GA-H55M-USB3 won't boot in AHCI mode

[Sntholiday]

Had to replace a bad HDD so I bought an SSD (Samsung EVO 840). Now I cannot get to the BIOS splash screen with any hard drive optioned for AHCI in BIOS. I have to disconnect all drives from the mobo to get into the BIOS. If I option for IDE everything works fine. Never had this problem before and did not change anything in BIOS. Installed Windows 7 on an HDD optioned for IDE in BIOS and the install went fine. Tried the procedure for changing from IDE to AHCI in Windows 7, and after optioning for AHCI in BIOS cannot even get to the point where Windows loads. BIOS just hangs. Any suggestions? I know this is an old mobo, about 4 years old. Could the AHCI controller be bad? This mobo doesn't require a driver be installed, worked fine for many years.

Thanks for any help. The system runs fine in IDE, guess I'll just leave it that way but would rather not.

[dmdilks]

This might be the problem is when you change it to AHCI it can't read the SSD because the controller is for Sata 2 - 3gb.

The drive you are trying to use is sata 3 - 6gb. Yes the SSD should be backward compatible. That is what I would be looking at.

You could try and update the bios and see what happens.