EP43-UD3L won't boot from CD with AHCI enabled

[Blackbat]

I've just put together a PC based around an EP43-UD3L motherboard. The HDs are SATA, as is the BD-ROM. I have found out that I cannot get the PC to boot from optical disk (W7 install) when AHCI is enabled in the BIOS. The message to "push any button to boot from CD/DVD" doesn't appear. If I disable AHCI in the BIOS then the boot DVD is detected and I can install Windows 7.

Is this a known problem, or am I doing something wrong?

TIA.

[flyfisher]

Re: EP43-UD3L won't boot from CD with AHCI enabled

Are the HDs and the BD-ROM drive detected by the Intel AHCI ROM? Do you know what version the AHCI ROM is? The latest is 1.20e. Win7 should load AHCI drivers without you doing anything.

[Blackbat]

Re: EP43-UD3L won't boot from CD with AHCI enabled

I've tried putting the BD-ROM on SATA channels 4/5 to no avail. What's more, the device disappears when the PC goes into S3 sleep and then resumes (a problem I still suffer on my EP45-DS4 and have never got to the bottom off -it's infuriating!)

[Blackbat]

Re: EP43-UD3L won't boot from CD with AHCI enabled

Are the HDs and the BD-ROM drive detected by the Intel AHCI ROM? Do you know what version the AHCI ROM is? The latest is 1.20e. Win7 should load AHCI drivers without you doing anything.

When I enable AHCI in the BIOS it spends some time trying to detect the BD-ROM drive, but does eventually. How do I tell what version the AHCI-ROM is?

It doesn't get as far as W7 loading AHCI drivers. If I have AHCI enabled in the BIOS then I can't get it to detect there's a DVD in the drive to boot from. I have to enable IDE rather than AHCI in order to be able to boot from DVD at all.

[flyfisher]

Re: EP43-UD3L won't boot from CD with AHCI enabled

The AHCI BIOS screen will have the version at the top. You can hit the pause key to see what it is if needed. It will say "Serial ATA AHCI BIOS, Version iSrc x.xx".

[Blackbat]

Re: EP43-UD3L won't boot from CD with AHCI enabled

Sorry - can't see the AHCI BIOS screen at all during POST, unlike on my EP45-DS4 which clearly shows the version. Thanks for the help but I've decided to stick with the IDE setting having read that I'll see no performance benefit through AHCI.

I've sorted the disappearing BD-ROM problem by installing the Intel series 4 chipset drivers over the default W7 ones.

[Psycho101]

Re: EP43-UD3L won't boot from CD with AHCI enabled

Unless you are wanting to hot swap drives without powering off, have a SSD that will benefit from NCQ or run a multi user database server using a normal HDD, AHCI will unfortunately, provide no performance increase.

If you were waiting a while for the BDROM to be detected then my guess is you have AHCI ROM version 1.07. The latest is 1.20E and is much faster.

Note that it is common for some optical drives to have issues when running in AHCI mode, something that is either resolved at a later date by the drive manufacturer releasing updated firmware or it's never fixed at all.

[Chike]

Re: EP43-UD3L won't boot from CD with AHCI enabled

AHCI BIOS does show for me when enabled, 1.20E with F5 BIOS, however I recently had to reinstall Windows and made another ATTO run this time on the main HD and it appears that AHCI performance are actually worse than IDE, unlike the secondary HD where it shows some minor improvement.