How do I change Windows XP to use AHCI disk mode rather than IDE mode for Dual boot?

Hi Tricky,

Thanks very much. This board actually has 8 Sata 3 connections, the first 6 are controlled by the AMD SB850 and the last 2 by the Marvel chip. The manual recommends using SATA 1-6 for booting. There is a setting in the bios for booting from the marvel controller, but even though I have the marvel drivers installed,  I am unable to boot from there in either mode, IDE or AHCI. Perhaps because I didn't install the operating system while connected to the Marvel controller?

I'm going to give re-install all these drivers and try to reboot to AHCI.  I'm not optimistic however. This is an interesting issue, and hopefully I can learn something from it.  I am going to install XP on another drive or partition in AHCI mode while continuing searching for a solution for this install. As I believe I mentioned before there are solutions that others have posted and have had success fixing this problem, but (as I recall) they have all been for Intel based mother boards not AMD. Bottom line Win XP is arguably obsolete and not fully compatible with some newer hardware. But we have gotten a lot of millage out of it! So compare that with our digital cameras which are obsolete in one to two years!  In that regard XP is looking pretty good! :-)

Regards,

Kelly

Aaah!

I mistakenly assumed all SATA was Marvel. I should have RT*M (which I have now).

I am going to do some experiments, admittedly on an Intel platform, but the principal should be OK for AMD if I am successful.

Watch this space...

Tricky

Aaargh, my test rig has just died on me, PSU I think. I'm afraid that I will not be able to do my experimentation, at least not in the short term.

Tricky

Sorry to hear that, Tricky.  Here is the link for the common method of fixing this problem for Intel chipped motherboards and apparently people have had success with it. http://www.blah-blah.ch/it/how-to-s/enable-ahci/   It does not work with with my AMD board. I wish I could post a screen shot here, but if I could you would see that in my case there is no SATA device listed in the device manager. What he is doing is basically from that SATA device, adding a dual channel IDE controller and then updating that device with the AHCI driver. This is what I was getting at in my earlier posts. If your backup rig is Intel and assuming that it was operational, and able to switch from IDE to AHCI in the bios you might be able to duplicate his results. Those of us that went the cheap route with AMD apparently are out of luck!  Like I say its a learning experience and I know what to do the next time I build or help someone else build a PC

BTW, Windows 8 is also a learning experience for me -- a steep one!  With my new hardware it is much quicker than XP. The new GUI is awkward at first, but as long as I can get to my photo editing applications quickly and have quick access to my files, I'm OK with it. I will eventually make the transition to using mainly Win 8. The catch is, I use some software and hardware that is too old for Windows 8, for example my Minolta Dimagescann 5400 II film scanner. As you may know  Konica Minolta's photographic division to was sold to Sony in 2006 Sony, chose to drop the scanner division, so there are no new drivers beyond XP. Eventually I will add one of Plustek's scanners that is, of course, Windows 8 compatible.

Regards,

Kelly

Thats what I did here with the SATA drivers. Installed Win8 then updated them to 11.6.0.1030 (intel drivers). Through device manager

What does appear under IDE in device manager then?