How to install an AHCI SATA driver in Windows XP, Vista and Win7

AidenShaw · Feb 8, 2014

sauria said:
Did you get it working? I am about to install on a Mac Pro 5,1 (2012) 3.33

If it's Windows Vista or later, boot from the Windows installation DVD, select "repair", then "command prompt". Run REGEDIT and set the AHCI service to "boot time". Windows has the right drivers on the disk, you just need to let the pre-boot environment know to start them.

Just Yahoo! for "windows ahci won't boot" for cookbook explanations.

[The above assumes that the Windows system was installed with the disks in "IDE" or "legacy" mode, and you're trying to change it later.]

Gav Mack · Feb 8, 2014

AidenShaw said:
If it's Windows Vista or later, boot from the Windows installation DVD, select "repair", then "command prompt". Run REGEDIT and set the AHCI service to "boot time". Windows has the right drivers on the disk, you just need to let the pre-boot environment know to start them.

Just Yahoo! for "windows ahci won't boot" for cookbook explanations.

[The above assumes that the Windows system was installed with the disks in "IDE" or "legacy" mode, and you're trying to change it later.]

To enable AHCI from the start its trickier. you can try hard powering off windows setup at the screen where it copies over the files, modding the mbr in OSX using the scripts only as the enabler app requires the ntfs boot volume to be called bootcamp for it to work. Then reboot back off the DVD and continue setup. Not sure if the bootcamp support drivers will install correctly though with a native AHCI driver loaded at the start though so I do the tried and trusted method of legacy mode first.

sauria · Feb 8, 2014

Gav Mack said:
To enable AHCI from the start its trickier. you can try hard powering off windows setup at the screen where it copies over the files, modding the mbr in OSX using the scripts only as the enabler app requires the ntfs boot volume to be called bootcamp for it to work. Then reboot back off the DVD and continue setup. Not sure if the bootcamp support drivers will install correctly though with a native AHCI driver loaded at the start though so I do the tried and trusted method of legacy mode first.

Thanks, all. Bootcamp doesn't want to install on an external SSD. Anyone have luck with that? Thank you.

Gav Mack · Feb 8, 2014

sauria said:
Thanks, all. Bootcamp doesn't want to install on an external SSD. Anyone have luck with that? Thank you.

Only way I've got external SSD's working is with setting up the original PCIe disk and using winclone on iMac's and MBP using thunderbolt enclosures hosting them. Not got one going in a Mac Pro tower cos PCIe SATA cards have to have a bios to boot windows properly in legacy mode and I don't think many SATA cards bios support the ESATA port for booting windows.

I've had to use twin SSD's off a solo x2 SATA 3 PCIe card in my 3,1 to boot windows properly. Having the windows partition on the same SSD it just wouldn't boot off it full stop which Apricorn say is a 3,1 specific problem. I had to use sticky thermal pads to stick a second 840 evo on top of the other which screws in the card, use the x2's second SATA port to connect and use power off the optical power extension I've run for the usb PCIe 3.0 card. Now I have SATA 3 on both OSX and windows 7. I installed windows and bootcamp in sled 2, ran the x2 empty to let windows install the driver, patched the mbr, got intel AHCI going with MSAHCI then upgraded to the 10.1.1008 rst driver only. That's the latest rst for my 3,1 and does not have the 3tb drive bug. Then I moved the 840 evo from sled 2, stuck it on top of the first SSD and finally it works great, leaving my sleds free for spinning disks.

It was probably the biggest pita bootcamp I've done but was cos I wanted SATA 3 or bust for dual booting windows and OSX. Though it takes a little longer to boot I do notice it's quite a bit faster in all round use, get about 470mb instead of 270 in a sled.

sauria · Feb 8, 2014

Gav Mack said:
Only way I've got external SSD's working is with setting up the original PCIe disk and using winclone on iMac's and MBP using thunderbolt enclosures hosting them. Not got one going in a Mac Pro tower cos PCIe SATA cards have to have a bios to boot windows properly in legacy mode and I don't think many SATA cards bios support the ESATA port for booting windows.

I've had to use twin SSD's off a solo x2 SATA 3 PCIe card in my 3,1 to boot windows properly. Having the windows partition on the same SSD it just wouldn't boot off it full stop which Apricorn say is a 3,1 specific problem. I had to use sticky thermal pads to stick a second 840 evo on top of the other which screws in the card, use the x2's second SATA port to connect and use power off the optical power extension I've run for the usb PCIe 3.0 card. Now I have SATA 3 on both OSX and windows 7. I installed windows and bootcamp in sled 2, ran the x2 empty to let windows install the driver, patched the mbr, got intel AHCI going with MSAHCI then upgraded to the 10.1.1008 rst driver only. That's the latest rst for my 3,1 and does not have the 3tb drive bug. Then I moved the 840 evo from sled 2, stuck it on top of the first SSD and finally it works great, leaving my sleds free for spinning disks.

It was probably the biggest pita bootcamp I've done but was cos I wanted SATA 3 or bust for dual booting windows and OSX. Though it takes a little longer to boot I do notice it's quite a bit faster in all round use, get about 470mb instead of 270 in a sled.

Thank you for the detailed report. It sounds like Boot Camp want you to live in the IDE drive era. Perhaps I will install this on my secondary SSD in one of the drive bays. I am tempted to try what you did though, it just seems like quite a hassle.

CrazyNurse · Feb 8, 2014

Gav Mack said:
Only way I've got external SSD's working is with setting up the original PCIe disk and using winclone on iMac's and MBP using thunderbolt enclosures hosting them. Not got one going in a Mac Pro tower cos PCIe SATA cards have to have a bios to boot windows properly in legacy mode and I don't think many SATA cards bios support the ESATA port for booting windows.

I've had to use twin SSD's off a solo x2 SATA 3 PCIe card in my 3,1 to boot windows properly. Having the windows partition on the same SSD it just wouldn't boot off it full stop which Apricorn say is a 3,1 specific problem. I had to use sticky thermal pads to stick a second 840 evo on top of the other which screws in the card, use the x2's second SATA port to connect and use power off the optical power extension I've run for the usb PCIe 3.0 card. Now I have SATA 3 on both OSX and windows 7. I installed windows and bootcamp in sled 2, ran the x2 empty to let windows install the driver, patched the mbr, got intel AHCI going with MSAHCI then upgraded to the 10.1.1008 rst driver only. That's the latest rst for my 3,1 and does not have the 3tb drive bug. Then I moved the 840 evo from sled 2, stuck it on top of the first SSD and finally it works great, leaving my sleds free for spinning disks.

It was probably the biggest pita bootcamp I've done but was cos I wanted SATA 3 or bust for dual booting windows and OSX. Though it takes a little longer to boot I do notice it's quite a bit faster in all round use, get about 470mb instead of 270 in a sled.

I had a Solo x2 that I had to return because it was DOA, but plan on getting a replacement one.
With the pcie card, will I be able to put OSX on one SSD and a bootcamp WIN7 on a second SSD (using the extra SATA III connector) without going through all this AHCI driver hoopla?

Gav Mack · Feb 9, 2014

sauria said:
Thank you for the detailed report. It sounds like Boot Camp want you to live in the IDE drive era. Perhaps I will install this on my secondary SSD in one of the drive bays. I am tempted to try what you did though, it just seems like quite a hassle.

Apple certainly did want inferior disk performance with windows, without AHCI it certainly is. If you are installing and running Bootcamp on an SSD in sled 2 in comparison to what I had to do its pretty easy to do with the enabler app, just like all the other intel chipset macs. It only got to pita levels cos I wanted it booting in sata 3!

sauria · Feb 9, 2014

Gav Mack said:
Apple certainly did want inferior disk performance with windows, without AHCI it certainly is. If you are installing and running Bootcamp on an SSD in sled 2 in comparison to what I had to do its pretty easy to do with the enabler app, just like all the other intel chipset macs. It only got to pita levels cos I wanted it booting in sata 3!

Yes, I would want SATA 3 too, I wonder how Bootcamp works on the new Mac Pro with PCI-E SSD?

Gav Mack · Feb 10, 2014

sauria said:
Yes, I would want SATA 3 too, I wonder how Bootcamp works on the new Mac Pro with PCI-E SSD?

Works great with the one I setup, apart from being Win 8.1 and 7 being incompatible with it. A Microsoft OS I am going to skip till Window 9 just like I did Vista!

With a 5,1 you shouldn't have as many problems with the solo x2 than I did with my 2008.

Gav Mack · Mar 13, 2014

If anyone has Euclid1's patchcode.bin file for the sandy bridge 2011 MBP models could they please send me a pm as I've only gone and lost it and the rapidshare link has gone dead.

Sod's law it had to happen when I was patching my own MBP

EDIT:

Found it, patch worked fine on my new old 17 inch late 2011 MBP and uploaded here for safe keeping.

Easy tutorial here too:

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/f...ing-AHCI-for-Windows-on-MBP-2011-now-possible

zarf2007 · Mar 15, 2014

Gav Mack said:
Only way I've got external SSD's working is with setting up the original PCIe disk and using winclone on iMac's and MBP using thunderbolt enclosures hosting them. Not got one going in a Mac Pro tower cos PCIe SATA cards have to have a bios to boot windows properly in legacy mode and I don't think many SATA cards bios support the ESATA port for booting windows.

I've had to use twin SSD's off a solo x2 SATA 3 PCIe card in my 3,1 to boot windows properly. Having the windows partition on the same SSD it just wouldn't boot off it full stop which Apricorn say is a 3,1 specific problem. I had to use sticky thermal pads to stick a second 840 evo on top of the other which screws in the card, use the x2's second SATA port to connect and use power off the optical power extension I've run for the usb PCIe 3.0 card. Now I have SATA 3 on both OSX and windows 7. I installed windows and bootcamp in sled 2, ran the x2 empty to let windows install the driver, patched the mbr, got intel AHCI going with MSAHCI then upgraded to the 10.1.1008 rst driver only. That's the latest rst for my 3,1 and does not have the 3tb drive bug. Then I moved the 840 evo from sled 2, stuck it on top of the first SSD and finally it works great, leaving my sleds free for spinning disks.

It was probably the biggest pita bootcamp I've done but was cos I wanted SATA 3 or bust for dual booting windows and OSX. Though it takes a little longer to boot I do notice it's quite a bit faster in all round use, get about 470mb instead of 270 in a sled.

I have two x2 cards, one running a Samsung Evo 1tb SSD for osx which boots fine and one with a 250gb Evo running windows 7 x64 which I initially installed while in a sled with both x2 cards in place and with all win7 updates applied. However when I moved the win7 SSD to the x2 card boot fails with a black screen and 'no boot drive' message.

I'm thinking that I need to do the ahci patching if you can point me in the right direction on how to do this (though I assume I will need to move it back to the sled to do this?). I noticed in another post someone suggested installing windows 8.1 and this works without issue but I would rather avoid using the new 'vista'!!

Gav Mack · Mar 15, 2014

zarf2007 said:
I have two x2 cards, one running a Samsung Evo 1tb SSD for osx which boots fine and one with a 250gb Evo running windows 7 x64 which I initially installed while in a sled with both x2 cards in place and with all win7 updates applied. However when I moved the win7 SSD to the x2 card boot fails with a black screen and 'no boot drive' message.

I'm thinking that I need to do the ahci patching if you can point me in the right direction on how to do this (though I assume I will need to move it back to the sled to do this?). I noticed in another post someone suggested installing windows 8.1 and this works without issue but I would rather avoid using the new 'vista'!!

I'm sure I've read somewhere twin x2 cards can stop windows booting. I've only ever had one card, and the 3,1 being more finicky than most only way I got it to boot was off port 2 off my X2. Though as legacy mode only supports 4 devices in IDE you could very well be right you may have to patch the MBR to enable ACHI on boot.

Instructions and the ahci enabler app here

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/18601306/

The original insanelymac thread if you want to research it first:

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/to...th-intel-chipset-in-ahci-win7-vista-xp-linux/

Costabunny's thread for the twin SSD on 1 X2 solution:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1675846/

Gav Mack · Mar 15, 2014

As a footnote to my MBP 2011 AHCI mod, I did a bit of testing with the RST driver.

Using the bootcamp 5.1 software Intel RST drivers 11.2 and below the windows bootcamp control panel is still broken with the usual startup disk error, however if your chipset supports the newer type of RST (11.7 and above) hey presto the windows control panel works.

I know that means the panel is still broken for 3,1 users as 10.1.0.1008 is the newest driver supported, though can't confirm which is the newest on the 4/5,1 models, until I get my 5,1 my clients for all are on the 1008 driver which doesn't suffer from the 3tb formatting bug and don't think would appreciate me asking to test on cheesegraters doing constant work. I think they will though as iirc the 1/3,1 models use the ESB2 controller and the 4/5,1 use ICH10 so you newer Mac Pro owners may get the control panel back.

The RST driver sets are here:

http://www.win-raid.com/t2f23-Intel-R-RST-RSTe-Drivers-actual-v-WHQL-v-WHQL.html

Update via Device manager, update driver, choose the path of the extracted driver. If supported it will update. The driver only is fine, the driver plus RST app requires .net, is slow to start and a waste of resources on startup. You'll need a 2nd restart after it loads the new driver for your boot drive.

zarf2007 · Mar 15, 2014

Gav Mack said:
I'm sure I've read somewhere twin x2 cards can stop windows booting. I've only ever had one card, and the 3,1 being more finicky than most only way I got it to boot was off port 2 off my X2. Though as legacy mode only supports 4 devices in IDE you could very well be right you may have to patch the MBR to enable ACHI on boot.

Instructions and the ahci enabler app here

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/18601306/

The original insanelymac thread if you want to research it first:

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/to...th-intel-chipset-in-ahci-win7-vista-xp-linux/

Costabunny's thread for the twin SSD on 1 X2 solution:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1675846/

Thanks, will try this and report back. I must admit I find it annoying that apple bill the oMP for it's expandability and then include the minimal number of power connectors. I don't really want to run power from the optical drive and thought this would be neater but if it doesn't work then back to the drawing board!

Demigod Mac · Mar 15, 2014

It's been a long time since I tried this. Back then it was a Bootcamp partition, on Windows 7. I guess the hack fooled into thinking it was Vista Business, somehow. But it also had annoying issues like not recognizing the Bootcamp control panel in Windows. I've since done a clean install.

Does AHCI on Bootcamp still have those same issues or have they been resolved? Nowadays I use Windows 8.1 on a dedicated SSD. Was thinking of upgrading to AHCI but only if it's trouble-free.

NOTNlCE · Jul 20, 2014

So I migrated my Boot Camp install to a new hard disk, and the ODD ports weren't seen anymore. I figured the AHCI mod had been overwritten in the transfer. (Used WinClone for the transfer, btw). So this morning I redid the AHCI mod only to be met with the dreaded black screen of "disk read error, ctrl-alt-delete to reboot." TechTool says the disk is healthy, so I don't think the disk died, but restoring the old MBR doesn't help either. Any guesses? I'm running Windows 8.1 Pro on my Mac Pro 3,1.

szepesg · Aug 1, 2014

the ocz link does not working

Gav Mack said:
If anyone has Euclid1's patchcode.bin file for the sandy bridge 2011 MBP models could they please send me a pm as I've only gone and lost it and the rapidshare link has gone dead.

Sod's law it had to happen when I was patching my own MBP

EDIT:

Found it, patch worked fine on my new old 17 inch late 2011 MBP and uploaded here for safe keeping.

Easy tutorial here too:

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/f...ing-AHCI-for-Windows-on-MBP-2011-now-possible

Hi,

The ocz link does not work anymore. I have the same problem with the MBP 2011 and the AHCI.
Please help me if You can.
Thank You in advance.

G.Sz.

mikeboss · Aug 1, 2014

I still have it as a Safari *.webarchive and it's attached to this post...

mikeboss · Aug 1, 2014

and here's the "patchedcode.zip"

szepesg · Aug 1, 2014

picturs

mikeboss said:
I still have it as a Safari *.webarchive and it's attached to this post...

Hi,

Thank You for the files. I am sorry to mention it because I am really thankful but the pictures are missing from the zip file.
If you could attach those that would be really great.
Thank You very much again.

G.Sz.

ps: the subject is "pictures" instead of whatever it is there

mikeboss · Aug 1, 2014

sorry, I don't have the pictures.

takovej · Mar 6, 2015

Gav Mack said:
I've always had a broken windows bootcamp control panel after with the older pre 2011 kit until this weekend for four years now so excuse me for being too cheerful

Sorry for asking, but how you solved this? I always get BootCamp error while trying to access it... Only way I was able to run it was lunch it with access controll rights setup below administrator level. Or have you patched the manifest file? Thx in advance.

slapfish · Mar 14, 2015

Hello everyone,

This is my first post although I am reading the forum for years, so thank you all for all the helpful information posted here.

A couple of months ago I bought an ssd for my macpro 2009 and I managed to enable ICH10 in windows 7 by following the instructions here. However since then I lost access to the last two hdd bays in windows. I can only see the first two bays and the two on the top that take the cd/dvd roms. In OSX all the hdds are being shown without any problem.

Is this something common? Is there a possible solution?

Thanks in advance for any help,
James

mikeboss · Mar 14, 2015

AFAIR this is, unfortunately, expected behavior...

gekalegoret · Apr 11, 2015

Cannot run ahci-1.sh script and unable to patch MBR

Hi everyone !

I hope somebody will read my question here since this is a relatively old thread.
I've read and followed very carrefully (by the letter) the "gugucom" tutorial which is quite clear. Thanks for it !
So far, I've been able to successfully patch the Windows Registry and installing the MS AHCI 1.0 driver.

But I'm now stuck in the Mac OS X portion. I'm unable to patch the MBR.
I have placed the unzipped "ahci-1.sh" script on the Mac desktop. I have opened Terminal. I have typed "sudo" followed by a blank and then dragged the script in the Terminal window. I have typed "return". Terminal has asked me for my administrator password. After typing it, all I got was :
sudo : /Users/geka/Desktop/ahci-1.sh: command not found
Consequently there is no patching of the MBR...

I don't dare to return to Windows since, 2 mods have already been done.
Can someone get me out of this trap ?

Thanks a lot in advance.

Georges

How to install an AHCI SATA driver in Windows XP, Vista and Win7

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