MA78GM-UD2H

[tx155]

Hello,

I've recently bought a new computer with Gigabyte's motherboard - MA78GM-UD2H.

I have some strange issue with AHCI mode. Before I installed Windows for the first time(XP pro 32bit), I selected ACHI mode, and everything worked fine after the installation. After a while, I decided to update the BIOS to a newer version(I updated to F7 from F2). After the update, during the boot process it asked me again which mode do I want to use(IDE/AHCI), so I selected again AHCI...after that the Windows failed to start (I got a blue screen). Eventually I managed to solve the problem by switching it back to IDE mode in the BIOS(otherwise Windows wouldn't start)

The question is, what do I do if I want to work again in ACHI mode ?

Any help will be appreciated

Thanks !

 

[roonj]

To be fair I'm unclear about the boot process asking you about which mode you want to use. I've used achi quite a bit with xp, vista , windows 7 and different motherboard manufacturers as well. I don't believe the bios is asking you that but I could be wrong. The operating system, in your case xp pro 32 bit will ask you on install if you need to load any drivers, could that be your reference. Anyway xp doesn't support achi mode natively until service pack 2 I believe. In bios the sata controller has the options of ide mode, achi mode, raid mode. To run in achi mode the controller has to be set to achi mode obviously. Then during install of xp you must use either a floppy or a cd with the achi drivers and insert them when asked, during the original install. This puts the achi86x.sys drivers in the windows/system 32/drivers directory and the inf file in the depository. Updating the bios to ver F7 would probobly cause the bios to revert to ide mode for the sata controller. In fact I'm sure it does, at which point you need to re-enter achi mode for the controller. Having failed to reset it yourself xp would normally try and load the achi86x.sys file and that would fail to boot the drive, but the system (xp) should then load the standard ide system file and then maybe reboot and run in ide mode. If you were ever running in achi mode and you reset the sata harddrive controller to achi mode, xp should load the driver and you'll be running in that mode again. Please accept my apologies if I sound derogotory as I don't mean it to be taken that way. There really isn't any decent instructions provided for the end user to utilize achi mode particularly with xp and vista isn't much better as I recall untill service pack 1. Unfortuately there isn't any easy way to initialize achi mode on xp if it wasn't installed that way originally. It requires manually editing the registry and a rather complicated software install that isn't automated. The exception is a motherboard with dual sata controllers of a different family which your gigabyte board doesn't have. I looked it up because my gigabyte board does have this feature ma790x. Well lets hope just setting the bios for achi mode works for you. If it's of any consolation running in NCQ which is the only benefit of achi mode isn't very competent on the amd chipset to date. As a last thought you can look in the windows/system32/drivers directory for the file achi86x.sys which is the amd driver for achi mode. This will tell you if it was ever installed. Best of luck