AHCI Samsung 840 evo not recognized in biois startup but seen in boot menu as IDE

[jpchappell]

This is my first time posting to a tech forum. I will try to present all pertinent info. I recently cloned my hhd to a Samsung 840 evo 256mb. Here is my pertinent hardware info. If anything else is needed let me know

MSI 790fx-gd70 (AMD)
bios version 1.6
Windows 7
Samsung 840 EVO 256 GB

I have heard that to take advantage of the ssd I should set my bios setting to AHCI. I changed the registry setting msahci to 0 in Windows 7. I rebooted, entered bios, went to Integrated Peripheral, then On-Chip ATA Devices, and changed RAID Mode to AHCI from IDE. For some reason the BIOS refers to the SATA mode as the RAID mode, which is confusing.

When I save and reboot, the BIOS initially does not detect my SSD, as it did in IDE Mode. It then goes to a screen where it indicates that it is initalizing the AHCI. It then briefly shows the drives, including the Samsung before hanging up and going to a screen where it is just a blinking cursor.

If I enter the BIOS boot menu, I can boot from the "IDE: Samsung 840 evo" option. When I did this, the system booted, Windows 7 installed the AHCI drivers and rebooted, but the BIOS will still hang up unless I go to Boot Menu and select "IDE: Samsung ..." or I change the RAID Mode setting back to IDE.

A couple of caveats: I do not want to have to reinstall Windows 7 if it can be avoided. And 2. I have never updated my BIOS and am leery of doing so if I don't have to (unless it has been shown to solve the problem) as I don't want to irrevocably crash my system.

So, how do i change my bios to AHCI without locking up my system on boot. Should the boot menu show my Samsung as IDE even though i have changed BIOS setting to AHCI. And finally, is all this aggravation worth it just to get AHCI working? Thanks for all your help.

 

[photonboy]

1) Update the BIOS.
That may be your problem. If not we can investigate further after you do that.

2) Your motherboard has a feature to help prevent a corrupted BIOS FLASH from bricking your motherboard. Read your motherboard manual about M-Flash.

3) I don't think you mean "BIOS will hang up" I think you mean the boot process hangs up. If the BIOS failed to start you couldn't enter the BIOS.

*I've got a feeling the main problem is it doesn't like the settings you changed in Windows so that you may have to reinstall Windows.