Unable To Enable AHCI

[kawzman]

[FONT=&quot]I finally upgraded from HDD to SSD (Samsung 840 Evo, MZ-7TE250) for my OS/programs. I have read that SSDs perform best with AHCI enabled. There are two settings in my BIOS (ver F3B) for my mobo (Gigabyte GA-X48-DS4) dealing with AHCI.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]SATA RAID/AHCI Mode. Has three setting options; Disabled, RAID, and AHCI.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Onboard SATA/IDE Ctrl Mode. Has three setting options; IDE, AHCI, and RAID/IDE.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Setting selection seemed obvious; AHCI for both. With those settings my PC restarts in an endless loop after a second or two of loading the Windows splash screen. I have Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]I don’t know how long my mobo has had this issue with enabling AHCI since my previous setup was running two Seagate Barracuda 500GB HDDs in RAID 0. This has been my setup since I built it in 2008, so I have never needed to enable AHCI. I decided to upgrade to SSD once one of the HDDs in RAID was starting to fail; has now failed.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]To keep my PC running until I could perform a fresh install of the OS and programs onto the SSD in a couple weeks, I used the Samsung Data Migration utility that came on a CD with the SSD to image the OS/program partition from my RAID HDDs to the SSD. I haven’t had any issues running the OS or programs.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]****************************[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Troubleshooting tried so far.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]1. SSD working with SATA RAID/AHCI Mode set to RAID and Onboard SATA/IDE Ctrl Mode set to AHCI.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]2. Verified all drivers and firmware are up-to-date.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]3. Tried every configuration possible for the two settings discussed above to see what would work. Was able to boot into OS with every combination except where SATA RAID/AHCI Mode was set to AHCI.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]4. With both modes set to AHCI, as a long shot, tried using Win 7 disk to boot into OS. Also tried Win 7 repair from the disk. Both failed.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]5. Googled and googled for this issue and this mobo with no solid leads to a solution.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]****************************[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Any suggestions and comments would be appreciated. Thanks as always.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Cheers,[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Aaron[/FONT]

 

[VirtualLarry]

Setting selection seemed obvious; AHCI for both. With those settings my PC restarts in an endless loop after a second or two of loading the Windows splash screen. I have Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit.

I don’t know how long my mobo has had this issue with enabling AHCI since my previous setup was running two Seagate Barracuda 500GB HDDs in RAID 0. This has been my setup since I built it in 2008, so I have never needed to enable AHCI. I decided to upgrade to SSD once one of the HDDs in RAID was starting to fail; has now failed.

To keep my PC running until I could perform a fresh install of the OS and programs onto the SSD in a couple weeks, I used the Samsung Data Migration utility that came on a CD with the SSD to image the OS/program partition from my RAID HDDs to the SSD. I haven’t had any issues running the OS or programs.

More than likely, if you had a HDD RAID-0 installation, and you cloned that install to your SSD, then your BIOS settings for the SATA controller should still be set to RAID, since you had the RAID drivers installed for your HDDs. Setting the BIOS to AHCI would likely cause those drivers to punt, and that's probably what you are seeing with a quick bluescreen.

I would first try setting your BIOS to RAID, like you had it for the HDD RAID. RAID is generally a super-set of AHCI, on Intel controllers, so you wouldn't be losing out on any performance.

If that doesn't work, you make have to re-install.

 

[kawzman]

[FONT=&quot]Thanks [/FONT][FONT=&quot]VirtualLarry, run[FONT=&quot]ning the [/FONT]SSD with SATA RAID/AHCI Mode set to RAID and Onboard SATA/IDE Ctrl Mode set to AHCI. Will complete a fresh install in a couple weeks and see what happens then. This issue is just bugging[FONT=&quot] me and won't stop nagging me till I put it down.[/FONT]
[/FONT]

 

[babcom]

If you can get in to windows with your SSD set to RAID mode then you can change to the AHCI driver by changing the registry as described here then changing the BIOS to AHCI. You do not need to reinstall. I have used this method before and it works.

 

[vailr]

[FONT=&quot]There are two settings in my BIOS (ver F3B) for my mobo (Gigabyte GA-X48-DS4) dealing with AHCI.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]SATA RAID/AHCI Mode. Has three setting options; Disabled, RAID, and AHCI.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Onboard SATA/IDE Ctrl Mode. Has three setting options; IDE, AHCI, and RAID/IDE.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Setting selection seemed obvious; AHCI for both.[/FONT]

The bios setting "[FONT=&quot]Onboard SATA/IDE Ctrl Mode[FONT=&quot]" pertains to the secondary JMicron (non-Intel) controller. [FONT=&quot]If the IDE port is not being used, or the JMicron SATA ports aren't being used, th[FONT=&quot]ere should be a bios setting to simply disable [FONT=&quot]the controller[/FONT].[/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT] Which would also be my recommended bios setting.
However: an X48 board is pretty outdated by now. For best SSD functionality, upgrade to something newer.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Having gone through this at least once, I think the OP can probably get out of this difficulty as follows:

If you can't boot to windows and you still have the RAID0 volume, clone it again to a single disk (SSD) operating under general RAID-mode.

Once you boot with the newly-cloned, RAID-mode-configured SSD, find the Windows "Fix-it" which makes all the registry edits for you -- hopefully to use the native MSAHCI driver of Windows. After running the Fix-It, you would reboot immediately to enter BIOS and change the setting to AHCI-mode. Follow the instructions; reboot and then install the Intel AHCI driver if you want to use it.

The other possibility: with the original cloned volume that won't boot, use the Windows install disc to "repair" the volume without assistance from other files. This worked for me once that I remember.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Really you should stop with the shortcuts and realize that if you want to use ahci then enable it in the bios and do a clean install of windows. This is what I did recently on my laptop which dell placed in raid when they installed windows instead of ahci.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Really you should stop with the shortcuts and realize that if you want to use ahci then enable it in the bios and do a clean install of windows. This is what I did recently on my laptop which dell placed in raid when they installed windows instead of ahci.

If you really needed to do a clean install of Windows, M$ wouldn't have posted a "Fix-It" button to prepare the hard-drive and registry for the BIOS changeover.

There's nothing complicated about it. It gets complicated when someone doesn't do their homework and follow the prescribed steps. Then, you're making all these detours to achieve a simple objective that would not have caused a problem.

 

[red454]

Sounds like a problem similar to when I was switching from IDE mode to AHCI, if I am reading your post correctly. If you can get back to booting to your OS, there are a couple of setting to change in the registry, then shut down and change to AHCI in the bios - reboot and all is well. I have done this a few time successfully, but I was going from IDE to AHCI, not from RAID to AHCI. Perhaps it is different.

I am not sure what you have searched on, but maybe see if a search on switching from IDE to AHCI helps you. And of course, be careful fooling with registry entries. You may end up having to go with a fresh OS install anyway.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Sounds like a problem similar to when I was switching from IDE mode to AHCI, if I am reading your post correctly. If you can get back to booting to your OS, there are a couple of setting to change in the registry, then shut down and change to AHCI in the bios - reboot and all is well. I have done this a few time successfully, but I was going from IDE to AHCI, not from RAID to AHCI. Perhaps it is different.

I am not sure what you have searched on, but maybe see if a search on switching from IDE to AHCI helps you. And of course, be careful fooling with registry entries. You may end up having to go with a fresh OS install anyway.

When I was addressing the same obstacle for myself, I found a forum post or guide summarizing the procedure for all three possible transitions -- IDE to AHCI, RAID to AHCI, and vice-versa. They all require registry edits which are simple. The Windows Fix-It I found specifically focused on RAID-to-AHCI conversion.