Z77 Chipset - How To Enable And Confirm AHCI (Drives Aren't Hot Swappable)
May 4, 2012
New i5-8570k with Z77X-D3H build. SSD's & HD's. 1 backup HD is in a caddy (simple SATA connection, its not a raid device) with on/off switch. BIOS is AHCI by default. Installed Win7 Pro x64 then after chipset drivers with mobo DVD. IRST is installed but notes say it should be installed during o/s install. How to confirm AHCI is on? The drives aren't listed in safely remove/eject hardware icon in systray. HD Caddy is useless because hot swap isn't working or on.
Does the new Z77 chipset require the drivers to be installed during O/S install? I tried that with files on USB flash drive but Win7 prevented it because the drivers were unsigned. These are Intel's latest drivers for the Series 7 chipsets. I've tried to confirm whether i have AHCI on or not, 'AS SSD benchmark' detects 'iaStor'. I guess if the chipset drivers must be installed before o/s install then the question becomes "How to install Intel drivers that aren't signed during O/S install". There is no 'ignore & continue' option.
I'm coming from win XP and I've got 3 SATA drives currently operating in IDE mode. I am just about to move to Windows 7 Pro and I was considering setting the motherboard to recognize the drives as AHCI. I am going to reformat one drive completely for the OS drive.
My questions are:
1. Will this negatively affect my other two storage drives because they had previously been running in IDE mode?
2. Is there a way to determine whether or not my drives support AHCI at all? (They're all SATA drives bought in the last 4 years.)
3. I intend to run XP mode, will AHCI mode pose any problems for this?
I recently upgraded to an SSD. I moved windows 7 over to the new SSD and re-aligned the partition properly The drive setup is as follows:
2x 500GB WD Black drives in RAID 0 1x 120GB ADATA S510 SSD
In BIOS, RAID mode is enabled. You cannot enable RAID for one pair of drives and AHCI separately. I was assuming disks that are not part of the logical RAID volumes would be set to AHCI automatically. I have enabled NCQ in AMD RaidExpert for the SSD.WEI is 5.9 for the primary disk. The primary disk is the SSD.Other strange behanivour is that the RAID array and the SSD both appear as SCSI devices in device manager, and Windows won't accept the ahci drivers from ECS.
I have a problem with migration from AHCI to RAID on existing win 7 x64. I had AHCI HDD connected to marvell SATA 6gbit controller. I wanted to create RAID 0 on intel controller (ICH10) I created hdd image in acronis. Enabled RAID in bios and Created RAID 0 disk (2 x hdd) Restored from image to new raid hdd . When I try to boot win i get blue screen . error 0x0000007B ( so win cant recognize hdd)When I boot from win CD installer have access to raid disk what shall I do? I my opinion system doesn't have access to raid drivers. (maybe missing registry entries) i system32/drivers i have file iastor.sys but probably there is no registry entries how to add registry entries to system? How can I boot system??? ( in rescue mode windows also doesn't start)
Went into the registry, and changed the Start Value of msahci to 0. However, when I enable AHCI in my bios, Windows 7 won't boot. It freezes and then my system restarts.
Okay I plan on doing a clean install of Windows 7 on my laptop. I have an SSD from crucial.I know that I need to enable AHCI BEFORE I start the installation of Windows 7...correct? I saw this Intel website in regards to AHCI.Intel Rapid Storage Technology” Configure the BIOS for RAID or AHCI on an Intel Desktop Board.I know that my laptop has a chipset that supports AHCI."Enabling AHCI or RAID after installing the operating system is not recommended or supported when a SATA hard drive is the boot drive. Enabling AHCI or RAID after installing the operating system might cause an immediate blue screen with an 0x0000007b error code, followed by a reboot. If you use AHCI or RAID, enable them before installing the operating system.".it looks like enabling AHCI is the absolute last thing I should do before installing Windows 7. As in this is the routine I should follow.
1) Back up any drivers/files/etc that I need 2) Insert Windows 7 Installation Disc 3) Close out of pop up install window. 4) Restart Laptop 5) As laptop is restarting enter BIOS 6) Follow Intel's step by step guide for enabling AHCI 7) Change system to "Boot from DVD Drive" 8) SAVE new BIOS Settings....EXIT
At that point my computer should REBOOT and this time it will do so from the DVD drive and Windows 7 installation screen will appear correct? OR am I missing something? Do I need to do anything in Windows 7 itself before I do anything with the BIOS?
I would like the good and bad about running your SATA drives in IDE and AHCI modes.
I have 3 drives. 1 SSD and 2 normal hard drives.
Does it even make a difference? I have an Esata bracket that I want to run in AHCI mode but how about the normal system and data drives? What is the best way to set up drives?
A strange problem, nothing critical, but I found it annoying that my optical sata drives will not boot from a bootable disk when in AHCI mode in Bios. If I switch the drive mode to native IDE then I can boot just fine from either of the Opitcal Sata drives.I have done some searching and found this has been a problem out for some builds/MB in the past but you would think with a new MB and Sata controller and such this would no longer be a problem.If you look at my specs you will see the Gigabyte MB. The documentation is fuzzy on the sata ports. There is a setting to put SATA port 4/5 into some kind of IDE support mode. I currently have the slots 0 - 3, used for all the drives. 0 & 1 for HDD, and 2 & 3 for the optical drives,wondering if I use the 4/5 slots for the SATA and set the bios to the 4/5 ide support if this might solve my little problem.
i'm working with a new pc build that uses a 60 gb ssd for its boot drive, and which is also reusing some "old" sata hdds for storage.
at the time i installed windows 7 ult 64, i had only a new ssd plugged in, and the bios was set to ahci mode. the installation went fine and i was able to boot into windows afterwards without issue.
then, i connected a wd caviar black sata hdd to use as storage, with the ssd being the boot drive. with both of them connected, windows will not get past the starting windows screen.
i made this video of the program before i understood that it was a drive controller issue: startup problem - Internet in it, you can see that windows boots fine in ahci mode with just the ssd plugged in, but that when the backup sata drive is also connected it doesn't get past the starting windows screen.
for the record, this caviar black hdd was my previous boot os, and it also has a windows 7 install on it (which i've renamed the base folder of), but it is not booting from that hdd. also, i have tried the same thing with other "old" sata hdds that do not have any previous windows install on them, and the result is the same thing which is shown in the video.
I successfully installed Windows 7 64bit in AHCI mode on a PC with 3 new 3TB Western Digital WD30EZRX Caviar Green hard drives.Then I installed "Intel Matrix Storage Manager Driver [v8.9.0.1023]" & as soon as Windows restarted after installing it, Windows would not boot, & will now only boot in IDE mode.In IDE mode I have to do a system restore to the point before installation of "Intel Matrix Storage Manager Driver" to be able to boot again in AHCI mode.
I just picked up a new graphics card HD6750 for my HTPC. I am then connecting the HTPC via HDMI to an 1080p LED TV. How do I ensure that I am sending an 1080p signal to my TV? My TV manual states that the tv supports: 1080P 1920 x 1080P. So I know the TV can handle it. Do I simply set the Display settings to 1080P 1920?
I have the GA-EX58-Extreme Board and have just installed the pre release of Windows 7 7600 64 bit. Normally i have experience to get the BSOD when in staling with AHCI active in bios so i change to IDE mode. Installation went flawless and also the change to AHCI mode on Intel ICH10R controler went normal.
As always i got problem to change the J micron controller to AHCI and of cause i got the BSOD again. I installed the latest R1.17.48.16 driver and tryed again but no luck. Can some tell me what i am doing wrong. ? I have a hardisk and a dvd drive attached to the J micron Sata connection.
anyways, my main drive is a RAID 0 with Vista x64, but I have a second HD that is a SATA 250GB, which I installed Windows 7 on. The only way I could get install to work was to switch my BIOS to IDE mode rather than RAID. I would of course though, like to be able to access my Vista drive from Windows 7 (and more importantly, not have to switch between IDE/RAID mode at all in the BIOS, it's a pain).
Now, the one odd this about this all is that the drivers I have for Vista (x86/x64 drivers) for this mobo's RAID controller WORK when loaded on installation to identify and install to the drive, but seem to not load or not work in any way once the first reboot on install occurs. Maybe this is because I installed from within Vista x64, though.
(Incedentally, my motherboard is an M3A Asus, using ATI's SB600 for a RAID controller)
I've tried loading the drivers from within Windows 7 while in IDE mode, but the install program won't let me. At first it didn't allow because of version restrictions, but then I altered the ini file to get around that, but it encounters some sort of error when installing and quits.
Any help that can be offered, would be grateful. I realise it's a beta and not a real release, so I can get past the BSOD from my odd setup, and I really am enjoying playing around with it so far. Very very impressed.
Edit: Just in case anyone thinks of suggesting me to right-click the inf file and install that way, already tried, won't allow for it.
I agree that to run DOS stuff on Windows 7 a DOSshell is the way to go, but I had a DOS and Linux partitions setup before I installed Windows 7 and guess what, it doesn't see them at all! It seems like Windows 7 isn't backward compatable at all, or perhaps doesn't read FAT16 (EXT3 I didn't expect it to read), will check FAT32...Yup reads FAT32 from USB sticks, but reads FAT16 from USB Sticks, just not FAT16 first partition (MSDOS6.22) from the main SATA drive (C: is the fourth and last partition).
I just upgraded to windows 7 (on a new laptop). In XP there were two icons which indicated whether I was connected to a wireless network or to a cable modem. I could easily go from one another which is important to me as I use my laptop at my home/office with the cable modem and travel with it and use wireless.These icons aren't on my new laptop which has windows 7. So its not as direct to switch from one to the other.how to make this process easier? (currently I went to the control panel - network connections - enable wireless - too many steps)
I have Windows 7 Home Premium and my desktop icons aren't working. I have to reboot to get them to work I use Microsoft Essentials for Virus Protection not Norton.
my computer was working fine, but then I goto boot up today and it doesn't even recognize my Hard drive. I'm running windows 7 ultimate, 64bit.The computer won't even boot, my bios boot priorities are set as default.
I am not at all very good with computers, it even took me a minute to figure out my OS lol! but i have a serious problem: My USB drivers are no longer reading my phones and other devices the message i get is "USB Device Not Recognized", When i click the message and go through the troubleshoot it gets no where. It's like my computer doesn't even realize that the devices and drivers are malfunctioning, also i don't know if it is related but it seems like files, apps and folders are constantly being deleted without my consent and no one else has access to my pc. i suspect foul play hidden in my system.
Tried installing a USB Driver for my PS3, Called Libusb 1.0.4 something something. No all my USB Ports have stopped working. Only in Windows though. They work in bios, and in start up applications. even tried using the Windows7 Disc to repair the problem.
The last few days when I've been viewing websites on any browser (IE, FF, Chrome, Opera), they haven't been loading or displaying properly. Sometimes they're fine but frequently, pages aren't loading entirely, displaying html code. Images are distorted, blurred or looks wrong. Sometimes refreshing the page loads everything and sometimes it doesn't help. Here are some examples.
I have my power plan set to Energy Star with display brightness set around 40% when on battery and 100% when plugged in. It seems to get reset periodically to the default which 40% for both battery and plugged in. I haven't been able to reliably reproduce the problem but every few days the plugged in setting gets reset to 40%. Is this a known problem with Windows 7?
A week ago all the notifications in the notification area stopped appear. There is no problem with icons - they all are there, but the notifications aren't display.My taskbar is set to autohide. When there must be a notification - i.e. when I disconnect a flash drive - the task bar stays for a moment (like there is a notification) and then hides, but there is no notification shown at all. The situation is the same with all other notifications.By default I work with the checked option "Always show all icons and notifications on the taskbar". I tried to uncheck this option and select "Show icon and notifications" for all icons, also tried to set "Only show notifications", with no success - the notifications aren't display under any circumstances.I tried to Reset the notification area icons cache, but this also doesn't help. Tried to turn off Aero - no change. Tried to turn On/Off "Always show all taskbar icons and notifications" using reg files from here, in both cases there are still no notifications.In fact not a single notification showed in any way for the last week.