Possible to disable AHCI mode after Win7 install?

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criccio

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I forgot to turn off AHCI mode (that I realized I didn't need on) after doing my 7 x64 RTM install. I would really rather not re-install at this point. AHCI mode is adding an annoying 15 seconds to my boot time. I know its not the end of the world but I figured I would ask.

So is it possible to turn it off or should I leave it alone?
 
That sounds good, thanks. Completely non-personal but does anyone else have an opinion?
 
Yea just turn it off
It wont cause any issues.

it might when you turn it back on install drivers and ask you to restart, but thats it.
 
criccio said:
I forgot to turn off AHCI mode (that I realized I didn't need on) after doing my 7 x64 RTM install. I would really rather not re-install at this point. AHCI mode is adding an annoying 15 seconds to my boot time. I know its not the end of the world but I figured I would ask.

So is it possible to turn it off or should I leave it alone?
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Sorry if this is seen as thread crapping, but what's the delay from? Is it waiting 15 seconds somewhere, or is the performance 15 seconds slower? What motherboard, BIOS rev, AHCI drivers and disk model? I hear people talking about "slow" but they very rarely state any specifics. I'm curious to figure out what's at fault.

With a mechanical disk and XP or Vista, turning on AHCI only made things faster on my P5B-E (ICH8R). This is primarily NCQ, I would imagine. Of course on an SSD NCQ is meaningless.
 
Its the AHCI start-up process that happens right after POST and right before the OS starts loading that take the 15 seconds. Its annoying and un-needed (in my situation).
 
As the OP said AHCI adds another step to booting up the PC. Similar to what happens when you turn on raid or add a controller card to the system.
 
criccio said:
Its the AHCI start-up process that happens right after POST and right before the OS starts loading that take the 15 seconds. Its annoying and un-needed (in my situation).
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Well that's clearly limited to your motherboard/BIOS (or an incompatibility with one of your attached devices) then, not AHCI as a whole as some people are alleging in various threads around here lately. What is the model and version#?

There are no extra delays, detections or any AHCI activity visible on my P5B-E when it is enabled.
 
Surly73 said:
Well that's clearly limited to your motherboard/BIOS (or an incompatibility with one of your attached devices) then, not AHCI as a whole as some people are alleging in various threads around here lately. What is the model and version#?

There are no extra delays, detections or any AHCI activity visible on my P5B-E when it is enabled.
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Yes its on every board, there is a 10-15 sec HW initialization that takes place, just like a RAID controllers initialization.

After bootup there is no delay or slowdown.
Its just an extra process that takes place during bootup.
 
Ok so I went ahead and disabled it but now I get a BSOD right as Windows starts to load. Back to AHCI mode... ;)
 
criccio said:
Ok so I went ahead and disabled it but now I get a BSOD right as Windows starts to load. Back to AHCI mode... ;)
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What?
Seriously?

Ive never seen that.
Ive seen it when going from IDE to AHCI but not the other way around.
 
Yea, I don't know why. I guess I can live with it.

The only reason Its been bothering me is I have been playing with my OC lately and doing a lot of reboots.
 
nitrobass24 said:
Yes its on every board, there is a 10-15 sec HW initialization that takes place, just like a RAID controllers initialization.

After bootup there is no delay or slowdown.
Its just an extra process that takes place during bootup.
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It is NOT on every board... As I said there was no increase in POST, pre-boot or boot up times on my board with ICH8R, but there is a decrease in plainly visible disk thrashing with NCQ enabled via AHCI.

I see the board in question is a non-R ICH9, not sure what makes the difference. :confused:

Was the increase from enabling AHCI strictly on the ICH9, or on the JMB363 which provides the IDE? In my case the JMB is in IDE and the ICH8R in AHCI.
 
You cannot change from AHCI to IDE. People claiming you can just do it have never done it or installed Windows improperly.

Changing from AHCI to IDE changes the boot devices within Windows. The BSOD is from being unable to find the boot device. This can only be fixed through a very complicated method using the Windows Recovery Console, and is not worth it.

In other words, don't bother changing from AHCI. Just leave it be.
 
AreEss said:
You cannot change from AHCI to IDE. People claiming you can just do it have never done it or installed Windows improperly.

Changing from AHCI to IDE changes the boot devices within Windows. The BSOD is from being unable to find the boot device. This can only be fixed through a very complicated method using the Windows Recovery Console, and is not worth it.

In other words, don't bother changing from AHCI. Just leave it be.
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I've done hundreds of Windows installs and have never found that to be the case. In my experience, one can always change from AHCI to IDE mode with no ill effects -- I've never had the computer not boot due to making that switch. However, I have certainly experienced the opposite when attempting to change from IDE mode to AHCI when the proper drivers aren't installed (which can result in the aforementioned BSOD, namely in XP. Vista and 7 seem to be able to handle it without a problem as they apparently have the appropriate drivers for popular chipsets already integrated).
 
AreEss said:
You cannot change from AHCI to IDE. People claiming you can just do it have never done it or installed Windows improperly.

Changing from AHCI to IDE changes the boot devices within Windows. The BSOD is from being unable to find the boot device. This can only be fixed through a very complicated method using the Windows Recovery Console, and is not worth it.

In other words, don't bother changing from AHCI. Just leave it be.
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Nonsense.

Edit: Utter Nonsense.



.
 
The wikipedia article is about switching to AHCI from IDE, not the other way around which is what the OP was trying to do.

The Storage review article is trying to switch from AHCI to RAID

The other article is in a foreign a language.

I have switched from AHCI to IDE on several different systems without any issue whatsoever.
 
Thxs NitroBass24....you can go from AHCI to IDE w/ "Zero" problems. Done it lots of times.
 
AreEss said:
You cannot change from AHCI to IDE. People claiming you can just do it have never done it or installed Windows improperly.
Click to expand...

My experience has been the exact opposite. (Shrug)


I see the board in question is a non-R ICH9, not sure what makes the difference.
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The ICH9 doesn't have official AHCI support from Intel but can be "hacked" to include it.

The ICH9R is the RAID edition and officially supports AHCI.

I have no idea how Win7 would install AHCI on a chipset that doesn't support it but from the OP's experience, it looks like it will work but won't install the IDE drivers? :confused:
 
AreEss said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanc...mmon_problems_switching_to_AHCI_under_Windows

http://forums.storagereview.net/index.php?showtopic=26643&start=0&p=249542&#entry249542

http://www.tweakpc.de/tweaking/ide_ahci/s01.php

You're welcome to stop making a fool of yourselves now.
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And you're welcome to leave the discussion now, since you obviously do not know what you are talking about. It is amusing how you continue to prove yourself wrong while attempting to belittle others, though.

As has been said, the problems occur when switching to AHCI mode, not from. Hell, even the link that YOU posted clearly indicates that! I fail to see why you insist on arguing that the opposite is true, when multiple members and even your own supporting evidence indicates that you're wrong.

If you just got mixed up in your original post and meant to say "You cannot change from IDE to AHCI", just say so. Everyone makes mistakes and accepting that you made a mistake would be a lot easier than trying to come to grips with the fact that you honestly think you're the only one who is right. Honestly, who is the fool?
 
criccio said:
Ok so I went ahead and disabled it but now I get a BSOD right as Windows starts to load. Back to AHCI mode... ;)
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If Win7 has a repair install mode, I would imagine you could switch to IDE and do a repair install.
 
Must be dependent on BIOS and chipset. My Gigabyte X58 board has no problem switching from AHCI to IDE. Like the OP, I wanted to switch back because the extra boot up process is annoying and not worth the benefit (for me) of AHCI.
 
Old Hippie said:
If Win7 has a repair install mode, I would imagine you could switch to IDE and do a repair install.
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Triedthat after the first BSOD; after about 10 minutes of "trying to fix the problem" it didn't find anything wrong.
 
Yea as I said before, it was only because I was doing alot of rebooting while messing with my OC that the extra 10 or 15 seconds was getting irritating. I'm done with that now so I won't be rebooting as often. Usually I only reboot about once a week.
 
imyourzero said:
I've done hundreds of Windows installs and have never found that to be the case. In my experience, one can always change from AHCI to IDE mode with no ill effects -- I've never had the computer not boot due to making that switch. However, I have certainly experienced the opposite when attempting to change from IDE mode to AHCI when the proper drivers aren't installed (which can result in the aforementioned BSOD, namely in XP. Vista and 7 seem to be able to handle it without a problem as they apparently have the appropriate drivers for popular chipsets already integrated).
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Ditto
 
Old Hippie said:
The ICH9 doesn't have official AHCI support from Intel but can be "hacked" to include it.

The ICH9R is the RAID edition and officially supports AHCI.

I have no idea how Win7 would install AHCI on a chipset that doesn't support it but from the OP's experience, it looks like it will work but won't install the IDE drivers? :confused:
Click to expand...

Well gee, maybe that has something to do with it.

I'm not sure how people can post "all boards do it" when they clearly don't, and the board in question doesn't even officially support AHCI. This then gets boiled down to "AHCI causes delays" and "AHCI is bad".

I'm also still curious if AHCI is being toggled on the JMicron chipset as well, adding another possible cause for the delay at boot time. I also wonder if the IDE detection timeout is being modified by turning on AHCI on this particular board.

I was incorrect in one of my posts yesterday. I now have AHCI turned on both on my ICH8R and my JMB363 (for e-SATA) and I have no extra delays.
 
criccio said:
I'm done with that now so I won't be rebooting as often. Usually I only reboot about once a week.
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In that case it's no biggie but the AHCI-IDE thing is unusual.

To install in AHCI mode with a chipset that supposedly doesn't support it and then not run in IDE mode is one of those "Say What" type of deals.

And it sounds exactly like something I would do! :D
 
Surly73 said:
snip
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You seem to be under the impression that the "delay" i'm speaking about is just some random pause in the POST process... Its not. Its a compltetely different screen that pops up right after POST that says something about "blahblah blah AHCI BIOS vX.XX etc... blah blahblah" And then scans all the SATA ports for drives. This only shows up with AHCI mode turned on and does take almost 15 seconds to complete.
 
Its a compltetely different screen that pops up right after POST that says something about "blahblah blah AHCI BIOS vX.XX etc... blah blahblah"
Click to expand...

Strange, I've never seen it. :confused:
 
Sorry re: my post above; I did not see where the OP identified the chipset as ICH9 (and I still don't)...if it's a non-R chip set, there's other issues to resolve or consider.
 
criccio said:
You seem to be under the impression that the "delay" i'm speaking about is just some random pause in the POST process... Its not. Its a compltetely different screen that pops up right after POST that says something about "blahblah blah AHCI BIOS vX.XX etc... blah blahblah" And then scans all the SATA ports for drives. This only shows up with AHCI mode turned on and does take almost 15 seconds to complete.
Click to expand...

The Gigabyte board I used on a build for my girlfriend (GA-G33M-DS2R), which uses the ICH9R chip does this as well. You get the little twirlng cursor and the dots moving across the screen while it scans for devices. It takes about 10 seconds or less.

You should be able to switch to IDE mode without problems. You may have to go into your BIOS after you switch to IDE and make sure it still has the correct devices and settings listed for your boot device. Otherwise, your BIOS may pick a random drive for your boot device. For instance, if your normal boot drive was plugged into Sata port 2 and you had another drive plugged into SATA port 0, the BIOS may get confused, especially if they're both bootable. Your BIOS may decide you wanted the drive in port 0 to be your boot device, like you normally would under old IDE methods of configuring drives.

EDIT: Also, sometimes the device name for the AHCI and IDE mode for the drive are not the same in the BIOS. Make sure the correct device is listed in your BIOS after switching to IDE. Keep in mind if you do this you will most likely need to manually switch it back if you decide to go back to using AHCI mode.

Hope that makes sense.
 
criccio said:
You seem to be under the impression that the "delay" i'm speaking about is just some random pause in the POST process... Its not. Its a compltetely different screen that pops up right after POST that says something about "blahblah blah AHCI BIOS vX.XX etc... blah blahblah" And then scans all the SATA ports for drives. This only shows up with AHCI mode turned on and does take almost 15 seconds to complete.
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I understand exactly what you're stating but:

1) people on here have said "all boards do that". They do not, yet some are speaking like it is a foregone conclusion that AHCI slows everyone's boot time by 15 seconds.

2) I've asked you about whether you were toggling the ICH9 or JMicron AHCI or both (ie. which device is the screen from)? No response.

3) I asked about whether there's a possibility that an IDE detection delay setting was present in the BIOS but was only activated when you flipped AHCI on. (my BIOS has one) No response.

4) It's come to light that the ICH9 doesn't even support AHCI but it was stated that "hacks" allow this to happen. This could certainly be something to do with your sub-par experience, if it's even the ICH9 that you're talking about (see 2).


I'm annoyed by generalizations ("all boards do that" "AHCI does nothing but slow things down") when my experience is the opposite and I'm also trying to see if we could help you by figuring out if the delay is caused by something correctable. Like, say, an incompatibility between AHCI mode and an optical drive that is causing that screen to stall for a full timeout instead of 2 seconds. Without full information no one is going to make a connection like that which could fix it for you.
 
criccio said:
I don't think that was the problem, as the Win7 loading screen did show up for a few seconds before the BSOD. So the right boot device was chosen.
Click to expand...

This just means the kernel comes up, but may not be able to map it's "root" device to continue past a certain point. It doesn't rule out a "boot device" mapping issue.

You may be able to fix it in the same way as the partition mapping thread which was also active this week (boot drive seen as I:)

http://www.hardforums.com/showthread.php?t=1446487
 
criccio said:
You seem to be under the impression that the "delay" i'm speaking about is just some random pause in the POST process... Its not. Its a compltetely different screen that pops up right after POST that says something about "blahblah blah AHCI BIOS vX.XX etc... blah blahblah" And then scans all the SATA ports for drives. This only shows up with AHCI mode turned on and does take almost 15 seconds to complete.
Click to expand...

The confusing thing here is the 15 second delay you are talking about. My system, with 4 hard drives and one cdrom, AHCI initialization takes about 2 seconds. In fact, the screen goes by so fast, it's difficult to read. IDE mode isn't any faster. In IDE mode, that time is spent autodetecting SATA IDE devices, in about the same amount of time as AHCI initializaion in AHCI mode.

I have an IDE drive tray, with a SATA adapter, and if there is no drive in that ide tray, then, AHCI initialization pauses for about 10-15 seconds before giving up on that SATA port. Is your issue similar to that?

I just recently changed my windows from IDE TO AHCI. I came up with my own workaround for the bluescreen. I got an E-SATA to regular SATA cable on my last newegg order. I used that cable to move my boot drive to my mobo esata port. Then, I changed bios to AHCI, and installed drivers when windows booted up. Then, I shutdown and moved the boot drive back to the SATA port. I found that method a lot simpler than the workarounds I've seen on the internet. All you need for this method is some sort of other SATA controller that you can use, temporarily.

Since making the swap, while changing around bios settings, I have accidentally left them in IDE for a bootup. System boots up fine, with no signs of any problems. The AHCI drivers seem to stay in the system though, as changing back again is as simple as chainging bios settings back to AHCI.

Short answer: OP, if you're sure standard IDE is what you want (you're giving up NCQ, and hot swap ability), all you have to do is switch it in the bios.
 
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