XP install on IDE then inject AMD AHCI

Old post rescued from my old site.

How to manually register the AMD AHCI drivers after XP install, as the drivers are not detected by the F6 "add driver" on installation.

I spent half a day to find this, so I thought I should make a post that maybe google can index and help others find it.

I had a Lenovo X100e notebook (I refuse to say netbook, it's huge), and gave up on the Win7 that came with it and installed XP.

This notebook have only an AMD AHCI SATA interface, but XP does not come with AHCI drivers. So when I installed, I had to set the SATA channel to IDE compatibility mode. No worries, I said, when it is installed I just install all the Lenovo drivers and reboot, set it to native AHCI mode, and done.

Buuuut... it can't be done that way. The drivers cannot be installed, they are just the .INF/.SYS/.CAT files. So here you go, TL;DR version. I recommend reading the posts on that forum if you are using a different model/make or using RAID, as there is some changes to be made in the IDs:

While still in IDE compatibility mode in XP:

reg add "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\ahcix86" /f
reg add "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\ahcix86Enum" /f
reg add "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\ahcix86" /v Type /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
reg add "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\ahcix86" /v Start /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f
reg add "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\ahcix86" /v Group /t REG_SZ /d "SCSI miniport" /f
reg add "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\ahcix86" /v ErrorControl /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
reg add "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\ahcix86" /v ImagePath /t REG_SZ /d "system32\drivers\ahcix86.sys" /f
reg add "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\ahcix86" /v tag /t REG_DWORD /d 4 /f
reg add "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\CriticalDeviceDatabase\PCI#VEN_1002&CC_0106" /v Service /t REG_SZ /d "ahcix86" /f
reg add "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\CriticalDeviceDatabase\PCI#VEN_1002&CC_0106" /v ClassGUID /t REG_SZ /d "{4D36E97B-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}" /f
  • Copy ahcix86.sys, ahcix86.inf and ahcix86.cat to c:\windows\inf
  • Copy ahcix86.sys to c:\windows\system32\drivers
  • Reboot and change IDE compatibility OFF (AHCI mode).
  • When "new hardware found" comes in, point to c:\windows\inf\ahcix86.inf
Enjoy!

Many thanks to the people that took the time to help some other guy in the forums and not much thanks to google that put this page so hard to find.

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