Windows 10: Windows 10 Recovery Boot Loop after switching from AHCI to IDE!

So, for some time I had dual boot with Windows 7 and Windows 10 installed.
Recently I changed my motherboard, and it all seemed fine for some time.
Windows 10 worked just fine.

Then one day, I decided to go back to Windows 7 to do some stuff I couldn't on the new OS.
It was stuck in a boot loop.

The fix for that was to switch from AHCI to IDE SATA option in UEFI Bios (ASUS).

It did fix Windows 7, and it worked flawlessly. Up until the point... where my Windows 10 couldn't boot up at all.

So what happens now, is windows 10 is stuck in a recovery menu, creating that error log file.

What seems to be strange is the way boot behaves.
My C: drive is set to Windows 10. Yet when I list all the partitions it shows Windows 10 as letter D:.


And even more interesting, that error log goes to letter I:

When checking that partition it shows it as hidden.

Tried the method with registry... where you would backup and replace the config files.

Really in need of help.

Also when switching back from IDE to AHCI, nothing happens. Basically says that none drives have Windows installed.


List of drives shown from Windows 7:





List of drives shown from Windows 10 (When it was still working):





:)

 

AHCI vs regular Native IDE


If you want to change IDE to AHCI in windows 10, without a clean install, do the following steps:

• Open Command Prompt (Admin)
• type: bcdedit /set {current} safeboot minimal
• Restart PC and go into you BIOS -> Set IDE to AHCI
• Windows 10 will start if Safe Mode
• Open Command Prompt (Admin)
• type: bcdedit /deletevalue {current} safeboot
• Restart and Windows 10 should load with AHCI enabled now

Until now, I had a 100% succes rate with this, but in the case Windows 10 wouldn't start, go back into your BIOS and set AHCI to IDE.

 

IDE vs AHCI

Hot-switching IDE to AHCI (with OS installed) enables NCQ on HDDs that support it. So I'm sure TRIM gets enabled. When you switch from IDE to AHCI, Windows redetects the hard-drive (or in this case, the SSD) and controller it's installed on (despite booting from the same drive).

 

Unable to switch motherboard from IDE to AHCI on Windows 10

I think you might have to reformat the drive after doing that. You might have to make a full disk image using Windows 7 backup (in Windows 10) then switch to AHCI and then reimage the disk from your backup. You should be able to restore the image after booting
from Windows 10 install media. Normally the imaging and restore are quite fast, if you have some way to connect large enough storage for the backup image.

However, here is an article with steps that may work, if you follow the Windows 8 steps mentioned.

http://winaero.com/blog/switch-from-ide-to-achi-after-installing-windows-7-or-windows-8/

EDIT: After checking this article, restoring an image with the wrong registry settings for AHCI might be useless. So try the article method first. It sounds like Windows is setup to work one way or the other, so you have to use Safe mode and edit registry
to fix things to handle the change.