How to Install Ahci Support for Ati Sb600 Sata Controllers on Existing Windows Installations
SATA is the new standard for communication between a computer system and hard drives, CD and DVD drives, etc., and replaces the slower IDE standard. However, many people do not realize that SATA comes in two flavours: AHCI mode, or "real" SATA mode, and a form of IDE emulation over the SATA bus. Windows XP does not have native support for AHCI. My motherboard (an Asus M3A) sets AHCI off by default. Booting the Windows XP Professional x64 CD actually bluescreens when AHCI mode is enabled from the BIOS (even when I preloaded the AHCI drivers onto a burned disc with WinLite), so I had to install Windows with AHCI disabled. The problem with this situation is as follows.When AHCI is disabled in the BIOS, booting Windows works just fine, but as soon as you try to install AHCI drivers for your chipset they fail - because no AHCI support is detected, since it's disabled. When you reboot and ena...
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Steps
- Back up your critical data, and especially your registry. There are lots of programs out there to do it. Hopefully you won't have to use your backup, and the procedure is pretty safe, but consider yourself warned anyway.
- Make sure AHCI is disabled in the BIOS. If it's enabled and you can boot into windows, you don't need this walkthrough.
- Download the drivers for the M3A/ATI SB600 from here: http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&model=M3A
- Extract the zip file.
- Copy the appropriate .sys (in my case, ahcix64.sys) to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\.
- Copy the following text, paste it into Notepad, and save it to a .reg file (for instance, ahci.reg):Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\CriticalDeviceDatabase\pci#ven_1002&dev_4380&subsys_82311043]"Service"="ahcix64""ClassGUID"="{4D36E97B-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}"[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\ahcix64]"Type"=dword:00000001"Start"=dword:00000000"Group"="SCSI miniport""ErrorControl"=dword:00000001"ImagePath"="system32\\drivers\\ahcix64.sys""tag"=dword:00000019"DisplayName"="ATI AHCI Compatible RAID Controller"[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\ahcix64\Parameters\PnpInterface]"5"=dword:0x00000001[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\ahcix64\Settings\CAM]"EnableALPEDisableHotplug"=dword:0"EnableCCC"=dword:1"CCCTimeoutValue"=dword:10"CCCCompletionValue"=dword:32"NCQEnableDiskIDBits"=dword:0"EnableHIPM"=dword:0"EnableDIPM"=dword:0[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\ahcix64\Enum]"0"="PCI\\VEN_1002&DEV_4380&SUBSYS_82311043\\3&13c0b0c5&0&FA""Count"=dword:00000001"NextInstance"=dword:00000001
- The easiest way to make sure that the device and subsystem numbers are correct is to download a handy Linux-based live CD (or even better, dual-boot with Linux), boot it, and run something to the effect ofsudo lspci -vvnn | lessThis will list, in great detail, all of your PCI devices and their properties. Your AHCI controller will be in there somewhere, and its subsystem and device number will be listed. Edit the registry file as necessary.
- Double-click on the registry file to add its entries to your registry.
- IMPORTANT: After modifying the registry, you must do this on the next boot. If you don't it is likely that your changes will be lost and you'll have to install the .reg file again. Reboot, go into the BIOS and enable AHCI. Then squint, pray, and let Windows boot.
- If you fail, which isn't out of the question, Windows will bluescreen and immediately reboot the system - but no worries; disabling AHCI in the BIOS will allow it to boot again. If it does fail, tweak the registry file a little and try again.
- If you succeed - good work! Windows has booted. Now comes the easy part. We replace the ugly hackjob of a driver "installation" with a true installation by running AsusSetup.exe (or the like) from the driver zip. It will install, and you can reboot to have the driver take effect.
Tips
- I've verified success with the same procedure, replacing all instances of *64 with *86 for Windows XP Professional (32-bit).
- Try going into the registry and setting EnableHIPM and EnableDIPM to "1". HIPM and DIPM stand for Host-Initiated Power Management and Device-Initiated Power Management, respectively. If this SATA controller is in a laptop, you might improve power consumption or behaviour of sleep modes.
Warnings
- As a disclaimer, this has been tried on an Asus M3A motherboard with Windows XP Professional x64 edition and a SATA/AHCI-capable hard drive. Thankfully, it worked the first time. There is no guarantee that this will work at all, much less that it will work if your setup is different.
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