Windows 10 seems to run decently on a Dell D620 laptop of which I upgraded a few components (hard drive, memory). Unfortunately the SATA drive is running in IDE mode instead of AHCI. The Dell BIOS (most recent version is A10) does not allow the user to enable AHCI. In fact, AHCI is not even mentioned in the BIOS. However, some people seem to have discovered how to unlock this feature: http://en.community.dell.com/support-for…41310?pi21953=1
I’m trying to do this as well (on Windows 10 though), but nothing is extracted in %TEMP% when I run the flasher downloaded from the Dell website. I’m able to extract the ROM file from the “universal executable” (should run both in Windows and DOS), but not the BIN file. I have tried to inspect the contents with 7-zip and Universal Extractor, but that did not work.
In the end, I’d prefer to flash the modified BIOS from a USB stick running DOS.
How can I extract the BIN, modify it (using the instructions in the link provided), and flash it, to support AHCI? Any tips?
Have you already tried to run the following command within the DOS box (after having navigated to the folder, where the file is located)?
xyz.exe /writeromfile
Yes. However that resulted in a 1 MB ROM file that I cannot open in the tool that should modify the BIOS. I think the BIN file should be 4 MB (if I remember correctly; I saw a BIN file modified by someone else but don’t dare to flash that as I don’t know what he changed).
I’m unaware of how to convert ROM to BIN or vise versa (I support the 1 MB ROM file is what the flasher needs?).
Only UEFI BIOSes have that size.
Can you attach the ROM file?
Your system has nothing to do with the other thread you linked. You have an ICH7-U (2007 or so) system which is irrelevant to the H61 PCH (2011) that thread depicts. Your laptop has a 1MB SPI chip with Phoenix BIOS probably. You can neither use AMIBCP nor enable AHCI on such a system. The latter is not supported for ICH7-U.
Check what ICH you have by using a system scanning tool such as Speccy. If you have ICH7-M or ICH7-M DH then AHCI should be supported.
Thank you for reminding me to run Speccy to see which controller this system actually has! That should have been one of my first steps…
As I donated this laptop to my sister who is living in a different city I while probably not be able to give an update until next weekend.
Speccy reports a 82801GHM (ICH7-M/U).
Windows reports an Intel (R) ICH-7M Family Serial ATA Storage Controller - 27C4, which is IDE mode as I learned from Fernando: Recommended AHCI/RAID and NVMe Drivers (17)
So, I’m still not sure whether this system supports AHCI and how to enable it.
Suggestions?
The chipset does support AHCI without RST (was called Matrix back then). It’s up to Dell to implement a BIOS option for it. If it’s not there you cannot do anything else. As far as bios modding to enable AHCI is concerned, someone else might be able to help you as I don’t have the knowledge.