New SSD. Unable to use with AHCI mode.

[JoeStokes]

Sup beautiful people,

My aim is to install Windows 7 64x Home Premium on a new SSD in AHCI mode.

I recently bought an OCZ Arc 100 Sata III SSD to transfer Windows 7 Home Premium OEM to, on a Samsung RV510 laptop.

All possible methods of backing up and restoring, cloning and repairing boot sectors completely failed without any BIOS changes from a perfectly booting Samsung HDD partitioned as MBR booting in AHCI mode with Legacy OS support turned on in BIOS. I would end up with "Operating system not found" and it being impossible to recover the environment and rebuild the BCD with the error "Requested device unavailable" and "No OS files found" with automatic repairing.
If I were to try and install Windows 7 Home Premium with the aforementioned BIOS settings after completely wiping the disk clean it would tell me that:
"Windows cannot be installed to this disk. This computer's hardware may not support booting to this disk. Ensure that the disk's controller is enabled in the computer's BIOS menu."

Installing Windows 7 Home Premium with IDE set and Legacy OS Boot set goes through without any hindrances and OEM OS was activated. I have tried to reset the AHCI mode through the registry with the OS loaded on the SSD and then rebooted and changes BIOS settings back to AHCI mode and I once again face the error "Operating system not found."

In AHCI mode the SSD is not recognised as a bootable device at all however BIOS is picking it up. It makes no sense to me that an SSD with an exact copy of the OS of an HDD will not boot, however the HDD does.

I have done endless amounts of Google research but I think this time it won't be able to teach me and my brain is just absolutely fried right now, so I am hoping some one here might be able to help me. I believe I have recalled correctly all my trials and errors, feel free to ask any questions for clarification.


Spec:
Samsung RV510 Laptop (2011)
Windows 7 Home Premium 64x OEM
Samsung HM500JI HDD
OCZ Arc 100 SSD
Pheonix SecureCore BIOS
BIOS version: 02UC
MICOM version: 02UC


Advanced BIOS Settings:
CPU Power Saving Mode
Intel SpeedStep
EDB
Graphics Memory

Legacy USB Support
Legacy OS Support
AHCI Mode Control
>Native AHCI Mode

Fan Silent Mode
Battery Life Cycle Extension
USB S3 Wake-up

(No security options for EFI mode)

 

[JoeStokes]

Any one got any ideas at all? Any theories? Any suggestions?

I just tried a BIOS update which had no affect. This is killing me because it makes no sense what so ever!

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi and welcome to SevenForums,
Sorry for the late response please review this if you haven't already
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/219533-troubleshooting-windows-7-failure-boot.html

Doesn't make much sense to me even on legacy bios ahci is the default bios setting so you shouldn't have to change anything :/

 

[JoeStokes]

Thanks.
I'm afraid I have already looked through that.

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
Can you post some images of the bios settings Secure boot and csm ?
Also disable Fast boot and test as well.

 

[JoeStokes]

Advanced:

Security:

Boot:

As you can see this is an extremely basic BIOS on a 2011(?) laptop. Not an awful lot to configure. No fast boot option, no secure boot.

 

[ThrashZone]

Interesting no fast boot option shown,
The ssd might not be marked as active ?
Have you used diskpart
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/71432-partition-mark-active.html

 

[JoeStokes]

Yep I have done that. Not what is causing the issue though as I installed Windows 7 onto it in IDE mode, then used registry changes (after checking it boots fine) to change the OS to AHCI, then changed the BIOS to AHCI and then got the error "No operating system found"

 

[ThrashZone]

Not sure how to fix the ide thing looks like might be the ultimate problem
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/61869-ahci-enable-windows-7-vista.html

 

[JoeStokes]

Yeah that is the thread I read through when changing to AHCI in the OS. I don't know how to fix this either and it hurts my brain trying to logically put all this information together to something that makes sense.

 

[ThrashZone]

Yea sorry ide install was a big mistake
Might be more straight forward to clean install knowing now what not to do and what to do learning via hard knocks always hurts

At least the original hdd still boots or have I read that wrong ?

 

[JoeStokes]

I think you may have misread a large portion of my original post.
Cloning the HDD over to the SSD then taking out the HDD and booting off the SSD with no BIOS changes gives me "Operating system not found".
Trying to install fresh with no BIOS changes (AHCI mode) tells me "Windows cannot be installed to this disk. This computer's hardware may not support booting to this disk. Ensure that the disk's controller is enabled in the computer's BIOS menu."
I can install Windows while in IDE mode, but when changing it using the method you linked I get "Operating system not found" again.
All form of recovering the boot environment gives me "Requested device unavailable" and automatic system repair gives "No OS files found".

As an added note, the SSD is not showing up in boot devices while AHCI mode is active (Though BIOS shows it on a SATA port) only when in IDE.

 

[ThrashZone]

Ouch this one expensive ssd this is what you have ?
OCZ Vertex 4 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) VTX4-25SAT3-128G - Newegg.com

 

[JoeStokes]

Woah not that one. This one:
OCZ Arc 100.

 

[ThrashZone]

Your bios security screen shot is pretty interesting
You are using a bios password :/

 

[JoeStokes]

Nope, not using one. It has not been set.

 

[ThrashZone]

Looks enabled to me ?
View attachment 373444

 

[torchwood]

try this

Please try dsissabling SpeedStep, i know it causes problems for Dual booting with Ubuntu.

Roy

 

[ThrashZone]

That does sound similar to fast start too nice observation Torchwood

 

[JoeStokes]

Looks enabled to me ?
View attachment 373444

The password hasn't been set so the options are greyed out. I double checked and it is definitely asking me to set one as well as not letting me choose any other options other than what is highlighted in the screenshot.

Please try dsissabling SpeedStep, i know it causes problems for Dual booting with Ubuntu.

Roy

Thanks. I am afraid that has made no difference though. Still can't get the SSD to appear in the boot menu with AHCI.