Install AHCI on post winxp sp3 install with z68 chipset

Personally I'd do a clean install. The methods to do this seem pretty long winded. You can google ahci after windows xp install. Here are just a few.

http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?t=444831

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/109450-enable-intel-ahc...

http://www.theacerguy.com/2008/06/how-to-install-the-ah...

Hawkeye22: Nice writeups. The third one is pretty close to what I did the time I slogged through this myself, although I didn't edit the registry directly.

OP: If you attempt any of these approaches, do an image backup to an external drive. If your first attempt fails, change the BIOS back to IDE, restore the image backup, and boot back into XP. I had to do this three times, each one due to choosing the wrong device to install from the driver list.

A fresh install is cleaner, but will require a floppy / USB drive with the drivers for AHCI and the F6-for-more-drivers step in installation.

I will read over these later today to get an idea of what I will need to do. Thanks for the responses.

In regards to image backup I have a great system.

I have a master drive that I clone from. The Master drive is only updated with MS Patches, game and apps and then cloned. It is never used and anything risky is for the clone. That way I have an easy way to avoid having to reinstall.

Before I did the new motherboard I cloned the clone, and ran the steps Lloyd Case laid out for upgrading to a new motherboard. Once I confirmed everything worked, then I did it to my good clone and things worked. I was going to attempt to do the ahci on my good clone that was working on the new motherboard and then I thought, wait a minute, why not take that test clone and well use it as a guinea pig. After all if I crash it, I can just reclone off of the good clone and start the testing again.

I am a big time advocate of anyone who can afford it to keep a master - clone system in place as it can be a big time life saver. Keep the master away from anything that could harm it. Don't surf with it. Only visit the most needed websites, windowsupdate, adobe flash player updates, etc. Save the visit to these sites that are needed for patching for the clone.

I will update you on how the three ideas work. Thanks again.

The first link is one of the first I tried. Sadly it is only on the last page that the Z68 is talked about. I tried their steps and did get ahci on the system. But it seemed odd. They had cougar (6 series) drivers with ahci next to the chipset name, but were only offered in 6-port ahci configuration, despite the fact that intel list 2 port (6gbps) and 4 port (3gbps), no 6 port non-ahci in the device manager.

The person who listed what they did on the z-68 was clever by using what showed up in a clean install of win7. However the fact that it isn't the name of the chipset left me unsure. HOwever I didn't end up with any in the my scsi controller section like he did (even checked for hidden devices). But now I have that express server/workstation ahci driver and then a standard ide controller with primary and secondary. So I know something didn't take. But the system seems to work. So I decided to keep looking.

Thanks for showing that the site was considered a good source.

Read through all 3 links. Only the first one came closest. The other two deal with different chipsets and so not knowing the exact vendor name C01 c02 etc. makes it hard to do it. However one of them did give me an idea of something new to try. However if anyone has any other links I would greatly appreciiate it.

Once again thanks to all those who have helped me out here.

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey