How to enable AHCI in HP pavilion dv6700t?

[schang105]

Hello,

I was wondering if there was any way to enable AHCI on my pavilion dv6700t.  The intel chipset is a much older model, P965 from 2008 but still works quite well. 

In the device manager, under the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers it says the ich8m-e/m sata ahci controller is enabled.  Is it safe to assume that AHCI is therefore already enabled? I have no way of doing so through the BIOS, which has limited config options. It's the PhoenixBIOS F.58.

I'm contemplating installing a SSD as my boot (and only drive) and I've read that AHCI is important for functions such as NCQ, etc.

Thanks for your wisdom!

Jason

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

Hi, Jason:

Yes, that is correct.

AHCI is enabled by default.

That is why everyone has trouble installing XP on those notebooks. AHCI drivers have to be loaded prior to installing XP at the F6 prompt or slipstreamed into a copy of the XP installation disk.

Now...you can do what you want, but I do not know of anyone on this forum who has successfully installed a SSD in any dv6000/dv9000 model series notebook.

If you know that is possible, please post back after you install a SSD, and let us know how you did it.

Paul

[schang105]

Thanks Paul - I appreciate the prompt reply! I will have my old HDD standing by if this fails, which seems likely, haha! 

But if all goes well, I will check back and update results. 

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

Here's wishing you luck, and I hope to read we have a success story.

Paul

[schang105]

WOO I GOT IT TO WORK!!!! I FEEL A SONG COMING ON!!! CUZ I'VE GOT A GOLDEN TICKET....

I'll post some basic specs and tips which will hopefully (may) help others who are frustrated with the dv6000 series. 

HP Pavilion dv6700t CTO edition (core 2 duo)

Windows 7 x64 Ultimate

Intel 82801HMB (ICH8) Chipset, P965 motherboard (Quanta), PhoenixBIOS F.58 

Intel ICH8M-E/M SATA AHCI Controller driver (enabled) ver. 10.1.0.1008

Crucial 2.5" M4 128 GB SSD, Firmware ver. something outdated (flash firmware to 0000F)

1. I went to windows seven forums and found an automatic tool to enable AHCI upon boot in the registry, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976 so I did that first (it automatically creates a restore point in case things goof up).  Download the latest SSD firmware on Crucial.com (0000F) and burn to boot CD.  Power down.  

2. Put in the SSD using the adapter and mounting brackets (which come with the PC, just take off from existing HDD) and put in the firmware boot CD, flash firmware to current version.  Power down the PC and take out the SSD, put the HDD back in and prepare for disk cloning.    

3. As others have mentioned before, you can't do a clean install of Win7 (you will get an error code 0x80300001), so you have to clone your existing drive over.  I did this with the cloning software and USB to SATA cable which came in the box, the software is EZ Gig IV.  It takes about 20 minutes to clone over your HDD.  Disconnect cables and take HDD out, put SSD back in.

4. Cross fingers, perform pagan rituals to facilitate good luck, and prepare to sing...

Other thoughts: I've read somewhere that this particular chipset (intel P965) doesn't support IDE natively (this may explain why a clean install of Win7 doesn't work as it cannot detect the SSD), and since this version of PhoenixBIOS is stripped down, there is no 'switching' between IDE and AHCI manually.  With that said, I'm not even sure if it's even necessary to do the first step using the Windows AHCI enabling tool - but at any rate it seemed to work out.  The tool (i believe) does a few things in the registry, it changes 'iaStor,' 'msahci', and 'iaStorV' to value '0' from whatever they were previously.  I would experiment but I'm afraid to goof up things in the registry any further than i have.  This particular chipset also cannot support RAID, so a lot of the intel matrix storage manager drivers wouldn't be applicable, beyond the AHCI controller driver listed above.     

Anyways, happy trails friends! 

[Paul_Tikkanen]

That is great news!!!

Thanks for sharing your success story!

Paul