Abit iP35 Pro - Switching to AHCI from IDE in Win XP x64

[prasvt]

So lately I haven't been all that pleased with Vista - went from Vista Ultimate x64 for a few months to x32 for a few weeks. Had some trojan / virus issues despite having symantec endpoint and spybot / teatimer running (useless programs and my fault for letting it happen). So now I'm back to XP x64. This time I ghosted the drive so if anything happens I can just restore. No problems thus far, but I'm unable to switch from SATA IDE mode to AHCI. I've done it in Vista w/o any problems but w/ XP x64, once I enable AHCI in the BIOS, I get a "disk read error" when the machine goes to load Windows.

So these are the steps I've followed:

1 - download and extract the latest Intel Matrix AHCI drivers
2 - run that custom registry entry that is floating around
3 - update the SATA drivers in the device manager to AHCI
4 - reboot into the BIOS, make the change

Now the real bitch is that once I see the disk read error and then switch back to IDE I get a BSOD - probably b/c I changed the SATA controller drivers in Windows. So at that point, I have to a "last known good configuration" boot.

So my question is ... does Win XP x64 SP2 even support AHCI? I do alot of video encoding so there's a decent amount of hdd activity going on across the 3 hard disks I use. So I figured NCQ would help when I'm really multitasking.

Anyway if anyone has been able to switch in XP (or x64), some help would be appreciated.

And my apologies if this is the wrong thread to post Thanks.

 

[Michael Daly]

You cannot switch back and forth between IDE and AHCI without re-installing Windows. That's documented on the Intel web site.

If you want AHCI, then set that in BIOS and install Windows XP. Be prepared to provide the drivers on the install (F6 at the start).

Set it to RAID instead of AHCI if your MB provides the RAID setting meaning RAID+AHCI. That will give you AHCI now and RAID if you need it in the future without an OS re-install.

 

[prasvt]

Documented or not, you can switch between AHCI and IDE in all versions of Windows. Just do a google search and you'll see people who've done it in both 32/64 bit flavors of Windows XP and Windows Vista. I've done it in Vista 64 and Vista 32, but for some reason I was having problems doing it in XP x64.

In any case, it's a moot point, because I just reinstalled XP x64 with AHCI turned on from the get go. Like you said, I just put the drivers on a floppy and did the F6 thing. I actually attempted to do this on the initial install but I think I did something wrong the first time. Anyway it did the job this time and I'm glad I did b/c responsiveness has increased noticeably.

Still, I'm not sure why I couldn't do the switch when someone else managed to in XP x64 with the same motherboard. But I guess that wasn't Intel's intent since they're not exactly prescribing the method to do it themselves.

 

[BUFF]

there's another way to do it on an IP35 Pro (or similar mobo).

Take your OS HDD off the ICH9R & put it on the Jmicron.
Whilst OS HDD is on the Jmicron install the Intel AHCI drivers in Windows .
Switch the ICH9R to AHCI in the BIOS.
Move the OS HDD back from the JMicron to the ICH9R.
Job done.