Help - Strange Win7 Install issue with SSD

petertr2000 · 14 Aug 2012 at 14:25

Hi,

Been googling this for a while now, but since this isn't a newbie issue, I'm struggling to find an answer.

Just put my new M4 SSD in my PC - its the only HDD installed (as I'm short of a sata cable I had to completed remove the other HDD!!)

1st off, went to BIOS and switched to AHCI mode. Oddly, noticed that my BIOS no longer detects the disk.
But stuck the Win7 DVD in, and booted. Found the drive no problem and installed.

Couple of reboots went fine, but now it won't boot. If I change to IDE mode, it works fine???

Any ideas?

petertr2000 · 14 Aug 2012 at 14:33

How odd.

Put the Win7 disk in to try a system repair (or reinstall if no luck). Couldn't fix it. So shut down, and restarted.

Lo and behold, worked fine. Rebooted, checked the BIOS, yet AHCI mode is enabled, and can't see any Sata devices. Buts its booting fine.

Now I come to think of it, the laptop I'm using to type this had the EXACT same issue when I installed an SSD in it. And I never got to the bottom of it.

(Original Win 7 64bit DVD if it makes any difference)

petertr2000 · 14 Aug 2012 at 14:35

And bang.

WEI rating has gone from 7.1 to 7.7 - so AHCI mode is certainly faster!

And I thought you couldn't flip between ICD/AHCI modes - odd???

Justintime · 14 Aug 2012 at 14:45

Generally, if you install in AHCI mode, then switching to IDE mode won't cause a boot fail, its when you install in IDE mode you have to do some reg tweaks to get AHCI going.

petertr2000 · 14 Aug 2012 at 14:53

Ah, knew you "can't" move to AHCI if you accidentally install in IDE, thought it went both ways.

Still, any idea why I got this problem on TWO totally different machines?

Justintime · 14 Aug 2012 at 14:55

What SSDs? Sandforce based by any chance? Also what firmware version are they running? Have you updated the BIOSes on the machines in question?

petertr2000 · 14 Aug 2012 at 15:06

Updated the BIOS a while ago, but no recently.

Its a Crucial M4 64Gb.

Justintime · 14 Aug 2012 at 15:44

I'd update the BIOS. Also turn off hot swap (or whatever it might be called in your BIOS) function, sometimes helps with that issue, usually for Sandforce only but its worth a shot.

petertr2000 · 14 Aug 2012 at 15:49

Hot swap? I don't recall seeing any settings for this. Just a note, I don't have any RAID setup.

Its working now. I'm just curious why its done this on a PC desktop AND on a netbook. Its odd.

Couldn't be because the Win7 Disk is a upgrade only disk could it? And so doesn't correctly set boot options as it expects them to already be setup? (I hacked reg to get it to work with a clean install)