Enabling NCQ in Asus PK5-E WiFi? Need AHCI in BIOS?

[BoboKatt]

Anyone know how to enable NCQ and where the heck to find it on my system? My Asus P5K-E Wifi board using a Q6600, 2x500GB WD SATA drives (both NCQ) and 1TB drive also NCQ give me no options for it.

In my other system (eVGA 680i, right in the control manager under hardware and IDE/SATA the controller itself gives me an option to enable disable NCQ for each drive that supports it.

In my BIOS I am using the IDE setting not the AHCI option (nor RAID). I read that if I want to enable NCQ I must use the AHCI feature of my board (how it treats my SATA drives). Problem is that now that I already installed WinXp, when I try to change the method it ACHI, the system wont boot into Windows. Heck it just restarts over and over again until I switch back out to IDE mode.

Thus is this the only way to enable NCQ on drives? and do I need to reinstall windows? Any idea why I cannot boot into Windows with AHCI enabled?

And what the heck is Intel Robson technology?

thanks

 

[NoelS]

BoboKatt,

When you install Windows without enabling AHCI in the BIOS ahead of time, you lose the ACHI capability. So before installing WinXP, you need to go into the BIOS, enable ACHI, then install the ACHI drivers at the F6 prompt when installing WinXP. What's happening now when you select ACHI, it's shutting down instead of blue screening since the drivers aren't there...

You could try a repair install to get those drivers in there. First, go to the BIOS, enable ACHI, then use the WinXP install CD to start a normal Win install. At the F6 prompt, load the drivers for ACHI. At the repair screen (the SECOND time an R option comes up) select it. It will look like a normal install, but will keep all your previous settings and programs, etc. But it's not a normal install...

If the repair install doesn't work for you, you'll have to do a re-install on Windows to get the ACHI drivers in there and get your NCQ capability. Just remember: Select ACHI in BIOS FIRST!!! Then install...

Noel

 

[BoboKatt]

Hehe I just read your reply and thanks. I did hours of research last night to discover as you said.. yup I had to do this BEFORE I installed WinXP.

I will give it a try as you stated for the repair feature. Hopefully this will do the trick if not.. well heck I am due for a clean install soonish