I have a PC that is all SATA, including the DVD drive. I prefer to set the SATA controller for AHCI for the bit of extra performance. However, build 7000 will not install from the DVD drive set like that. So I changed the SATA controller to IDE and was able to install build 7000. I then manually changed the SATA driver to AHCI, rebooted and changed the SATA controller to match. That works, of course. With build 7057, however, I was able to perform the install with the SATA controller set to AHCI. A nice improvement.
I also noticed two other things. The magical 200MB hidden partition is now 100MB, and I think I saw a speed improvement copying HDD to HDD. At one point I saw 130MB/sec copying back files to the C: drive (new 500GB Hitachi) from the V: drive (year-old 750GB Seagate). This PC has an ancient 3.2 GHz P-4 on a new motherboard.
I also noticed a huge speed improvment when moving files accross the network, twice as fast as the build 7000. My secondary 200MB partition remained the same because I did the upgrade and not a new installation.
Yes, I was mistaken, but with a bit of a good reason. In recalling the events of the installation, I did have to switch to IDE to get the installation to work properly. However, after the initial installation and the first set of updates, I updated the BIOS on the motherboard. That fixed the AHCI problem I had earlier. So, you are right and I was wrong.
