AHCI drivers in win7 installed, and still no booting into windows!

[gugucom]

I wonder what the actual size of the problem is. Is this an individual problem? Is this a problem with Win7-64? Or is this a problem with Win7-64 and the MP3,1?

I have Win7-64-RC in Microsoft AHCI running on a unibody MBP. It has no Intel chipset and no ODD-SATA ports. So I cannot be 100% sure it would work on a MacPro. I could cross take this version with Winclone to the MP4,1 and see how that works out.

The problem is that I can find faults in the driver installation or the patch process if I do it myself. If someone else does it one can never be sure what went wrong. So we might have to wait for someone to be successfull or not to confirm this case.

 

[BHamilton]

I've spent the afternoon and evening trying this out. Bottom line is that on my early-2008 Mac Pro the ODD ports do not appear to go live under any version of Windows (XP Pro, Vista, 2008, 7). XP and Vista were tried in 32-bit, and 2008 and 7 were tested in their 64-bit versions.

That said, on each version or Windows, AHCI modification as outlined worked flawlessly on the HDD ports.

 

[gugucom]

I've spent the afternoon and evening trying this out. Bottom line is that on my early-2008 Mac Pro the ODD ports do not appear to go live under any version of Windows (XP Pro, Vista, 2008, 7). XP and Vista were tried in 32-bit, and 2008 and 7 were tested in their 64-bit versions.

That said, on each version or Windows, AHCI modification as outlined worked flawlessly on the HDD ports.

Could you post a pic of the Windows device manager and the Intel matrix storage manager of the 2008 machine in AHCI?

 

[BHamilton]

Could you post a pic of the Windows device manager and the Intel matrix storage manager of the 2008 machine in AHCI?

That's a looong install to get a screenshot. I'll kick off the install tomorrow and post the pic.

What is it in 2008 that has your curiosity?

 

[gugucom]

That's a looong install to get a screenshot. I'll kick off the install tomorrow and post the pic.

What is it in 2008 that has your curiosity?

I am curious to know the limits and the problems with the 2008 model baffels me a bit to be honest. I post a pic of my uMBP.



And this is the respective installation on a 2009 MP. The storage manager shows the SATA BRD in ODD-SATA port 0 and the Win SSD in ODD-SATA port 1. It is exactly the same Win7-64 cloned with Winclone to the MP4,1. So there is no doubt that win7-64 works exactly like Vista and XP on the MP 4,1. I'm still puzzled why this should not work on a MP3,1.

 

[nanofrog]

I wonder what the actual size of the problem is. Is this an individual problem? Is this a problem with Win7-64? Or is this a problem with Win7-64 and the MP3,1?

I have Win7-64-RC in Microsoft AHCI running on a unibody MBP. It has no Intel chipset and no ODD-SATA ports. So I cannot be 100% sure it would work on a MacPro. I could cross take this version with Winclone to the MP4,1 and see how that works out.

The problem is that I can find faults in the driver installation or the patch process if I do it myself. If someone else does it one can never be sure what went wrong. So we might have to wait for someone to be successfull or not to confirm this case.

I've been on the phone with Nadav35 on this:

Hard drive attached to the ODD_SATA in an '08 MP:

Win7-64

• Attempt to install via Legacy Mode = FAIL

• Attempt to load AHCI drivers during installation = FAIL

XP-32

• Attempt to install via Legacy Mode = FAIL

• Attempted to load AHCI drivers during installation = Incomplete
  It wanted a floppy device to load the drivers from, and wasn't able to find a USB HDD the files were stored on.

No Boot Camp partitions were created (util not run). No slipstreaming was tried either.

So it seems the ODD_SATA ports on that particular model don't work with a Windows installation at all.

 

[gugucom]

I've been on the phone with Nadav35 on this:

Hard drive attached to the ODD_SATA in an '08 MP:

Win7-64

• Attempt to install via Legacy Mode = FAIL

• Attempt to load AHCI drivers during installation = FAIL

XP-32

• Attempt to install via Legacy Mode = FAIL

• Attempted to load AHCI drivers during installation = Incomplete
  It wanted a floppy device to load the drivers from, and wasn't able to find a USB HDD the files were stored on.

No Boot Camp partitions were created (util not run). No slipstreaming was tried either.

So it seems the ODD_SATA ports on that particular model don't work with a Windows installation at all.

You cannot install a drive with Windows to an ODD-SATA port unless you have previously installed the AHCI driver on the drive while it was connected to a standard HDD port.

The only exception is by cloning a Winclone image to the drive from OS X which already has AHCI enabled. That is what I did with my installation that I cloned from the uMBP to the MP4,1.

In all other cases I have first installed Windows in legacy mode on a standard HDD port, then activated AHCI and then transferred the drive to the ODD-SATA port. I thought that was obvious.

 

[nanofrog]

You cannot install a drive with Windows to an ODD-SATA port unless you have previously installed the AHCI driver on the drive while it was connected to a standard HDD port.

It was tried = FAILED

In all other cases I have first installed Windows in legacy mode on a standard HDD port, then activated AHCI and then transferred the drive to the ODD-SATA port. I thought that was obvious.

This is how it began. Drive attached to HDD bay, installed in Legacy, then the AHCI mode was activated successfully.

Transferred to the ODD_SATA port, and it didn't work. Not with XP-32 or Win7-64.

 

[gugucom]

And an OS X drive boots from the ODD-SATA port?

It sounds as if something is different on the MP3,1, but I have no clue what it is.

Perhaps the mixed IDE/SATA booting causes a problem. It sounds strange but did he ever take out the IDE optical drive? This machine will probably run a SATA optical drive for booting. I wonder if the a complete SATA environment would fix the issue.

In my MP4,1 I have also EFI64 but it runs optical disks from a SATA drive. Obviously I'm unable to test the thing the other way round because I do not have true IDE in my chipset.

 

[bagodonuts]

Boy I hated trying to make this work a few years ago. I just wanted to use the extra ports so I could run SATA blu-ray. If I recall, there were two big hurdles

1) The Mac itself works against you (at least true for my 08 MP), through the boot process, not sure if it is in EFI or some other boot loader, the Mac sets the ports to IDE mode if you are not booting to OS X. I assume Apple did this for compatibility.

The solution to this for me was to setup my Mac to triple boot OS X/Win/Linux and use modified Grub stage1/stage2 files to set the ports back to AHCI mode when booting Windows

2) Windows has a requirement to be the last partition on the disk so the sequence of events to setup the partitions for triple booting was not straightforward.

A quick search and it seems that people have taken the original concepts figured out by pipomolo42 on OnMac and figured out the sequencing which will make this less that the 24 hour nightmare it was for me to get working.

These two pages should help

a) Describes the grub method and a way to modify the mbr from within OS X which sounds simpler than using grub. Also points out that you don't technically need a full Linux install to make the grub method work, though I have found it handy to have Linux around from time to time
http://www.infinitemac.com/f74/how-to-boot-mac-pro-in-ahci-mode-t3159/

b) Clear instructions on the order of operations to get your mac setup to triple boot
http://wiki.onmac.net/index.php/Triple_Boot_via_BootCamp

 

[Infrared]

I've spent the afternoon and evening trying this out. Bottom line is that on my early-2008 Mac Pro the ODD ports do not appear to go live under any version of Windows (XP Pro, Vista, 2008, 7). XP and Vista were tried in 32-bit, and 2008 and 7 were tested in their 64-bit versions.

Mac Pro 2008, Windows 7 x64:



All six ports are there.

The problems people have written about here are caused by the
controller not being in AHCI mode at the appropriate time. If the
controller is not in AHCI mode, the ODD ports cannot be accessed.

I think it may help to describe a typical scenario. So here goes:


[1] You press the power-on button and hold down the OPTION key.

[2] The machine powers up, executes some EFI firmware instructions
and configures the ESB2 controller. At this point it may be in AHCI
or legacy IDE mode. I'm not sure which. I suspect it's AHCI mode.

[3] You select a Windows installation from the firmware OS chooser
and hit RETURN.

[4] The EFI firmware loads a Compatability Support Module (BIOS
emulator) and executes some firmware code that, amongst other
things, puts the controller into legacy IDE mode.

[5] The firmware reads the MBR (Master Boot Record) from the disk
and begins to execute the code contained within it.

[6] If the AHCI patch code is present in the MBR code, the controller
is switched back to AHCI mode.

[7] The MBR code passes control on to the Windows bootloader.


Notes:

The controller must be in AHCI mode before Windows boots if you
want AHCI enabled within Windows.

If your Windows drive is attached to an ODD point, and you can see
it at step [3], you will lose access to that drive during step [4]. So
you will never get a chance to run the MBR code and any AHCI patch
contained in it.

If you boot from a Windows installer disc (CD or DVD), the controller
likely ends up in IDE mode. When the installer runs any drives attached
to the ODD port are likely inaccessible. So you can't install to them.

To avoid that you might patch the CD or DVD to enable AHCI. Or you might
run the installer directly from a hard driver instead. You can do this with
Windows 7 but make sure that the MBR patch is applied to the MBR used to
load the Windows 7 installer.

Sigh. Long post

I think the above is correct. If it isn't, please let me know. I'm always
happy to be proved wrong if I learn something in the process.

Thanks.

 

[gugucom]

I'm glad Bagodonuts and Infrared could confirm that AHCI also works on the 2008 model. I noticed that both users seem to work without an IDE ODD drive. Bagodonuts wrote that he installed a Blu-Ray SATA and Infrared showed two SATA HDDs attached to his ports 0 and 1.

So my theory that you must eliminate the IDE drive could still be right.

 

[BHamilton]

I'm glad Bagodonuts and Infrared could confirm that AHCI also works on the 2008 model. I noticed that both users seem to work without an IDE ODD drive. Bagodonuts wrote that he installed a Blu-Ray SATA and Infrared showed two SATA HDDs attached to his ports 0 and 1.

So my theory that you must eliminate the IDE drive could still be right.

Dang, I never removed the optical drive during any tests. Pity.

I plugged in the mini-sas to sata fan cable and now have my 8 drives. The 4 drives off the board work beautifully in AHCI (per the OP's tutorial) and boot like they should. No use for those bloody ODD ports now.

 

[nanofrog]

And an OS X drive boots from the ODD-SATA port?

Yes. Confirmed a few times actually, so it's not a fluke/glitch,...

It sounds as if something is different on the MP3,1, but I have no clue what it is.

It's in the firmware, but I don't know exactly what/why is occuring with the IDE-SATA interaction (if it's a code error, or a hardware difference in that particular chipset). I've not gone back and compared the 5000 chipset to the 5400 chipset (and the southbridges), to see if there's a difference, forcing a change. So I'm not sure which.

Perhaps the mixed IDE/SATA booting causes a problem. It sounds strange but did he ever take out the IDE optical drive?

No, but a very interesting idea, and might just work. Nadav35 didn't have a SATA optical drive to test with, as he was trying to go in reverse (use the HDD tests on the ODD to determine if the SATA optical disk would boot a windows install disk).

In my MP4,1 I have also EFI64 but it runs optical disks from a SATA drive. Obviously I'm unable to test the thing the other way round because I do not have true IDE in my chipset.

The idea of SATA only may be what occured to fix the issue, though the firmware on the '09 /= '08 models due to the different CPU & chipset microcode.

BTW, I had issues with SATA optical with an i7 system (LGA1366 board) when the ports were set to AHCI. It wouldn't boot the Windows install disk. So I had to set it back to Legacy to get the OS disk to load, and manually add AHCI to the windows install later.

I don't know if this has changed via the optical drive firmware (there's since been updates), and I've not tried to repeat the process to find out.

Assuming it's still the same, that might explain the reason the '09 still uses Legacy on the ODD SATA ports.

I'm glad Bagodonuts and Infrared could confirm that AHCI also works on the 2008 model. I noticed that both users seem to work without an IDE ODD drive. Bagodonuts wrote that he installed a Blu-Ray SATA and Infrared showed two SATA HDDs attached to his ports 0 and 1.

So my theory that you must eliminate the IDE drive could still be right.

I think it definitely has merit.

Though Nadav35 made a post "]here, indicating there will be a firmware update to the '08 models as part of Boot Camp 3.1 to fix it (citing an Apple Engineer as the source of the information). Assuming he was given accurate information, those that have forsaken their IDE ports may be able to regain it's use in order to recover the ODD_SATA port used for the existing optical drive. Might mean something to a few users tight on available ports.

 

[gugucom]

Though Nadav35 made a post "]here, indicating there will be a firmware update to the '08 models as part of Boot Camp 3.1 to fix it (citing an Apple Engineer as the source of the information). Assuming he was given accurate information, those that have forsaken their IDE ports may be able to regain it's use in order to recover the ODD_SATA port used for the existing optical drive. Might mean something to a few users tight on available ports.

Irrespective of firmware updates it would be good to know how things work under the present firmware.

 

[BHamilton]

When mentioning SATA 'optical' drives for testing, are you speaking of BluRay or simply conventional DVD drives? I've tested with my Pioneer DVD drive (SATA connection) and it is unresponsive on the ODD ports.

 

[nanofrog]

Irrespective of firmware updates it would be good to know how things work under the present firmware.

With the existing firmware, the ODD_SATA ports WILL NOT BOOT Windows HDD's. This included removing the PATA/IDE drives.

No testing was done with SATA optical drives on these ports, so I didn't confirm that a Windows Install disk would boot or not. PATA/IDE drives only on hand during testing.

OS X HDD's will boot.

 

[gugucom]

When mentioning SATA 'optical' drives for testing, are you speaking of BluRay or simply conventional DVD drives? I've tested with my Pioneer DVD drive (SATA connection) and it is unresponsive on the ODD ports.

I'm sure we had several users tell us that they booted optical disks on the MP3,1 with SATA ODDs. But that may also be subject to certain restrictions. Perhaps you have to remove all IDE based drives and have AHCI activated from a HDD in order to boot Windows. I cannot imagine that there is a difference between DVD and Blu-Ray drives that leads to the different results.

 

[nanofrog]

I'm sure we had several users tell us that they booted optical disks on the MP3,1 with SATA ODDs. But that may also be subject to certain restrictions. Perhaps you have to remove all IDE based drives and have AHCI activated from a HDD in order to boot Windows. I cannot imagine that there is a difference between DVD and Blu-Ray drives that leads to the different results.

An OS X HDD will boot off the '08's ODD ports (IDE drives installed or not), and it seems reasonable that a SATA optical drive would boot the OS X media as well (not tested, as there wasn't a SATA optical drive on hand).

The Windows side is the issue. Even with the IDE drives removed, a Windows HDD drive didn't boot (left as legacy or set in AHCI mode in the HDD bay first, then moved to test booting on the ODD port).

Any further details as to what worked (or didn't) would really help.

 

[gugucom]

Even with the IDE drives removed, a Windows HDD drive didn't boot (left as legacy or set in AHCI mode in the HDD bay first, then moved to test booting on the ODD port).

I would be interested to know how the Windows HDDs were partitioned for these tests. Were they all done in MBR partition table from a Windows install disk or did you use the GUID partition table via the Bootcamp utility?

BTW, Nadav35 now claims in another thread https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/8779929/ that he was able to boot into Windows from the ODD SATA ports.

 

[nanofrog]

I would be interested to know how the Windows HDDs were partitioned for these tests. Were they all done in MBR partition table from a Windows install disk or did you use the GUID partition table via the Bootcamp utility?

Both an MBR and BC partition table installs were attempted. Neither functioned on the ODD_SATA ports in an '08. Not even if it was created in one of the HDD bays, AHCI activated, then moved. Windows just wouldn't boot.

If a disk was left on the HDD bays (primary 4 ports on the logic board), it worked in either MBR or GUID partition systems (native Windows or BC partitioning done).

We also determined an OS X install would boot off the ODD_SATA ports (installed in the HDD bay, then moved to the ODD port). No attempts were made with Linux, for those interested.

BTW, Nadav35 now claims in another thread https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/8779929/ that he was able to boot into Windows from the ODD SATA ports.

We'll have to see what he's referring to, as it didn't work when I was helping, and IIRC, was off the phone with him later than the post time. Something's not making sense to me here.

Ultimately, what he seems to want to do, is install a BluRay burner for archival purposes. He can go with either a SATA unit and use a SATA->PATA converter, and attach it to the IDE cable. It would allow it to boot a Windows install disk. Or the drive could be attached to an ODD_SATA port, and worst case, the Windows install disk would have to be placed in the IDE Superdrive in order to boot.

He has options for what he's actually trying to do. No HDD Windows drive is needed on an ODD port, as there's HDD bays available.