Enable AHCI mode after installing Windows XP

[eugene0541]

Hi, I'm new in this forum.

First of all, I would like to say that the english is not my native language. I have registered this forum because I did not get a solution for this question in a spanish forum. So if I make a drafting error, please excuse me.

Well, here goes my doubt.

I have installed Windows XP SP3 (professional, original, without any complement or modification incorporated and with spanish as native language) in a mini notebook (netbook) (Toshiba Mini Notebook NB205-325BL)

As you must supose, I made this with an USB pen drive and I had to disable de AHCI Mode and make the installation in "compatibility mode" because XP (at least an original one) do not have SATA drivers included.

I had no major trouble during the instalation and now I can say the mini notebook works well.

But I would like to enable again the AHCI mode and I have been looking for a way to do this.

I found many pages that have made me the following suggestion:

Source 1

Well, I have problems with this procedure.

1. They tell me that I have download the Intel Matrix Storage Manager and extract from the installer the "iastor.sys" file and put it in the driver folder on the system.

This is the detail of my drive:

After looking for matches in the iastos.sys file I have noticed that my hardware ID is not specified in the .inf file.

2. They tell me that I have to create a .reg file with instructions like this:

As you can see, the instructions are not compatible with my drive.

So, here I have to ask. Can I use this method changing parts refered to my harware ID and using drivers extracted from the chipset pack?

If is not, can you suggest to me another way?

 

[WyomingKnott]

I did this a long time ago with a simpler method, and it worked for me. However: have a complete, tested, and trustworthy image backup of your Windows partition, plus bootable software to restore said backup. So, if you screw your Windows, you just reset the mobo to AHCI mode, boot the imaging software, and restore the image. Test this procedure (restoring to a spare drive) first before doing anything to your Windows, or you run the risk of a catastrophic loss.

With that scary caveat out of the way, I did this so long ago that I can't provide screenshots. I downloaded the Matrix Storage Manager, as you have, and unpacked it somewhere convenient. I then opened Device Manager, selected the correct controller (which I guess is your ICH7 hub, but I offer no guarantees), selected Update Driver, and opened the drivers from the Storage Manager. The hardest part was figuring out which of the list of options presented was the correct one.

Then I shutdown, changed the BIOS config to AHCI, and booted. About the third choice in Update Driver (with system restores in between) I got it right.

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Unless you have a lot of time to play with this, this is too sketchy to use. You will need information on which .inf file to use, which driver to select, and which controller to change in Device Manager. My apologies, but I did this long ago and don't have the exact details that you would need to do this in one shot. I think I posted it here a year or more ago; I will go look.

But the general procedure did work: Extract the AHCI driver from the MSM package, pick the drive controller and choose to Update Driver, change to AHCI mode in BIOS, and reboot.