Switching from ATA to ACHI mode without reinstalling XP?

[dohnmd]

I have a laptop that is set to ATA and I need to install an external sSATA DVD Rom. How can I change it to ACHI without reimaging the laptop?

 

[Hawkeye22]

If your bios has seperate controllers for your internal drives and the esata port, you should be able to turn on the esata port and set it to sata/ahci then install the sata/ahci drivers.

Unlike vista and win7 which have native sata/ahci drivers, XP does not. because of this, there is no simple registry hack to switch from one to the other. If you only have one sata controller, I beleive your only option is to reinstall. Use the F6 option during installation to load in the sata/ahci drivers.