AHCI : Enable in Windows 7 / Vista

Hello

Quick question

I had the OS installed already, so I did the registry thing and it all worked. I had to change 2 things on my BIOs though. Had to put AHCI and enable Intel Rapid Start Technology.

I had already installed the latest Intel RST driver from my MOBO along with the other mobo drivers when I installed the OS.

My question is: Should I install that driver again now that I activated the AHCI? Because from what I see, when I did the switch, windows installed it's own AHCI drivers, did not use the one I installed before when I didn't even realized my system was installed in IDE and had no AHCI activated.

Brink said:

Hello Roy,

If it's a newer driver version, it wouldn't hurt anything to reinstall it if you like. :)

Hi Brink

Yes it is newer than windows driver for sure.
My only doubt is, I had already installed it. But I didnt have AHCI before nor did I used Intel RST, cause I installed my system in IDE.

I did that switch to AHCi today. Windows detected the AHCI and gave me a msg that it was installed and ready to use. The fact that I had already installed it before could be a problem?

System is working great and I felt a good difference from IDE.

First off, I'd like to thank BFK for saving me the hassle of having to reinstall everything. I'm posting this in case anyone runs into the scenario I just went through..

My specs: Lenovo M57 6072 SFF with dual core Intel. Sandisk 128G SSD - 4 gigs ram.
I'd like to let everyone who reads this know what I went through after making the changes, in order to get back to Windows 7 desktop. When I rebuilt this Lenovo M57, I upgraded the BIOS, which defaulted my SATA from ACHI to IDE. It was my fault for not checking, but there it was.

After making the changes per BFK's instructions, I rebooted into the BIOS and made the change. After saving and rebooting again, I kept getting an error: 1962 "BOOT FROM ACHI CD-Rom" and it went into a constant loop. I had the option of hitting F1, but that would take me right back to the error.

I went into my BIOS again and found that my boot sequence had a 'standard IDE and IDE CD-rom' .. but at the bottom of my boot list in the 'excluded' area sat my exact SSD and CD-Rom. I was able to move those up into my process list, then select them as primary and it booted to Windows, where it installed the correct drivers, so I rebooted a few times, and believe I should be good to go.

Thanks and GL

Thanks so much for the tutorial. I seem to be having an issue however. I recently upgraded my SSD drive from a tiny one to a bigger Samsung 840 EVO. After cloning the old drive over I ran the managment tool and was then informed about ahci mode. and that was why my benchmarks were so low. Sequential reads 250 writes 237mb/s random read/write 8967/20963 IOPS for reference. I followed the tutorial and switching to AHCI mode in the bios is causing windows to get to windows boot screen but then bsods. It never tries to install any other drivers. If I switch it back to IDE in the bios it boots and runs fine. I'm quite confused as I'm not sure what else to do. I really feel reinstalling windows is not an option. Is there anything else I can try? Included the BSoD reports if that might help.

ghaleon636: I'm not sure what troubleshooting you have performed so far, but you do have some options. I'm going to recommend a few things, and I'll go in order that is fastest.. the last could be time consuming. I am hoping you have not deleted or already reused your 'tiny SSD', and the original OS is still intact ..X,

Not knowing the exact date you installed the new SSD, there is an EVENT LOG note from May 25th referencing the Samsung Magician software. If your old SSD was the Samsung, try to remove the software in Safe Mode. Have you checked, or updated the firmware on your new SSD?

I'm also not sure about your time factor. I'm a tinkerer, so for me, if it's not a production PC.. it's play time. Going back to the changeover to ACHI.. the 1st step I'd ask is, did you check your registry for the "iaStorv"? It's in the tutorial on page 1, and could be easily missed. If you did, then have you tried to boot into Safe Mode With Networking to see if your PC will allow you to possibly auto-update the ACHI drivers? My computer had to do that after I rebooted the 1st time.

Here is a link in the forum regarding how to get help with BSOD's. Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) Posting Instructions

GL!

spelingchampeon Thank you for your reply. I have found out what my issue was. Oddly turning on AHCI mode in my motherboard disables the 6th sata port entirely. I had not disconnected the "tiny" ssd and it was still trying to boot from it. I had not changed the registry which was the cause of the bsod. I just swapped out an old drive to move the new ssd to sata1 and it worked like a charm. I had actually done most of what you recommended aside from messing with the firmware on the actual SSD as it's a brand new drive and I don't know if that's a good idea. However the new drive is samsung, and that was the point of installing disk magician. It's great to know at least I was thorough and great minds think alike. :) I'm unsure if this is normal or not though benchmark wise or something else is a problem. It seems kind of on the low end.

Glad to see you got it running.. that's the start you needed!

Have you checked to see if your SSD is aligned (offset divisible by 4096) properly? There are a couple of ways to check to see if it's aligned, and I highly recommend checking out this page:
How to: Properly re-align your SSD/HDD partitions

I recommend the AS SSD program, it will tell you about both ACHI and Alignment. It comes recommended from many different websites (including this site ).

Hi Folks of SevenForums!
Since a few days i'm fighting with my new bought SSD. I'm not able to boot in AHCI mode if i do the windows logo is loading until a blink of a BSOD appears and the system restarts automatically.

The weird part here is that the SSD sometimes is booting if the SATA Mode in BIOS is on SATA and i can enter the Windows 7. Thats a win (although i have to restart the PC sometimes more than 5 times) and i'm so in the range of doing something in windows.
If i change the SATA Mode to AHCI i gets always recognized but i cant skip the BSOD.
So my conclusion was Windows7 has a problem with the AHCI mode so does the internet as it seems ((:
But here is the trick with the registry changes of Msahci and IastorV not working. I changed both to 0 (first only Msahci, later both) and did one restart normally but after changing next to AHCI went to the BSOD again.

I'm wondering if there is any chance of installing the AHCI driver through an other way?

Greetings
chris