Windows 7: AHCI : Enable in Windows 7 / Vista

@tweakradje

You can shorten all that to: Before you reboot and change the BIOS do this part as you listed

::Start

Make sure that the AHCI service is started during boot time. Goto HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\msahci and set Start to 0 (at boot time)

Now reboot and go into the BIOS to switch the controller mode from whatever to AHCI.
Save your BIOS settings and reboot.

::End

Make sure you press F8 and boot in to safe mode, install the correct driver, reboot. Your Done.

Clean up if you wish.

I have done this many many times works perfectly. -WS

Thanks for your info. I will test it on some pristine machines an let you know.

My experience so far is that the CriticalDeviceDatabase key must be present.

I let you know.

Cheers

@ Bare Foot Kid: Thank you for doing this. You have just saved me 2 days worth of re-installing files as I forgot to set my SSD to AHCI before I installed Windows 7.

You are a super star!!!

Hello,

I think I'm beyond help for my situation, but this forum seems to have a lot of answers, so I'm crossing my fingers.

I have a very old Dell Dimension 8300 system (almost 9 years old) and I have a Samsung 330 SSD drive. I think that my system might be too old to support AHCI, but I thought I'd double check here, just in case.

I've followed all the instructions, but I simply cannot find any setting to change from IDE to AHCI.

Any ideas?

Regards -- James

James - I don't think the Dell 8300 supports AHCI. Do you see it in the BIOS settings? As far as the SSD drive most/many backwards compatible so you could be able to use the drive without the need for AHCI drivers. However your problem is that this is a SATA III drive and your system only supports SATA II, if you can return it for a SATA II I would do that. -WS

Thanks for the response. I believe I can still return the drive since I just purchased it a few days ago. I'll see if I can get a SATA II drive instead. I did not see an option in my bios to choose AHCI.

Good. It brought my ssd score from 7.4 to 7.7 with AHCI enabled on SATA 2 3gbps.

..Just for saving time...
....Do I need to do anything (like this tutorial suggest), when I'll... "clean install" Windows 7 over my OEM Windows 7?
.........Thank you much much!...

Hello Notis,

Nope. This tutorial is for after installation. Since you'll be doing a clean install, you could just set your BIOS settings to use AHCI/SATA before the installation instead.

...Thanks for reply...(my f...poor english...always!...)
..I meant.. :
.. now in my bios..is written -SATA operation [ACHI]. When I'll do a "clean install Windows 7", a) will bios stay like it is now or I have to care about?
..and b) maybe (not sure), I'll update my bios from A13 to A19, then will I have to look for.. or settings will stay?
(never I did something else than restoring to factory settings...so excuse my simple questions...)
For admin.
-Is it possible someone to write in his "system spec" about two computers? Often I see confusion when I get a reply..