AHCI : Enable in Windows 7 / Vista

Looking for an assist.

I've done this procedure on different machines in the past. However, I have a recalcitrant machine right now.

I had to perform a Repair Install Repair Install on my Win7/64 running on an Asus M5A88-M EVO motherboard https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/M5A88M_EVO/overview/ with an FX8350 cpu. BIOS is 1702, the latest.

When I did the repair install, I ensured that the ONLY drive connected was my Samsung 850 Evo SSD and the DVD drive (for the Win7 disk). I physically disconnected the other drive.

Per the mobo instruction manual, the SSD is connected to SATA6G_1. The DVD drive is connected to SATA6G_6. (The manual explains how the sata ports are split 1-4 and 5-6.)

As part of the cleanup process after the repair, I ran Samsung Magician. It showed that I was in IDE mode. Okay, no prob. This is easy.

I opened regedit and msahci start was 3: I changed it to 0, as I also did with IaStorV Start. Both were 0. Close regedit. Restart, get into the bios.

I changed the sata port 1-4 from IDE (which is what it WAS), to AHCI. That automatically changed ports 5 and 6 to AHCI, so I changed them back to IDE. See the image...

Saved and exited.

A POST screen, a flash of DOS-type writing, a flash of blue, another POST, and then a "Failed to start" windows screen with the option of startup repair or normal windows start.

Changing BIOS back to IDE allows a normal windows start.

I've tried several iterations of the above procedures with some variations (keeping sata 5 and 6 as AHCI, only changing registry msahci not iastorv, etc.) but the only way I can boot is with the Sata 1 set to IDE.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Ken



(The Repair Install went great. Fixed my issues.)

Edited to add: I've attached another image showing my Computer/Manage screen. This motherboard is an AMD mobo with a SB850 controller for the sata ports. Does the attached 2nd image look right? And the 3rd image, where I expanded the sata drives. I just cannot figure out why ahci is not working when the registry and the bios are both toggled to have it on. (after the edit, the images are now in the order 3,1,2)

Thanks.

Hello Josephm and welcome to Seven Forums. :)

What type of hard drive do you currently have, and what type of controller are you using now?

If you won't have any IDE drives connected along with the new SSD, then you could set to use AHCI in your BIOS, power off the PC, connect the new SSD, power on the PC, boot from your installation media, and proceed to restore the system image from the external drive to the SSD.

The size of the old HDD compared to the new SSD may be an issue when trying to restore the system image depending on what you used to create the system image.

If you used the built-in system image feature in Windows, then you will not be able to restore a system image created from a larger drive to a smaller drive.

If you used a 3rd party program (ex: Macrium Reflect), you may be able to.

What did you use to create the image with?

In that case, you won't be able to restore the system image on a drive smaller than the one the image was created from.