990FXA-D3 Enabling AHCI, finding AHCI drivers, without reinstalling Xp 32 bit

[unity100]

the title is rather self descriptive but here goes :

i researched far and wide (even mac forums), but i wasnt able to manage this. currently im running 1 ssd and 1 hdd with native ide mode with standard ide drivers. disk operations cause stutter in the system, causing it to go into intermittent pauses as if it was old windows millenium days.

first of all i am unable to find ahci drivers. intel's matrix storage manager or something does not allow installation of any files saying that the machine is not compatible. it doesnt even extract files.

i have searched far and wide for msahci.sys , which is said to be the microsoft ahci driver, but wasnt able to find any place to download for windows xp 32 bit.

i have tried the downloads in 990fxa-d3 downloads list, but there are only 2 downloads listed for ahci and both are for only usage at windows installation. i am not able to reinstall windows at this point due to business.

i have downloaded the F6 preload drivers, extracted them, and attempted to make windows seek drivers from within. it wasnt able to find any compatible hardware. maybe it was needed to turn ahci on and boot into windows for windows to see that my hardware is compatible, but i cant do that since windows hangs up and reboots while booting if i do that.

so im in a pich and had to open this thread - what i need is :

need to find a way to either install microsoft ahci drivers, or amd ahci drivers without reinstalling windows. thank you for any recommendations.

[Dark Mantis]

Hi and welcome.

You are looking for the Matrix Storage drivers but they are old and the new ones are the Intel Rapid Storage Technology drivers IRST. They are downloadable from the Intel website. I am not sure if they will work ok with the old Windows XP 32 bit though, you will have to read up on that.

[unity100]

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?ProductID=2101&DwnldID=20215&lang=eng&iid=dc_rss

i already downloaded this and attempted to install. it says 'this computer does not meet the requirements for ....'

i attempted to extract files with 7zip and seek a driver from within, but no usable file was there.

[unity100]

i see that you moved this topic to motherboards with intel processors forum,

however notice that 990fx series boards are boards with amd's new 990 chipset. this topic therefore, is in the wrong place.

[Dark Mantis]

I would suggest that you posted it in the wrong place then as I haven't moved it. However I will move it to the correct location.

[musicman53]

Why would anyone with a motherboard that can only take AMD cpu's even ask or think about installing drivers for Intel based boards?

[unity100]

Why would anyone with a motherboard that can only take AMD cpu's even ask or think about installing drivers for Intel based boards?

apparently microsoft ahci driver is nothing but a repackage of intel's ahci driver. this was the info i got from researching. i have been trying to get ahold of msahci.sys for xp, through intel driver packages because i havent been able to find it.

[absic]

Hi there,

have you tried the AMD SATA RAID/AHCI Driver for Windows XP 32 bit from here: http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3894&dl=1#dl ?

Not totally sure if this will work but, from trawling through a load of posts I found on Google, hopefully it should.

Download the above drivers and save to your Desktop
Move your OS drive to one of the Marvell (GSATA) ports and set the GSATA controller in BIOS to IDE so that you can still boot
Set the AMD controller to AHCI Mode and restart the system (you may have to change the HDD BOOT Priority at this stage)
Install AMD SATA RAID/AHCI drivers from the download package and reboot the PC
Shutdown the PC and swap the OS drive back to the AMD Controller

Now, if you are lucky, the OS should BOOT in AHCI Mode (again you may have to double check HDD BOOT Priority). If it doesn't don't panic,you can safely switch back to IDE mode to get back into your system.

[unity100]

i had had attempted to install files from that driver pack before, despite it seems that it was made for using during installs. i extracted the files in it, and attempted to install them through either choosing 'update driver' from the controller entry in the device manager, or, directly right clicking on the .inf file to install it from there. both did not avail. it cant find any compatible drivers.

i tried the method you outlined below. i plugged my hard disks to the last ports (4 and 5 in my 990fxa-d3 mobo), set sata ports 4/5 to ide, set the onchip controller to AHCI mode, and booted.

the good news is that it booted. a new device was found by windows but it wasnt able to find a driver for it. I had attempted to reinstall chipset drivers (southbridge) from the driver disk that came with the board. it installed some raid drivers, and rebooted. but nothing mentioning an advanced host controller or ahci.

the bad news is that, after reboot xp is still unable to recognize any ahci controller. the change has been that, instead of primary ide channel and secondary ide channel in listings, an 'AMD PCI IDE Controller' came instead of the secondary ide channel. it doesnt mention anything about Advanced host controllers. the only difference has been that the unknown device went away, and xp recognized some raid controller.

unless AMD's AHCI driver is named as AMD PCI IDE Controller in device manager, i still dont have an ahci driver.

Now ill try rebooting by plugging the 2 hard drives from sata ports 4/5 (marvell ports i presume) to 0 and 1 ports that are designated in bios as ahci. i will update this topic with the result.

Hi there,

have you tried the AMD SATA RAID/AHCI Driver for Windows XP 32 bit from here: http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3894&dl=1#dl ?

Not totally sure if this will work but, from trawling through a load of posts I found on Google, hopefully it should.

Download the above drivers and save to your Desktop
Move your OS drive to one of the Marvell (GSATA) ports and set the GSATA controller in BIOS to IDE so that you can still boot
Set the AMD controller to AHCI Mode and restart the system (you may have to change the HDD BOOT Priority at this stage)
Install AMD SATA RAID/AHCI drivers from the download package and reboot the PC
Shutdown the PC and swap the OS drive back to the AMD Controller

Now, if you are lucky, the OS should BOOT in AHCI Mode (again you may have to double check HDD BOOT Priority). If it doesn't don't panic,you can safely switch back to IDE mode to get back into your system.

[unity100]

it rebooted successfully. since these two ports were set to AHCI, can i presume that i am now running in AHCI mode ?

i had done a crystal disk benchmark with my ssd. the comparison of the benchmarks to the sata ii controller on the previous asus board with nforce chipset to the new 990fx gigabyte board in this latest situation shows considerable improvement in some areas, especially 4kb random reads.

however, it seems to imply there is 1gb/sec data transfer (sata 300 is 300 gb, as listed below). i think i am not running my disks in sata 3 mode.

so my questions are :

- am i running in ahci mode ? (ahci mode is set in bios for these ports)
- am i running in sata 3, or am i not running even at sata 2 ?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo
                           Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

           Sequential Read :   182.583 MB/s
          Sequential Write :    57.459 MB/s
         Random Read 512KB :   179.856 MB/s
        Random Write 512KB :    56.393 MB/s
    Random Read 4KB (QD=1) :    18.868 MB/s [  4606.4 IOPS]
   Random Write 4KB (QD=1) :    56.317 MB/s [ 13749.4 IOPS]
   Random Read 4KB (QD=32) :    20.483 MB/s [  5000.8 IOPS]
  Random Write 4KB (QD=32) :    59.297 MB/s [ 14476.9 IOPS]

  Test : 1000 MB [C: 13.6% (7.0/51.3 GB)] (x2)
  Date : 2011/07/23 2:43:56
    OS : Windows XP Professional SP3 [5.1 Build 2600] (x86)


ssd in 990fx board with amd pci ide controller with ahci set

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo
                           Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

           Sequential Read :   215.979 MB/s
          Sequential Write :    60.629 MB/s
         Random Read 512KB :   199.845 MB/s
        Random Write 512KB :    60.491 MB/s
    Random Read 4KB (QD=1) :    17.066 MB/s [  4166.5 IOPS]
   Random Write 4KB (QD=1) :    51.454 MB/s [ 12562.1 IOPS]
   Random Read 4KB (QD=32) :    86.318 MB/s [ 21073.7 IOPS]
  Random Write 4KB (QD=32) :    61.160 MB/s [ 14931.7 IOPS]

  Test : 1000 MB [C: 20.9% (10.7/51.3 GB)] (x2)
  Date : 2011/08/15 18:24:45
    OS : Windows XP Professional SP3 [5.1 Build 2600] (x86)

[absic]

Hi there,

I wouldn't like to say for certain that you are running in AHCI Mode but from the speeds you are now getting it does look as if things have improved.

Saying that, if the OS Drive is attached to the AMD Controller and the controller is set for AHCI Mode, then it is safe to presume that you are indeed running XP in AHCI Mode, now.

[unity100]

hopefully. or it may be a better raid/sata driver as it lists.

i noticed that my corsair f60 is sata 2. so it seems it is properly running at sata 2 mode.

[absic]

As I said before, if you have the AMD controller set to AHCI mode and the OS Drive attached to one of the first four SATA ports then you are running in AHCI Mode.

[Dark Mantis]

Yes I would have to agree with you absic. I really don't think there is any argument about that(well not from me at least!)

[unity100]

it seems so. at least, the drives are now faster than they were back with the older asus board. so we can conclude that im running ahci.


thank you for your help in this topic.