Windows 10: Attn. SSD owners - Enabling AHCI mode AFTER Windows 10 installation.

I just registered to say that after entering the first command and restarting the computer, it won't turn on anymore. After it posts, I get no display and basically, nothing works. I've tried switching the sides of the battery, replacing the RAM and a bunch of other stuff.
Do NOT follow this if you don't want to risk screwing your PC up.
If anyone had the same problem as me and found a solution, please contact me.

 

It works exactly as you have assumed. I have done it in Windows 7 and recently in Windows 10 when I played with a raid set up and then switched back to a single SSD. Obviously I had to change my bios setting before rebooting into the single SSD mode.

 

I registered to express my eternal gratitude towards you, OP!
I salute you!
You are my GOD.
I was very sceptical because of this somewhat old motherboard and having a IDE optical drive and having the SSD in the last SATA port (lol) but I decided to go with it.
It worked flawlessly and here's the benchmark difference I got (red numbers were with IDE).

 

My response is aimed at AMD users - Like many others, I tried the fix from Toobad, and like a handful, it did not work for me. The BSOD was obvious, and changing back to IDE would let it work again. But with an SSD, I don't want native IDE, so...

Far be it for me to say that my solution will work for everyone, but if you are like me and you find this thread, try the following before giving up entirely:

Go into your device manager and change your AMD IDE driver to AMD SATA Driver. You shouldn't need any third party downloads or even a download from AMD, as what I tried was a brand new install. Just keep picking the last option to enable searching for a driver on the system (Browse My Computer for driver Software > Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer > UNcheck show compatible hardware > Ignore the warning > Pick AMD, then AMD SATA Controller > Yes to the warning > Reboot. [Optionally, if you have it, scroll down below AMD in the manufacturer list and pick the only Standard SATA AHCI Controller driver and continue as before])
Reboot and let the system come back into Windows 10 first before continuing. If it doesn't work... try the other driver, if needed
Reboot once more and go into your BIOS and enable AHCI mode as you may have tried already, but with the following additions (where equipped, I realize some motherboards may not have these available or word them differently):

Enable your XHCI Hand Off option
Enable your EHCI Hand Off option
Change your boot mode selection to UEFI and Legacy (some boards may not have this, just pick between the two if you need to troubleshoot)
Change your Storage Boot Control to Legacy First

Reboot.

I was ready to give up and reinstall all over again but tried this out and was surprised to see that it had worked. Will it fix everyone? No, but it's better than giving up... Hope it helps.

My motherboard is a Gigabyte 990FXA-UD5 (AMD 990FX Chipset)

 

Brilliant. These instructions worked perfectly for me after I had cloned my old HDD onto a SSD in IDE mode. Now running AHCI and loving it.

I did have to look up a couple of things to accomplish the switch. One was the elementary matter of finding the CMD icon to run it as administrator (it is in the Windows System folder in the apps). The other was decoding something unique to my old Gigabyte motherboard. In BIOS there were several lines for setting drive types: Onchip SATA type, OnBoard SATA/IDE Ctrl Mode and OnChip SATA Port4/5 Type. Fortunately, a post by TwoCables at Configure SSD as AHCI instead of IDE? clearly explained that only the first setting (for ports 0,1,2,3) is to be set to ACHI. The OnBoard settings are for Gigabytes proprietary (and not very good) ports 5 and 6. I disabled them. The OnChipt SATA Port4/5 is to be set to "As SATA type." This is where I plug in my DVD drive.

 

CMD and CMD as Administrator is on right click menu on Start button.
On Gigabyte MBs, ports 4 and 5 can be left in IDE mode for CD/DVD or HDD drives that don't like working in AHCI mode. The other two SATA ports (Grey/white) are on different SATA controllers (jMicron, SATA2/SATA 300).
For boot SSD it's best to connect to SATA_0 port. It will be first on the list and default for BOOTing.
If you want to check performance: Download AS SSD Benchmark - MajorGeeks is most accurate benchmark for SSDs.

 

Yes! I looked everywhere for how to switch to AHCI on my gigabyte motherboard. For awhile I thought it was just too old. This works, but I went another route because I'm not the smartest in this field. In my Gigabyte Bios, I set on board to AHCI and As SATA type, then disabled on chip because I didnt have any GSATA plugged in. I also set PCI to PEG and my graphics card flies. After that, I couldn't get it to load because it kept saying inaccessible drive for operating system. I let it restart for me and let it try to boot again. The second time it came up and asked if I wanted to view startup options. I booted the computer up in safe mode with networking, then restarted one more time and it worked. I also set storahci to 3, but I'm not sure if this fixed or broke anything... That said, yes this works, and also the people talking about mscahci or something in the regedit, I couldn't find msachi on my computer. I did have, however, storahci and so I messed with that. Good luck everyone!

 

Thank you Toobad, you have helped me big time!

 

Thanks Toobad. Your fix worked flawlessly

 

followed the instruction and my SSD was already running in AHCI mode.
ran the benchmark test as mentioned by CountMike and I got these result.

 

For those who are reluctant to use the bcedit command: start/power/ and then pressing shift and clicking restart will also enable a one time launch of win 10 in safe mode. You will be presented a tile interface, safe mode is under troubleshoot/startup settings en then after the boot choose the number of safe mode. (Next boot after safe is regular automatically. )
I replaced my western digital 1TB disk by a Samsung 750GB SSD. Though successful, windows insisted to name/describe the Samsung as the original WD rotating drive. Booting into safe mode automatically adjusted the disk name/description/attributes/driver, I presume.

 

Registered just to write this post. Thanks a bunch for this.

I have a Dell Latitude E7440 running Windows 10 Enterprise on a 1 TB SSD 850 EVO
I wasn't paying attention when I installed Windows 10 and the BIOS was set to RAID mode, even though I'm not doing any RAID. I'm going to install a Samsung 500 GB 840 EVO as a second drive to dual boot OSX Mavericks. OSX doesn't work in RAID mode, it wants to be in AHCI mode.

Additionally my Win 10 partition is using BitLocker, so I was a bit hesitant that this would work.
A few commands and reboots later and I'm running Win 10 in AHCI mode.

Now on to dual-booting OSX and Win10!! Thanks again!

 

This fix worked perfectly for me the first try!

 

I have the same computer with a 500gb 850 EVO. I'm new to this, why is ACHI better than RAID (controller currently configured to RAID in Device Mgr).

Thanks,

Rick

 

Hello!
Thanks for your post.
However I tried this on my Dell XPS 13, but it did not work out as expected.
I followed the steps and now I can start Windows 10, but it starts only every third restart.
- First restart is black screen (with Dell logo)
- The next restart is an error message: File: \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD Info: The Boot Configuration Data is missing or contains errors.
- The third time Windows decides to start
Any ideas on this?