I have a Acer Aspire 5920 and just installed XP onto a partition, had to do some stuff to get both OS (Vista and XP) to dual-boot. I changed the mode into IDE when installing XP and now want to run it back in AHCI mode. I've googled and read numerous forums and guides but none of them works. Such as playing with the registry and placing iastor.sys in the system32/drivers folder and restarting in AHCI (doesn't work), I've tried updating the ATA controller drivers by using the extracted files from AHCI Intel zip files (doesn't let me update). Basically I've tried a lot of things, and when I try to boot XP in AHCI mode it just comes up with a blue screen that says it has to reboot to prevent damage. Does anyone have this model laptop and has successfully changed it back to AHCI mode? I've downloaded so many drivers, none of them work even though they say for XP but I think it only runs in x64 not x32; I don't know it's driving me nuts.
the other methods don't work.. xp doesn't contain a sata driver and attempting to add one after it's installed just doesn't work (been there.. got the shirt) What you need to do is streamline your own xp installer cd with the sata driver added.. nlite is the free program to do just that, then install with the ahci mode on and otherwise everything seems normal. easy tool to use.. just find your sata driver (they are pretty easy to find for xp) and unpack it, (easy.. little bit of dos magic) name-of-driver-file.exe -a -p full\path\to\a\sensible\directory then using nlite streamline it in.. nlite guide explains how.. install as usual from your newly created xp disk.
So do I have to reinstall XP, as in format the entire drive again? That really sucks because I just downloaded and installed all these software and updates. Is there a way to just install XP without erasing it, you know how there's that F6 option at the beginning or just the repair current installation instead of a full installation?
I've decided to keep it on IDE, save the trouble and plus people say that there isn't much of a performance gain. Cheers for the help!
just to answer you.. no.. full reinstall needed.. it's a one time thing which loads an actual kernal module at the most basic level. Monolithic kernels have this problem.. once they are built around the existing setup certain things (like sata drivers needed to access the hdd the os boots from) must be right at the top of the heap... before everything else gets started. You can try it if you want.. grab and install the whatever.exe driver for your chipset (it will install with windoze running and give no errors) and set to ahci mode and try rebooting.. black screen..
That's the thing, the drivers would say your system does not meet the requirements or something and not install. But it would install fine if I'm running Vista; leading me to assume it's because of the x32 vs x64 difference between the OS. So I'm just gonna leave it, but the information you've given is very useful, so I could come back to this if the situation ever arises again. At least now I have an answer (^_^) and not just scratching my head. CHEERS!
nah... the error is simple.. the system doesn't meet the requirements.. the bios is set in the wrong mode!!.. some boards error, others just allow install then fail on start. It's real easy to use nlite.. the hard part is finding the actual sata driver to add... which is where (I use sabayon) linux know how comes in... and google.. and knowing the precise motherboard/laptop model number. anyway.. now you know.. I use a cd-rw for streamlining xp install disks with nlite. saves having a heap of used once or twice only disks with ambiguous labels... plus I have a habit of adding all the required drivers to then.. hitting install and wandering off, because I have set timezone and serial and everything (I don't give a crap about legal, and neither do my customers.. I don't charge for xp, just for getting the heap they have broken up and running again)
