990FXA-UD3 Sata Ports XP 32

[Candoo]

I just purchased and set up this board in my system. I run dual boot Win XP 32 and Win 7. AMD 955 Black / Kingston Hyperex 1600 / 8 gigs
I have 4 hard drives and a DVD-rom. In the bios, I have set the sata ports to only IDE, NO RAID. I have installed the drivers separately to Win7 and XP.
I am not sure what I am doing wrong, but all 5 drives show up and are usable in Win 7, but in XP, the HD that I have connected at Sata 4 does not show
up at all. It doesn't work if I connect it to Sata 5 either. Any one be able to give me suggestions or help why XP isn't recognizing this drive?

[mikeyb5753]

Do you get an option to use AHCI instead of IDE?  If so, use AHCI.

You may also need the pre-windows installation drivers for your board from gigabytes site.  These will need to be on a floppy disc for XP unless you make a custom XP CD with nLite

[Candoo]

Yes, I get the option to use AHCI in the bios. Is there a way to do this without reinstalling XP all over again ?

[mikeyb5753]

To the best of my knowledge the only way is to reinstall windows.

[Vezina]

The board allows the usage of 2 sets of SATA ports ,some as IDE some as AHCI.
Using this approach you will be able to use AHCI under XP.
Install in IDE mode XP then switch the DVD ROM unit SATA port to AHCI.
Search for a driver to install for that AHCI device and when you find one that installs ,and the optical unit gets usable ,switch in BIOS to AHCI all together ,it should work,
The AHCI driver suggested by Gigabyte may not work under XP ,but the AMD RAID ones installed manually may work.