ACHI driver issue W7x64

[kegobeer]

I'm confused. You say you cannot enable AHCI in the BIOS? If you can't enable the setting in the BIOS, there's something else going on - that's not related at all to the OS.

Have you tried installing without pressing F6, to see if your SATA/RAID is discovered automatically?

Also - I'm certainly not a Microsoft drone, but I don't blame Microsoft if some hardware I purchased does not work with Windows 7. I always direct my anger at the hardware manufacturer. Of course, I never expect driver support immediately after the official launch date for hardware previously purchased. I understand that a hardware manufacturer is busy developing drivers for upcoming releases, and will slowly release drivers for existing hardware when it has the chance.

Intel is a big player in the OS biz, and has been best buds with Microsoft for years. If your motherboard isn't working with Windows 7, I'm positive this is Intel's fault. If anyone has complete access to every single dev build and code of Windows 7, it's Intel. They need to get off their butts and fix this.

 

[Qdos]

I'm confused. You say you cannot enable AHCI in the BIOS? If you can't enable the setting in the BIOS, there's something else going on - that's not related at all to the OS.

That's right. If I do that I end up in a boot loop, with the OS crashing at the time the little coloured dots start to coalesce into the W7 logo - and, no, it's down to nothing other than the AHCI/RAID drivers.

Disable AHCI and it boots fine.

Have you tried installing without pressing F6, to see if your SATA/RAID is discovered automatically?.

Yup. Same result if AHCI is enabled, a boot loop.

Disable AHCI and, once again, it boots fine.

IMHO the problem I'm experiencing is because, regardless of all the time the latest OS has been in development and BETA testing - Microsoft have not built in a compatible driver, and Intel haven't developed a stable one.

Gigabyte, it seems, have chosen to bury their heads in the sand for the timebeing as they've not responded to me raising the issue with them except to tell me that all the drivers I require should be on the W7 DVD, and automatically loaded by Windows Setup.

I don't rightly know who is to blame for this debacle

 

[kegobeer]

I'm still not clear - if you change the setting in the BIOS, it does not stick? Does it immediately crash when booting (without an OS installed)? Or, does it only crash after installing Windows 7?

 

[Adrian]

AHCI

Qdos, is it possible for you to use the existing AHCI driver from Vista 64 bit to resolve the issue?

 

[nredding]

IMHO the problem I'm experiencing is because, regardless of all the time the latest OS has been in development and BETA testing - Microsoft have not built in a compatible driver, and Intel haven't developed a stable one.

I installed Win7 on a PC with an Intel X58 chipset and AHCI activated, and Win7 installed an AHCI driver that works fine.

 

[Qdos]

Qdos, is it possible for you to use the existing AHCI driver from Vista 64 bit to resolve the issue?

That driver doesn't appear to work, it was my first thought too.

I'm still not clear - if you change the setting in the BIOS, it does not stick? Does it immediately crash when booting (without an OS installed)? Or, does it only crash after installing Windows 7?

It only crashes when it attempts to load Windows 7, the BIOS will POST regardless of AHCI settings/drivers.

I installed Win7 on a PC with an Intel X58 chipset and AHCI activated, and Win7 installed an AHCI driver that works fine.

Then I suspect the drivers you've used are specific to your motherboard and are not the same ones I'm having to resort to testing, and you may well be using an x86 build.

Within the next few days I shall reload the OS from scratch again, trying various drivers at the F6 prompt.

I am unable to see why, for the life of me, Microsoft cannot include AHCI drivers for all the common chipsets within the x64 W7 Setup process as these drivers are hardly new technology.

 

[Adrian]

Reduce the drives

Hello Q, I have a suggestion:

1. Strip down your system to 1 hard drive.
2. Partition it, make it bootable.
3. Copy OS 7 to the partition.
4. Boot it.

In my mind, I would try to reduce the hardware down to 1 drive and see where it bombs. I know this sucks! But if you can get the OS to install with out choking on the AHCI driver maybe if you can get it stable you can then connect another drive etc.
As I said, right now there is nothing to lose.

Regards,
Adrian

 

[Dave76]

We've seen some strange things with Win7 x64, if your feeling adventuresome, you might try:

Along with Adrian's one HD,
One RAM card, move to another slot if needed.
If you have onboard graphics take the card out or use VGA cable if possible.
Remove all peripherals except keyboard, mouse and monitor.
Any Over Clocking of the RAM, CPU or GPU? return all to default.
Have you ran a mem test? x64 is touchy with RAM.

If these don't work, I would try that RAIDfix installer, if Win7 installs in IDE mode.

I managed to switch mine from IDE to RAID (about a year ago using Vista x64) by using update driver-browse for file - from Device Manager, install the RAID driver, re-boot when asked, go to BIOS first and switch to RAID, continue startup, load Matrix Storage Manager. No re-installation needed. If you get a blue screen error you can go back to BIOS and change it back to IDE. Worth a try, it's free.

I know this doesn't help but, Win7 Ult x64 installed fine for me on two computers with Vista Intel ICH9R drivers.

Try the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor, just to see what it says.

If all else fails get the install log files.
Windows Vista setup log file locations (This references Vista, but it's ok)

There is a guy here that will take a look at them, he's quite good at it.

Edit: Are you installing with your internet connected?

 

[Adrian]

Quoting from wiki article

Qdos, I see a wiki article on AHCI and intel motherboards, bold face stands out:
"The Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) is an Intel programming-specification which defines the operation of Serial ATA host-controllers (also known as host bus adapters) in a non implementation-specific manner. The specification describes a system memory structure for computer hardware vendors to exchange data between host system memory and attached storage-devices. As of June 2008, the current version of the specification is v. 1.3.[1] AHCI offers software developers and hardware designers a standard method for detecting, configuring, and programming SATA/AHCI adapters. AHCI is separate from the SATA 3Gb/s standard, although it exposes SATA's advanced capabilities (such as hot-plugging and native command queuing) such that host-systems can utilize them.
Many SATA controllers offer selectable modes of operation: legacy Parallel ATA emulation, standard AHCI-mode, or vendor-specific RAID. Intel recommends choosing RAID mode on their motherboards (which also enables AHCI) rather than the plain AHCI/SATA mode for maximum flexibility, due to the issues caused when the mode is switched once an operating system has already been installed.[2] Legacy-mode is a software backward-compatibility mechanism intended to allow the SATA-controller to run in legacy operating-systems which are not SATA-aware.
AHCI is fully supported out of the box for Microsoft Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Linux operating systems from kernel 2.6.19.[3] NetBSD also supports drivers in AHCI mode out of the box in certain versions. OpenBSD has had an AHCI driver since OpenBSD 4.1. FreeBSD supports AHCI as well. AHCI support for Solaris 10 has been introduced in the 8/07 release [4]. Older operating systems require hardware-specific drivers to support AHCI."

Q, maybe we need to sitch to a RAID configuration. I remember at the top of the thread that you did not want to use RAID as you had some other faster way to access your drives.

 

[Qdos]

Thanks for all the input. I just need to find the spare time to reinstall everything (with a fistful of various drivers at hand and ready to smack onto a USB stick...) and see whether I can't make it work.

Thread is bookmarked, I will update it in due course