Recently I received a notebook that once didn’t load Windows, USB stick (bootable) – at all.

The first thing was to enable booting. The problem occurred after reset of the BIOS. I assumed the CMOS battery has depleted. Generally, no big deal. Switch off UEFI boot option and enable legacy instead.

After booting, however a blue screen appeared. It was just a blink and reset, no memory dumping etc. I thought that if its not dumping the memory, there must be problem with hard drive. I think I saw part of BSOD message with 000007 witch meant hdd error. I entered BIOS back again and changed SATA operation mode from AHCI(auto) to IDE. After saving and rebooting – voilà!. Back on track again. Windows boots, USB boots fine.

BUT….

The laptop has SSD and it’s working in IDE mode. Long story short – many of new features of AHCI are disabled and ssd might get worn faster. For information regarding difference between IDE and AHCI please refer to: http://www.diffen.com/difference/AHCI_vs_IDE

Switching to AHCI again in a few, simple steps:

  1. Download and install latest SATA drivers for your laptop/desktop (probably it will a version of Intel Rapid Storage Technology drives). Refer to your computer/motherboard manufacturer
  2. Run the Registry Editor (regedit.exe) – Administrator privileges are necessary
  3. Navigate to Registry Key:
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Msahci
  4. Set the “Start” value to 0 (zero)
  5. Navigate to Registry Key:
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Pciide
  6.  Set the “Start” value to 0 (zero)
  7. Restart computer

After restarting the computer, Windows will install new drivers and will ask for restart to complete installation of new drivers.

That’s all,
Enjoy!

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