the fact that you do not have an intel controller could be the reason you did not run into the issue. according to the info I have found the issue seems to be exclusive to intel chipsets.
I edited the registry to enable IDE mode. and then I switched the bios drive controller setting from AHCI to compatibility mode. when I restarted windows booted up and proceeded to install the IDE controller drivers. then when windows wanted to reboot again,
things got a little strange. the bios would do it's POST check and hand things over to the OS to load, but instead of loading, it just sat there, with a blinking text cursor in the far upper left corner. I restarted the PC about 5 or six times, and on the
last time, windows started to load. Once windows was loaded, I ran windows setup. this time around, windows setup completed successfully but for some reason it took a really long time to complete. once windows was back running again, it started to do what
it did before, i.e. that blank screen thing again. after a few restarts windows loaded. once I was in windows I switched the registry so that the SATA mode drivers would load and switched the bios back to AHCI. Windows then loaded on the first try. don't know
why windows was balking at loading windows before, but what ever. On sunday/Monday I proceeded to let windows install all the updates.
when I checked for updates oddly enough, windows 7 SP1 was listed. I check the system to be sure, and SP1 was indeed already installed. the update was only around 9.8Mb,o I'm not sure what that was about. despite my best intentions windows installed every
update released since SP1 came out. A hotfix was also automatically installed, which is odd. the hotfix was kb2534111. also windows update did not list or install the two updates that comprise the so called SP2 "convenience rollup" update. I tried to install
the fist of the two manually (KB3020369) but windows said the update was not applicable. I double check to make sure I was using the x64 version, but windows would not install it. I currently am trying to install the second part of the sp2 update. I don't
know if I need these updates in order to receive the update rollups, but so far windows did not install any. and windows updates says windows is upto date.
Windows is still acting a lttle squirrely but less so than before. the problem I tried to fix with the repair install also did not get fixed as I had hoped. (the IPv6 transition technologies had stopped working, disabling my ipv6 tunnel. also I am getting
these error messages when I use ipconfig /renew6 or /release6:
An error occurred while renewing interface Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface : The system cannot find the file specified.
An error occurred while renewing interface isatap.{5AFECDAA-F792-428F-AC54-7F502420E218} : The system cannot find the file specified.
An error occurred while renewing interface Loopback Pseudo-Interface 1 : The system cannot find the file specified.
I might try running windows repair (upgrade) setup one more time to see if that fixes things and to see if the error I ran into before happens again.