BSOD on boot possibly due to AHCI or related settings

Some time ago I upgraded my Win 7 hard drive to an SSD drive. Despite following all of the guides, I don't beleive the AHCI/IDE settings for my drives was ever correct, this often lead to the drives not being recognised during the boot sequence and the message insert a boot disk. Often a reset would lead to the drives being recognised and the boot processing normally.

Recently (possibly linked to the latest windows 7 update from approx 2 weeks ago), whenever I boot now as soon as the drive moves to the windows 7 logo a BSOD appears and the machine reboots. This happens everytime. The only way to get around this is to hit F11 during the boot sequence which brings up the list of drives and I can select the SSD drive to boot from. It then boots as normal. However upon reboot it goes back to BSOD every time.

I would like to resolve the BSOD issue but hopefully resolve the underlying AHCI issue if this is related. I am thinking of upgrading to windows 8 at some point but figure it is best to resolve this beforehand.

I have attached the diagnostics tool zip. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

In case the files do not indicate it I have a Samsung 830 128 GB SSD and 3x 2TB WD Green Caviar drives

Thanks in advance.

If the only way you can boot successfully is by bringing up the menu to select a different boot device temporarily (that's what the F11 menu is for), then the Solid State Drive is probably not set up as the primary boot device in the BIOS.

So, I recommend going into the BIOS to make sure that the Solid State Drive is the first boot device and then we'll go from there.

When you get a BSOD during startup, your system is probably loading Windows from the hard drive. If you changed the SATA controller mode from IDE to AHCI, then the installation of Windows on the hard drive is in IDE mode and that's why it's giving you a BSOD. The reason why you can successfully boot to the Solid State Drive when you select it as a temporary boot device is that installation of Windows is in AHCI mode. However, the solution here is to make sure the Solid State Drive is the first device in the boot priority.

You see, when the SATA controller mode setting in the BIOS does not match the setting in the Windows Registry regarding IDE or AHCI, then a BSOD occurs during startup. So since you get a successful boot when you select the Solid State Drive as a temporary boot device by pressing F11, the only thing you have to do now is make it permanent in the BIOS.

Picture attached.

The device was booting ok (subject to the AHCI issue) up until a week or so ago. I will double check the BIOS but no settings were changed when the BSOD began.

So, it just suddenly started requiring you to press F11 to select the Solid State Drive? I mean either way, that tells me that it's not the primary boot device right now. I don't know why it would change on its own, but I still recommend looking into it.

Two cables

There is something to be said for starting with the basics! Indeed you are correct. The BIOS had changed such that my SSD was now the 5 boot device instead of the first. Changed the order and bingo it worked perfectly. Quite possibly it was booting from my old Windows 7 drive (which is still connected and would have been higher up the order) hence possibly the error.

All of the drives appear to be recognised on first boot which was not happening previously (would take two or three boots before it recognised the drives).

I haven't changed the BIOS in months, the only thing I was aware of was a windows update about 2 weeks ago - not sure if that is able to change the BIOS, but we are up and running!

Thank you for your assistance.

captainhowie said:

Two cables

There is something to be said for starting with the basics! Indeed you are correct. The BIOS had changed such that my SSD was now the 5 boot device instead of the first. Changed the order and bingo it worked perfectly. Quite possibly it was booting from my old Windows 7 drive (which is still connected and would have been higher up the order) hence possibly the error.

Oh it was definitely booting from the hard drive. You can see this by switching to IDE mode and then using F11 to boot from the hard drive. If you were to keep it in IDE mode and then try booting from the Solid State Drive, then you'd get a BSOD from that installation of Windows just like how you were getting a BSOD from the hard drive's installation of Windows in AHCI mode.

captainhowie said:

All of the drives appear to be recognised on first boot which was not happening previously (would take two or three boots before it recognised the drives).

I haven't changed the BIOS in months, the only thing I was aware of was a windows update about 2 weeks ago - not sure if that is able to change the BIOS, but we are up and running!

No, it's definitely not able to affect the BIOS. It's unrelated, so this may be some sort of fluke. However, I would keep an eye on it. I think that it's a bit suspicious that the boot order changed on its own. Although, it could just be as simple as a dying CMOS battery. Have you ever noticed your time and date being wrong?

captainhowie said:

Thank you for your assistance.

You're very welcome!