Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
onaSATAdrivewithouthavingtopresstheF6keytospecifyandloadadditionaldrivers.
However, if you choose AHCI or RAID/AHCI modes, the standard ATA drivers will not
work, and you will need AHCI/RAID drivers instead. So if you are installing Windows
on a system with a SATA host adapter set to AHCI or RAID mode and Windows does
not recognize the drive, you need to press the F6 key and install the AHCI/RAID drivers.
Windows XP and earlier only support loading these drivers from a floppy disk, where-
as Windows Vista and later support optical drives as well as USB drives (including flash
drives). Note that Windows Vista and later include AHCI/RAID drivers for many SATA
host adapters on the installation DVD; it is also possible to integrate these drivers into
Windows XP install discs. See www.driverpacks.net for mass storage (and other) driver-
packs that can easily be slipstreamed into Windows XP install discs, eliminating the need
to load them manually during the installation process.
Switching SATA modes in the BIOS setup after the OS is installed can cause problems
if a SATA drive is the boot drive, and you have not loaded the proper drivers in advance.
For example, if you switch modes on a system running Windows XP or Vista, on the next
boot you will most likely have an immediate blue screen error, as follows:
STOP: 0x0000007B (parameter1, parameter2, parameter3, parameter4)
INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE
In this case, changing the host adapter back to IDE mode should allow the system to boot
again.
Theharddiskpredelayfunctionistodelayaccessingdrivesthatareslowtospinup.Some
drives aren't ready when the system begins to look for them during boot time, causing the
system to display Fixed Disk Failure messages and fail to boot. Setting this delay allows
time for the drive to become ready before continuing the boot process. Of course, this
slows down the boot process, so if your drives don't need this delay, disable this function.
Advanced Floppy Configuration
The Floppy Configuration menu is for configuring the floppy drive and interface. Table
5.14 shows the options in a typical BIOS Setup.
Table 5.14 Advanced Floppy Configuration Menu
 
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