Windows XP *AHCI* Boot problem

[Magic Carpet]

"A disk read error has occurred. Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart"

Long story short, I have exactly this issue. In my case, the disk just holds a vanilla XP SP3, no Vista/7 non-sense ;-p

Took a sata windows xp disk from another computer, plugged in to my main computer. *IDE* mode it works as it should but I need AHCI features, hence the pain... whenever I change to AHCI in bios, I get this very nasty error. Any ideas?

Ideally, I want to nail down the sucker myself without using easy fixes (e.g. Vista Bootloader and/or clean format). Something's not on speaking terms but what?

 

[Bubbaleone]

Is the drive correctly recognized (model, capacity,etc.) as a sata drive in BIOS?

 

[Magic Carpet]

Yes, it does. Everything is recent and up-to-date.

Windows XP Installation disk sees everything correctly (provided I use floppy w/ AHCI drivers). Everything seems to be OKAY, hehe.... The only way I have got it working would be to put Windows Vista/7 on top of that but that is a short-cut I am not really interested in. I want to leave everything as is and just fix the boot part.

Waaaay past the frustration point now ;-p

 

[Bubbaleone]

I'd suggest a "repair installation" as the simplest solution. At the beginning phase of text-mode setup, when prompted, press the F6 key, insert the floppy with the AHCI drivers, let text-mode setup finish, select repair, and finish the installation.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Thanks... but that's not an option, really. I intend to figure out the culprit ;-p

 

[postaled]

Thanks... but that's not an option, really. I intend to figure out the culprit ;-p

Try this out.

http://blog.mytwocents.it/?p=11

Looks like you just ended up doing some registry edits to change it over to AHCI from IDE.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Try this out.

http://blog.mytwocents.it/?p=11

Looks like you just ended up doing some registry edits to change it over to AHCI from IDE.

My situation is a little bit different. I don't get the chance to mount the system volume and enjoy a bluescreen my computer would most certainly greet me with. This could be a nasty hardware limitation of this system board but I need to work some more to nail this down. I could provide MBR if anyone is interested.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Tough mofo.

Only worked placing Vista's Boot Manager so far (or getting back to IDE). Changing back to XP's results in the same error. Really puzzled. Tried swapping ntldr from another AMD based machine, no dice. Different mobo, same. This is a 100% software issue. Error codes that are truly misleading. This is typical Microsoft at its finest, no useful debbuging options when it matters most. It feels like 1998 and my Windows 98, you have no idea what's going on but you do know it's not right. The turning point when I changed to *nix.

More details:

This XP's installation was on Sil3112's controller. Different motherboard of course. It may have left some code that has been avoiding my attention somehow. How could I debug that?

 

[postaled]

Tough mofo.

Only worked placing Vista's Boot Manager so far (or getting back to IDE). Changing back to XP's results in the same error. Really puzzled. Tried swapping ntldr from another AMD based machine, no dice. Different mobo, same. This is a 100% software issue. Error codes that are truly misleading. This is typical Microsoft at its finest, no useful debbuging options when it matters most. It feels like 1998 and my Windows 98, you have no idea what's going on but you know it's not right. The turning point when I changed to *nix.

More details:

This XP's installation was on Sil3112's controller. Different motherboard of course. It may have left some code that has been avoiding my attention somehow. How could I debug that?

Can you not just turn compatibility/ide mode in and boot without using AHCI right off?

 

[Magic Carpet]

That's correct. Compatibility IDE works perfectly fine. The moment I turn it to AHCI, that nasty error message comes up.

MBR has nothing to do with it, the problem lies within the boot manager and / or something next in the booting sequence. Vista's work fine. XP's stumbles upon it at some stage. I restored XP's either with XP CD or within Vista's CD, same result. It would have been easier to work with BSOD than this. This coud be a number of factors... I just really want to figure this out.

 

[Dahak]

The reason why the error is coming up is because the achi drivers are not installed in xp for the chipset that the drive is mounted on.

The blog post should work if followed correctly, I know there is another set of instructions that I had personally used that worked (here)
You would have to boot into ide mode first. then do the step, reboot, turn on ahci

Obviously you have to make the necessary changed for the newer drivers and chipset ids

The real questions is. Why do you absolutely need ahci turned on?

 

[Magic Carpet]

I routinely plug / unplug hard drivers. So this should answer your question.

The rest of your post is not really appropriate as I have an AMD chipset. But regardless, AHCI drivers have been installed and are there for the OS to mount the proper volume. But it's not getting to that stage for some reason when standard XP boot manager is in use. You read my whole thread up?

But thanks for trying to help :thumbsup:

 

[Dahak]

The reason why it was probably not booting, is that the driver in the registry was not set as boot, which means it would not load at boot time hence the bluescreen

With out knowing which chipset you have, i'll will provide instructions on what worked for me on my m4a77td

1) boot into ide mode

2) download the Raid Driver Here Yes for some reason amd list there ahci driver as raid, not sure why

3) run the drive so it extracts the files into c: \ati... you can have it extract where ever you want, cancel the installer

4) go to the extracted files, and find the folder Packages -> Drivers -> SBXXX -> Raid -> XP
where SBXXX is your southbridge, in my case it was SB7xx as it a SB710 on my board

5) copy the ahcix86.cat and ahcix86.sys to c:\windows\system32\drivers

6) import the following registry information as based from Source

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\CriticalDeviceDatabase\pci#ven_1002&cc_0106]
"Service"="ahcix86"
"ClassGUID"="{4D36E97B-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\ahcix86]
"Type"=dword:00000001
"Start"=dword:00000000
"ErrorControl"=dword:00000001
"Tag"=dword:00000021
"ImagePath"="system32\\drivers\\ahcix86.sys"
"Group"="SCSI Miniport"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\ahcix86\Parameters\PnpInterface]
"5"=dword:00000001

For some reason if spaces show up in the words, take them out as they should not be there

7) reboot, stay in ide mode so the above changes take effect.

8) reboot again, set mode back to AHCI and reboot. It now should boot into windows with no issues. It will detect new hardware which is fine.

9) run the setup located in the extracted folder and reboot and done


The reason why it was probably not booting, is that the driver in the registry was not set as boot, which means it would not load at boot time hence the bluescreen

 

[Magic Carpet]

Guess what.. I had done exactly just that... I've done it a number of times ...

But this particular time it has made no effect, whatsoever.

 

[Paperlantern]

Guess what.. I had done exactly just that... I've done it a number of times ...

But this particular time it has made no effect, whatsoever.

Then I would wager a guess that something is missing, either you have the wrong driver or something was missed in the process. This is a common problem with XP in the transition to AHCI over the years but they didnt exactly make the FIX very common. I would go back and triple check your procedure and make sure all your ducks are in a row... if they are... then i would wager you have the wrong ducks.

 

[Dahak]

ahhhh ok, now i'm starting to see the problem... not sure why I had stuck im my head that you where getting a BSOD when changing. I had read over all you said twice and still had that stuck in my head. :$

My steps I would take, if you have not already, and unless im blind i did not see you try these,

I see you can boot the xp install cd with the floppy and it see the drive.
Go into the recovery console and do the following

Fixmbr - which will fix the mbr code on the boot partiton

and

fixboot - which will fix the windows xp boot code on the system partition

 

[Magic Carpet]

Hi Dahak,

Glad we are on speaking terms right now. Oh course I had tried that combination prior starting my thread here. It rebuilds MBR and XP Boot Manager but nothing happens. Back to the black screen of stupidity (i.e. that error). AHCI drivers had been installed the moment I put Vista's manager to some use. That way, everything works as it should. But.. I am looking for a fix... not a workaround. I really want to nail this sucker down before the New Year's Eve. Thanks for the help!

Hi Paperlantern,

There's something missing in this puzzle, I just need to figure out what. Thanks for your input.