Can't switch QM67 chipset PC to AHCI mode

[evilspoons]

Hi everyone,

I have an Advantec UNO-2174G automation PC here at work. It has a "Huron River" QM67 mainboard with a Sandy Bridge Celeron 847E CPU. It is running a totally standard version of Windows 7 Professional. Not the fastest thing, but nice and cool.

Anyway, I installed an Intel SSD 520 60 GB to replace the 500 GB hard drive, transferred the data over with the Intel Data Migration Tool, and everything is working OK, with the exception of the SSD not achieving its full speed.

I then noticed that the SATA controller was running in IDE mode, not AHCI, so I went to change that. I followed the directions at Microsoft KB 922976 and turned on AHCI, but I still ended up with a BSOD (stop 0x0000008E, I think, but it flashes really fast. Might just be 0x00000008 edit: turns out the stop is 0x0000007B). Switch back to IDE, system boots.

I figured I might have messed up the registry changes and tried the Fix-It automated thing instead, but same results. BSOD on AHCI or RAID mode, boots fine on IDE.

What's the trick here? Is there something else that needs to be enabled in the registry? Do I have to install a driver? Advantech doesn't list a RAID driver for Windows 7 on their site, just one for Windows XP.

 

[razel]

Instead of adding more complexity, I'd reduce it. Since it's for work, I'd double check that the old 500GB boots up fine and works 100% in case you need to re-clone. Then it's time to simplify. Since it's an SSD this *should* be quick.

I'd 1st run msconfig and disable any Intel disk specific programs autostarting. Again since it's for work, reboot and check that it still boots up. After which you'd then want to remove that program from 'Add/Remove Programs.' If you didn't find any go there anyway and check to see if there's any other disk related and remove them. Yup... remove them. Again, reboot and check that it boots up.

I'd then reboot into Safe Mode, go to the 'Device Manage' check the disk controller. Right click it and it should be using the MS default driver or an older Intel disk controller. Now under 'view' check 'show hidden devices' and remove any old disks under 'disk drives'. Yup... remove them. If it's the only disk in the system, remove all 'generic volumes' from 'storage volumes.' Yup... remove them

By now the disk controller and disks attached to it are reset. Reboot once again. Then, redo the registry hack and change the BIOS setting. Let us know how it goes.

 

[denis280]

everything is working OK, with the exception of the SSD not achieving its full speed.

wen you say full speed.what are the result.switching from ide to ahci don't make a big change

 

[postmortemIA]

wen you say full speed.what are the result.switching from ide to ahci don't make a big change

some poeple have reported that IDE mode limits data transfer speeds to 133MB/s, and that is the case for me, laptop on ICH7 chipset that is SATA I w/o AHCI does only 133MB/s even on SSD.

 

[Cerb]

wen you say full speed.what are the result.switching from ide to ahci don't make a big change

AHCI has command queuing, while IDE mode does not. That's a big change, quite noticeable in daily use, both with HDDs and SSDs.

 

[evilspoons]

Alright, I've tried your suggestions, razel, and there is no change.

In safe mode booting with SATA set to IDE, I can see the 'non plug and play drivers' section is loading msahci and iastorv.

I booted Ubuntu off a USB drive and found that in IDE mode it shows device ID 1c09 for the SATA controller, and I can confirm this in Windows. Switching to AHCI results in a SATA device ID of 1c03. The Intel Rapid Storage Technology drivers won't install in Windows when 1c09 (IDE) is active (an error to the effect of 'can't find any appropriate hardware to install drivers for' is shown), but they do contain entries for a 1c03 device... but since I can't boot with 1c03 (AHCI) active I can't install them.

Why isn't MSAHCI taking over for the 1c03 (AHCI) mode of the SATA controller so I can then install Intel RST drivers?? Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

 

[Cerb]

Just to be sure, you have gone back and checked to make sure that registry setting is still 0?

 

[evilspoons]

Yes, I even tried turning off the iastorv driver and just enabling msahci (as opposed to both).

I turned off 'automatically restart on BSOD' and the stop message is 0x0000007B (the standard "I can't find the boot drive" message).

 

[razel]

When you removed the disk controller from 'Device Manager', it should have reinstalled the default MS versions and told you to reboot perhaps twice. One for the controller then the disks. If it's using non-MS or newer versions I suspect Win7 is going online and installing the latest version or has already kept copies. Turn this off in 'System Properties', 'Device Installation Settings'.

Then remove the copies by rebooting back into Safe Mode, run 'pnputil -e' and look for the inf names (like oem??.inf of anything Intel disk driver related and uninstall it with 'pnputil -f -d oem??.inf' where oem??.inf is the name. Remove the disk controller and disks again from Device Manager.

Depending on how much time you have already spent and if you can afford about a 1-2 hours of downtime.
If I were you, since it's an SSD, I'd just install Win7 on that machine new and see if ACHI even works with a clean install. I'd also check for firmware updates for you BIOS and SSD. At least you can still re-clone from the old HDD. I would at that point, unless you plan on undoing everything you'd done. Remember it's a work machine, not a toy... not something wise to play with.

 

[evilspoons]

The system integrator may have added some of the Intel drivers to their disc image. I'll try playing with your pnputil suggestion and see where that gets me.

The system isn't currently business-critical as it hasn't been brought into operation yet... I can afford to wipe it if I need to, but we will have to install a bunch of these in the future and doing a complete reinstall of Windows after switching to AHCI vs just a registry tweak is kind of annoying. Might just have to make it procedure to do so, though.

Perhaps I can create my own version of a Win7 install disc that includes some of my stuff (wallpaper, settings, THE RIGHT AHCI DRIVERS, etc). Is slipstreaming updates still a thing? I haven't touched that since Windows XP.

 

[Cerb]

THE RIGHT AHCI DRIVERS have been included in Windows 7 since release. Not saying an OEM wouldn't make it where they wouldn't install and work, but plain Windows 7 includes them.

 

[WT]

So just to be sure - you changed BOTH registry keys listed in the MS article - both MsAHCI and IaStorV - from 3 to 0 ? Both must be changed to make it work in my case.

 

[evilspoons]

So just to be sure - you changed BOTH registry keys listed in the MS article - both MsAHCI and IaStorV - from 3 to 0 ? Both must be changed to make it work in my case.

Yes, I did.

I did exactly the same procedure on my desktop PC here (P55 chipset) at the office and it worked just fine - it showed some generic Microsoft AHCI driver, and then I installed Intel RST and I was off and running after a couple reboots.

The QM67-based industrial PC still gives me a BSOD if I switch to AHCI whether the msahci driver, the iastorv driver, both, or neither are enabled.

 

[evilspoons]

As an update to this thread... I've purchased a couple more of these PCs with Windows 7 but they now come with an SP1 image preloaded that has more Intel drivers available to enable from the registry. The regular method of turning everything on now works fine.

I guess upgrading Win7 to Win7 SP1 doesn't add these drivers, or they (idiotically) manually excluded them from their original OEM image, or something.

Problem solved, anyway... except for that one original machine. Hah.