Hello everyone,

I am desperately seeking help. Really. I am at my wits end. I have scoured Google, every website, every related link, and i'm still so bloody confused on what im supposed to be doing. I've been at this for nearly 2 weeks now, i almost feel like just breaking down and throwing this piece of crap out the window. It's really that bad.

Well, here it goes, i really hope some of you can help me;

I've got my new SATA2 HDD, it's a 500GB Western Digital (5000AAKS). Since installing XP and optimizing my PC fully, i'm just not noticing any performance increase over my old 80GB SATA, in fact, it seems worse! Opening up simple files (Like My Documents) on the drive presents an hour-glass with at least a 1 second delay or so before the file opens! Deleting tiny files of around 8MB sometimes brings up the progress bar? This is a fresh format, with nothing but maintenance programs, registry optimizers, diskeeper, and a couple of games on it. I've optimized XP to the fullest, and the HDD is always defragged, including the page-file. The HDD should not be as slow as it is im sure of it.

So i figure it needs to have SATA/AHCI fully enabled. I enable AHCI in the Bios, and, the bSod occurs. Which is okay, as i knew it would. So i look into reinstalling OS with the drivers. Turns out i cant, since i don't have a floppy. Then i check out how to Slipstream my XP SP2 disc and put the SATA/AHCI/RAID drivers in there. I downloaded the Gigabyte SATA drivers from the Gigabyte website and integrate the drivers into my Slipstreamed XP installation disc. So i set the Bios to AHCI mode, and begin isntalling the OS. I skip the F6 (As im assuming the slipstreamed XP disc automatically installs the drivers - also hitting F6 brings up nothing). XP etc installs fine, this is all with AHCI mode set in bios.

At POST, i notice a screen pops up on every boot;

'Serial ATA AHCI Bios Version, iSrc 1.07
Copyright Intel (bla bla)
##This Version Supports Only HDD's and CD Roms##

Controller Bus#00, Device #F, Function #02: 04 Ports
............
No Device Found
AHCI Bios Not Installed'

My SATA drive is plugged into the Gigabyte SATA sockets (Purple), so i'm kinda assuming this doesn't really affect me as the Orange controller sockets are Intel. Also, i slipstreamed the Gigabyte drivers, no Intel ones?

When in Windows, my device manager displays this http://forums.techpowerup.com/atta [...] 1196734593

So is it in AHCI mode or what?

Did i do everything correctly?

Should i have slipstreamed the Intel drivers, not the Gigabyte ones?

I am so pissed off with this motherboard and SATA crap now, really, 2 weeks straight! I would REALLY appreciate it, if someone could just write out a quick, simple walkthrough for what i should do or point out where im going wrong or if i did it right etc.

Thankyou all, your my last hope!!

GIGABYTE 965P DS3 Motherboard (Latest Bios - F12)
C2D E6600 2.4Ghz CPU
X1900XT 512MB
2GB Ram
Western Digital 5000AAKS 500GB

From the picture you've posted it looks that you haven't loaded your motherboards drivers.It's obvious from all the exclamation marks next to some of the devices that the drivers aren't loaded. That's most likely the cause of your problems.