the easy way when nothing else works:

1. backup your windows7 drive (as drive image) to external drive
2. make windows7 recovery cd
3. burn ahci drivers to another cd
4. boot from the recovery cd and choose the "add drivers" option
5. add the ahci drivers from the cd
6. just restore your windows installation, this time with fully working ahci
7. enjoy

Thank you! This way finally worked for me! Only one problem though. I ran the SSD benchmark again and now my scores were worse this time. Especially the Write scores. Any one know how this could be???

Hello Windows 7 Forums!

I have gone through about half of this thread and spent time on google, but all to no avail. I previously had my eSata port (and thus AHCI) working with a previous install of Windows 7 Pro x64. Unfortunately, my 8800 GT died, and corrupted my Windows 7 install with it. After replacing the PSU and GPU I proceeded to reinstall Windows 7.

This is where the problems started. I don't remember exactly what happened, but it should be ok. I had trouble installing, and must have had to disable AHCI in BIOS for the install to complete (otherwise the AHCI should be working). I have now edited the registry, changing the value to '0'. I turned AHCI on (it is called RAID autodetect, if that is relevant), saved the new settings and let it boot. It just proceeds to loop through the beginning steps, once it says Windows 7 and the dots begin to appear it restarts the boot process. It does this a few times and then tells me Windows 7 can't start due to a recent hardware/software change and asks to a)repair b) proceed as normal. I chose b and simply disabled AHCI in my BIOS, and it continued to boot as normal (no data loss or anything).

I'm assuming it's stuck in the boot loop because there are no AHCI drivers, and thus it can't detect my HDD. Hopefully someone knows what I can do. I think I may be able to use the Windows 7 retail disk for the drivers, but I'm unsure how to have the system get them from the disk.

Thank you for your help .

EDIT:
I am hesitant to just attempt a reinstall because of the issues I had last time when installing. I think I will just run into them again. Also besides the hardware changes, nothing else was changed. I am sure I plugged all cables back in correctly. The only other change was switching a SATA cable.

I have an XPS 430 (pretty much the same as the 420) and was having the exact same problem. The only way I finally got it to work was following the steps shanouser posted just above this.

Make a system image to an external HDD
Make the win 7 recovery CD if you dont already have one
Burn the latest AHCI driverrs onto a CD (I got the most recent ones from the Intel site)
Go into BIOS and change the SATA settings to RAID ON
Boot to the recovery CD and choose to restore system image
Select the add drivers option and load the AHCI driver from the CD
Continue to restore windows from the image

This is what finally worked for me.

Thank you! I will try that and post an update if I can get it to work.

EDIT:

Is the the "System Repair Disc" I will be prompted to make after backing up my disk image? Or is this something else I am unaware of?

Also @ wakeboardr116 is http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Deta...18859&lang=eng what you used?

Yes the system repair disk is the same as the recovery cd I believe.

Edit: Yeah I believe that link is the right one for the drivers.

Here I still have the zip file containing the drivers from when I did it. Just extract all the files and burn them directly to a CD.

f6flpy96x64.zip

vanquish46,

Put the Raid drivers on a CD or USB stick.

Select 'repair' and follow instructions, look for the option to install drivers.

You can make a system repair disk but, must be done from within windows.