AHCI : Enable in Windows 7 / Vista

Brink said:

Well, the tutorial was not written for Windows Server 2012 R2 though.

Ya one could be dual booting it with windows 7 like me. So at least a warning that if you are dual booting with server 2012r2 then be warned..

Hi.
I´m sorry, but I haven´t read all pages.
But I do follow yours instructions and I appreciate a lot.

Unfortutetly, I haven´t had success and my computer keeps rebooting and blinking a bluescreen impossible to read.
I found a page from Microsoft that solve my problem:
Error message occurs after you change the SATA mode of the boot drive
Modifying two registry keys instead of only one:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Msahci
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\IastorV

from "3" to "0"

I just want to share this in a forum that already helped me so many times.

Thanks guys,

Brink,
You might also note that the choice of whether to use MSAHCI vs. IAStor is not clear-cut. Since I changed it to install a Samsung SSD with an Apricorn Solo X2, I used MSAHCI. Some folks say that the Intel driver is better (but they don't say how well it works with non-Intel drives, if at all).

PS. The Solo X2 took my boot-drive sequential write speed from 68 to 507 MB/s. I was using a 7200 RPM drive. Read speed went up to 523 MB/s. Random reads went up to 47571 MB/s. I use it ONLY for my system files and user/appdata, but NOT My Documents/Pictures/Music (moved them to another HD drive).

For those generally having issues, I thought that I'd briefly describe my situation.

I've had issues with the computer freezing and the cursor changing. Freezes for a few seconds then goes back, then increasing in frequency then usually I have to reboot which cures it for a hour or so.

It was something to do with my SATA configuration. Tried everything, including advice in this thread, but what finally resolved it was installing the Intel Rapid Storage Technology enterprise software (best to Google it as I downloaded it via the Dell website).

Once installed, I rebooted and finally my system installed the correct drivers for both my hard drives and I've had no issues since.

Best of Luck!

Thanks to Barefoot Kid for originally posting this thread more than 3 years ago and to Brink and all who have helped afterwards. Glad its still alive.

I just recently made the switch to AHCI after forgetting to reset my bios after a reinstall of Win 7 a couple of weeks ago. All went well or so it seems.

I only have one sata2 wd 500gb HDD and one sata DVD drive.
The bios screen now shows that the AHCI bios driver is loading and finding devices. So thats good. But in the windows Device Manager. I have a couple of yellow ! marks on some of the ATA channels. If I look at their properties it says "This device cannot start. (Code 10)" (see picture).



What concerns me is that there are 5 channel 0's, 5 channel 1's, 2 channel 2's, etc. Why so many channels? Why is the yellow! sign only on two of them?
I know why there's a yellow ! sign next to the Marvel 91xx device. Its because I don't have a RAID and never installed a device driver for that controller.

Here is a pic of my Gigabyte MB page with the SATA connector layout.




My computer seems to work fine, but why the yellow !'s?

Maybe after going to AHCI I need to install the Marvell drivers even tho I'm not using those connectors?

I'm stumped... any thoughts would be appreciated.

I followed this tutorial, and the microsoft fixit, but I'm still getting a BSOD on start if I switch to AHCI. Boots fine in IDE mode. Any other thing I need to take care of?