How to switch from IDE to AHCI mode while running XP

Hi Fernando

May I begin by saying a big Thank You to you - for setting up this wonderful resource of knowledge and support - and thanks to all the others who contribute to improving the information found here at Win-Raid Forum.

I’ve tried to help myself by reading and searching the forum, but hit a curious roadblock and need your opinion/guidance.

Goal: change my disk controller mode from IDE to AHCI (no RAID required) without reinstalling my existing XP environment (current HW in signature below)

This post outlines a strategy for the change, but I’m having trouble finding a suitable driver package. I tried using the “Modded+signed Intel RST drivers v11.2.0.1006” from page 1 of this thread, but it seems my Controller IDs are not in the list you provide in the TXTSETUP.OEM file.

Device Manager shows:



The P55 Express chipset uses ICH10R (if I’m not mistaken), described as a 6-port SATA controller. I suspect the IDE emulation from the BIOS has split the device into the 2-port & 4-port entries listed above.

Neither 3B20 nor 3B26 device IDs are in the v11.2.0.1006 driver package. How can I get XP to accept AHCI-mode drivers for the two devices it is seeing ?

(BTW, I have already successfully added the Win-RAID CA certificate to my OS)

Once XP is working, I will have to perform the same steps for the W2K3 environment…
AND THEN… I can pull the trigger on upgrading to Win7 - installing to a fresh, new Crucial MX300 SSD.

As you can imagine, the new SSD has precipitated the whole “change to AHCI” issue .

Thank you very much for help and advice.

@gjwAudio :
Welcome at Win-RAID Forum and thanks for your preliminary words about your first impression.

Due to the fact, that the switch from IDE to AHCI mode from within an already running OS is risky and may end with an unbootable system, I always recommend to use the much safer method by integrating the desired AHCI driver into the OS image and to do a fresh OS install in AHCI mode according >this< guide.

You cannot find the DeviceIDs DEV_3B26 and DEV_3B20 within any Intel RST *.INF or *.OEM file, because these are the DeviceIDs of the on-board Intel 5-Series Chipset SATA Controller, which is currently set to “IDE” within the BIOS. None of the Intel AHCI or RAID drivers do support any Intel SATA Controller, which is running in IDE mode.
As soon as you have changed the mode of the Intel SATA Controller to “AHCI” within the BIOS, the DeviceID of the Controller will be automaticly switched to DEV_3B29 (“Intel(R) 5 Series 4 Port SATA AHCI Controller”), DEV_3B2F (“Intel(R) 5 Series 6 Port SATA AHCI Controller”) or DEV_3B22 (“Intel(R) 5 Series/3400 Series SATA AHCI Controller”).
Consequence: If you want to switch the SATA mode of the Intel SATA Controller from “IDE” to “AHCI” from within a running OS, you have to force the installation of a “wrong” (currently not matching) Intel AHCI driver and to switch the SATA mode of the Intel SATA Controller within the BIOS to “AHCI” immediately thereafter (you have to enter the BIOS while rebooting and to correct the SATA mode, otherwise you will get a BSOD).
This procedure works, because the OS doesn’t use the updated (here: “wrong”) until the first reboot after having completed the driver installation.

No, the P55 chipset mainboards have an Intel 5-Series Chipset Southbridge and not an Intel ICH10R one.

No wonder (see above). Even if I would have added the related HardwareIDs to the *.INF and *.OEM files, the driver wouldn’t work (neither in IDE nor in AHCI mode).

You will have to update the driver of both listed Intel 5-Series Serial ATA Storage Controllers simultaneously.
By the way: There is no need to use my mod+signed Intel AHCI driver. You can install the original Intel AHCI driver v11.2.0.1006 WHQL, because it natively supports Windows XP and your on-board Intel 5-Series Chipset SATA AHCI Controller.

Provided, that you really want to switch the SATA mode of your Intel 5-Series Chipset SATA Controller from within a running Windows XP, I recommend to do the following:

  1. Download and unzip the Intel RST driver v11.2.0.1006 WHQL.
  2. Create a Restore Point of your current OS system (or make a complete backup of the XP partition and the usually hidden boot sector).
  3. Run the Device Manager, expand the section “IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers” and make sure, that only 1 Intel Serial ATA Storage Controller is listed.
    If the Device Manager shows 2 of them, you have to check, which one is managing your system drive, and to uninstall the other Controller (right click onto it > “Uninstall the device”).
  4. Update the driver of the (still) listed Intel Serial ATA Storage Controller:
    • Right click onto the Controller and choose the options “Update driver software” > “Browse my Computer” > “Let me pick…”.
    • Hit the “Have Disk” button and navigate to the folder, where you have stored the Intel RST driver v11.2.0.1006 WHQL.
    • Highlight the file named iaAHCI.inf and choose the option “Intel(R) 5 Series/3400 Series SATA AHCI Controller” (DEV_3B22).
    • Disregard all warning and let the OS install the “wrong” Intel AHCI driver.
    • Repeat the procedure with the other listed Intel SATA Controller.
  5. Now you can reboot, but don’t forget to hit the DEL (or similar) key to directly enter the BIOS.
  6. Set the Intel SATA Controller to “AHCI” mode and store the new BIOS setting.
  7. Reboot.

If you are lucky, you will now run Windows XP in AHCI mode. You can check it within the “IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers” of the Device Manager.

Good luck!
Dieter (alias Fernando)

@gjwAudio :
Since your request has not much to do with the thread title “Modded Intel AHCI and RAID Drivers”, where you had posted it, but may be interesting for other users, who are running Windows XP in IDE mode and want to switch to the AHCI mode without doing a fresh XP installation, I have moved your initial post and my replies into a new thread and gave it a meaningful title.
I hope, that this is ok for you.
If you do not like the new title, feel free to change it by editing the start post.

@Fernando
Yes, thank you for moving this discussion to its own thread (makes more sense to be under a unique heading).

And thanks for clearing up my device ID confusion (ie: “NOT ICH10R”). And a big thanks for the clear, step-by-step directions to update my controllers. I can report my system is now running well using AHCI-mode, despite a few roadblocks along the way.

In order to help any other XP-controller-mode-switchers who may fall upon this thread, let me describe the pitfalls and how to overcome them.

My Intel DP55WG mobo has one 6-port SATA controller (DP55KG has an additional 2-port Marvell controller). In IDE-compatible mode, it presents itself to XP as two devices - DEV_3B26 and DEV_3B20 (as shown in previous post above). My Device Manager now looks like this:



While following the Fernando’s excellent instructions, I began with DEV_3B26 (2-port), and sadly got a BLUE SCREEN when XP copied the 3B22 driver into system32 folder . The message said…

Technical Info:
*** STOP: 0x000000C5 (0x5928C863, 0x00000002, 0x00000000, 0x8054B0BA)


After a few trial-and-error passes (ie: restore partition from backup image), I found the correct procedure is:

1) update the DEV_3B20 (4-port) device with “Intel(R) 5 Series/3400 Series SATA AHCI Controller” (DEV_3B22)
2) UNINSTALL the DEV_3B26 (2-port) device completely

After reboot (and switching to AHCI in BIOS), XP found a “new device”, registered it accordingly, and required one more reboot.

Success !!

I’ve been stuck on this point for a week (how to switch without OS reinstall)… and thanks to the encyclopedic knowledge of Fernando (and friends) shared here at Win-Raid, I can move on with the bigger project of migrating two environments into fresh Win7 installs. The challenge of running parallel systems (dual-boot XP + W2K3 on HDD, and dual-boot Win7’s on SSD) is now greatly simplified - Woo-HOO !

My deepest respect and appreciation for your help - Thank You.

@Fernando
A Supplementary Question if you please…

Should I be slipstreaming "Intel RST(e) drivers v12.9.4.1000 WHQL dated 04/24/2014" into my Win7 install(s) for this mobo ?

Thanks.

@gjwAudio :
Congratulation, that you succeeded to switch the SATA mode from within a running XP and thanks for your detailed report about how you managed it.

This is a very important find. When I wrote my guide, I didn’t think about the bad consequences by trying to update the driver of both listed Controllers.
To prevent, that future users of my guide will run into the same troubles as you, I have just updated my guide, which I had posted >here<.

You can do it, but there is no need to slipstream any Intel AHCI driver, because Win7 has an in-box AHCI driver, which will detect and manage your on-board Intel SATA AHCI Controller without any problem. If you want to use the Intel RST(e) AHCI driver v12.9.4.1000 instead of the MS Win7 in-box AHCI driver named msahci.sys, you can manually change the AHCI driver from within the Device Manager at any time.

@Fernando

Well then, I’m happy to contribute new information to the site . Perhaps the rest of the story may be helpful to the remaining 300 XP users .

OTHER CHALLENGES

System Imaging: For as long as I can remember, I’ve used Ghost to backup & restore my OS environment(s). It has saved me from countless reinstalls (OOPS… rollback !!). However - when run from a bootdisk/PE environment - the program does not understand AHCI access. Hmmmm… inconvenient to my backup routine, to say the least. To run Ghost, the machine has to be in IDE mode.

Now since I made full images of both pre-AHCI-XP, and post-AHCI-XP, it’s a simple matter of <reboot / switch-mode-in-BIOS / restart> to get back to a functioning IDE-based environment. This is critical to the challenge below…

XP & GPT Disks: Back in 2012 I added the 3TB WD30EZRX to my setup, not realizing the full capacity couldn’t be addressed natively from within XP. Rats

The solution was >Paragon GPT Loader<. This utility has worked flawlessly between then and now… until I switched to AHCI mode. Unfortunately, when I finally got XP running with AHCI, the three partitions on the WD30EZRX disappeared from my computer. Double-Rats !!

Paragon Support has confirmed their product is only compatible with IDE mode. What to do ?

>FreeNAS< to the rescue ! Last year I finally built a dedicated file server, based on FreeNAS (10.1TB available, RAID-Z2), so there was somewhere accessable for my 2.5TB of data to go.

Restoring to IDE-XP allowed me to copy the data to NAS (actually a backup of each partition, using the awesome >Allway Sync< utility). Then, a return to AHCI-XP, to replace the missing partitions (F:\ H:\ and I:) with “map network drive” entries under the corresponding drive letters. Currently:



An unexpected result: I find programs that have their workspace set to these missing partitions (eg: uTorrent on F:) still function, without any adjustment to their internal settings. So, during the transition to fully capable Win7 environments (installing apps & customization takes sooo much time), the NAS copies will be the “master” version of the data.

When the day comes to finally abandon XP, Allway Sync will intelligently update the WD30EZRX partitions with changes only, and Life can get on as intended .

I hope this info will be helpful to someone, someday.

Cheers !

@Fernando and gjwAudio:

Highest accolades and thanks to you both. I spent 4 days trying to change a preinstalled XP running under IDE over to AHCI, knowing full well that it would be tricky but that others had done it successfully so I kept at it.

Fernando provided essential information and details including the astonishing change of device ID’s about which I was unaware.

gjwAudio provided the final piece of the puzzle, warning that the 2 port Device needed to be uninstalled and the AHCI driver update was done by clicking on the 4 port entry. I was trying that but wasn’t sure what to click on in the list of selections after selecting the new “.inf” for the AHCI. gjwAudio mentioned that the Series 5 / 3400 chipset entry should be selected.

I actually inverted the steps and installed the AHCI driver for the 4 port device first, but then when it said to reboot, I clicked on “No” and then uninstalled the 2 port.

One other note which may or may not be important, am not sure: I could not install the Intel Chipset Installation utility which you are supposed to install before updating the drivers manually with the “have disk” option. Even though I had installed Microsoft .NET 3.5 I got a “Your system does not have sufficent resources to run this program” message. So I just searched for an older version of the Intel utility software and installed that one first. It asked for a reboot, which I did, and then I followed the Fernando/gjwAudio steps mentioned above to complete the task.

Wow, what a trip, glad I don’t do that too often ! But i know what to do now.

Again thanks to you both ! !

James (CitizenJimserac)

Simples - Enable switching between all IDE/AHCI/RAID modes by changing "Start" Values in these keys to 0 in the registry
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Msahci\Start
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Pciide\Start
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\iaStorV\Start

Can I revert to ide mode in one xp iso image?