I installed windows xp with ahci driver included on the CD (with N-Lite), but a strange thing happens:
I can not see any information about my sata hard disks if I set the AHCI mode from BIOS. (Otherwise, if I set the IDE mode, the problem does not exist).
I use several programs for hardware diagnostics, such as Everest, HWMonitor, CrystalDiskInfo and many others. So it is strange that none of them recognizes correctly the devices.
I'm sure the problem are drivers, because with windows 7 I don't have this problem.
For confirmation of this, I installed the driver downloaded from the Gigabyte in Windows 7 and the problem appeared there too.
I had to restore its native drivers (msahci.sys) and everything works perfectly now.
Has anyone had the same problem? If so, how did solve it?
Edit: perhaps I understand the reason for this failure, and honestly I had more than one suspicion the reason was this:
SMART is enabled in the bios. Bios version is F2. The updates in the later versions relate to support for CPUs other than mine and for other stuff that I don't need. The OS is Windows Home Server, so no RAID. I've found some information indicating that since the AMD AHCI/RAID Controller driver is actually a RAID driver; it will not allow SMART data to pass. I think what I need is a non-raid AHCI driver?
http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php/topic,626.msg2730/topicseen.html#msg2730I'm beginning to hate this motherboard ...