The Acer Guy

You want comments? We got comments:

1. George Laz wrote, on January 18th, 2009:

   

   Thank you very much.
   It works!!!!
   I had a problem on writing the reg file but now its everything OK.!!

2. lara wrote, on April 15th, 2009:

   

   Hi
   i followed your instruction but my windows registry editor says that only binary numbers can be imported to the registry.
   is there a code for my windows registry?
   by the way my win reg ver. is 5.1

3. Sparkion wrote, on April 15th, 2009:

   

   Hi Lara,

   If you do it as follows, it should work:

   Open NOTEPAD in windows. Every windows version has it.
   Copy the text which is typed in italic in notepad EXACTLY as I put it above. In notebook, save it as “ahci.reg” (without the quotes), to ur desktop.

   If you then open it, windows will ask you to add it to the registry. and of course the answer is yes.

   g’luck

4. Humberto wrote, on April 27th, 2009:

   

   In step 4 …. wich AHCI drivers should we choose (there’s a big list of drivers ther)?
   Many thanks. Best regards.

5. Sparkion wrote, on April 27th, 2009:

   

   Hello Humberto,

   You need to unzip driver nr 2. to a location of your choosing. It’s the driver which u downloaded in step 1. U need to have it unzipped.

   And at step nr.4 u select the driver from that location (it’s an *.inf file)
   If you do it as described above, you should get the right driver selected!

   Let me know if it didn’t work out. In that case maybe u can post some screenshots!

   g’luck

6. Enigma wrote, on June 4th, 2009:

   

   thank you very much for this blog, I have a Toshiba A300-1NO and it’s working. I did everything as YOU mentioned. yahoooo

   greetz from ROMANIA

7. Sparkion wrote, on June 5th, 2009:

   

   Hi Enigma, good to hear it’s working! Çe façi? Bine? Good!

   Now don’t start talking romanian back to me. That s pretty much all i know. Multumesc.

   -Spark

8. Fey wrote, on July 13th, 2009:

   

   My laptop is aspire 2930 T6400. How to enable ahci mode for this model?

9. Morris Lee wrote, on July 14th, 2009:

   

   @Fey,

   I don’t think enabling AHCI will make much of a difference to Windows XP systems, as the installation disk is not capable of repairing the AHCI disks. but you should check if you got such option in the BIOS, it is accessible by pressing F2 when you see the big acer logo on startup.

   Good luck!

10. Sparkion wrote, on July 14th, 2009:

    

    @Morris

    Well no, it doesn’t have to make that much difference. But what has repairing an AHCI disk to do with it.
    If something might go worng with your XP installation, just reinstall the system. especially with XP and the nowadays laptops.. It can be done in an hour.

    As for Fey and other users. If they want to use their XP system in AHCI mode, let them..

    @Fey, if it is as Morris said: press F2 during startup to get into the bios, and enable AHCI mode.

    If your question is what AHCI-sata controller to use… Check on (internet or in your laptop documentation) what controller is is used by your model. Then select that model at the INTEL-site and download the file/driver for that controller. Don’t worry.. in most cases it will still be the same zip-rar-file as i described in the tutorial.

    Let us know on this site, if you succeeded.

    greetz -Sparkion

11. Wessel wrote, on July 31st, 2009:

    

    Hey man, Thanx for this!
    It worked just like you said!
    U r a genius!!!

12. Sparkion wrote, on July 31st, 2009:

    

    Glad it worked, Wessel. are you dutch?

13. James wrote, on August 8th, 2009:

    

    Thanks! This also worked on my Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P with XP Professional.

14. Piero wrote, on August 27th, 2009:

    

    To The ACER GUY:

    YOU ARE THE SHIT! Thank You!!!! You know what you do… I’ve been trying to do the AHCI change after installing XP for almost 3 days looking for an answer and everyone else leads to the wrong one or doesn’t explain well. I erased the factory image because I wanted to have the extra 10GB of space. But, if you just install the drivers from the the Acer website the program won’t do it. I was afraid that your solution would not work too but It DID! and I’m glad. Now I’m running XP custom install with AHCI ON, I know is better performance than IDE and consumes less battery. Thanks so much from El Salvador.!!!!

15. Piero wrote, on August 27th, 2009:

    

    by the way I did this on an ACER ASPIRE ONE D150 so if anyone else out there wants to try this solution, feel confident that it works.

16. Sparkion wrote, on August 27th, 2009:

    

    Buenos diaz Piero,

    Glad to know I’m The Shit!
    Nice to hear it worked! Bueno!

17. Piero wrote, on August 28th, 2009:

    

    Your welcome! Thanks for Supporting ACER Customers. Keep up the good work.

18. Felix wrote, on September 1st, 2009:

    

    Hi,

    Thank you, your help was valueable. I was succeded to make this on an Aspire One 531.
    2 remarks:
    1.
    As I manually installed the driver (Nr4) I got a list of intel ahci chipsets to choose. I had to check in the device manager which one I have.
    2.
    When I was saving the registry part from the webpage, it complained to contain unicode symbols. I realized, that the ” character wasn’t standard so I’ve changed it.

    Felix

19. Sparkion wrote, on September 1st, 2009:

    

    Hi Felix,

    to your 1st comment: of course u have to choose the right chipset. This i actually said in the instructions.
    to your 2nd comment: Of course a quote, a ” symbol, is a quote. So of course what is to be pasted is what is between the quote. Hence the function of a quote.

20. Nebojša wrote, on September 3rd, 2009:

    

    Dear Sparkion,

    I have problem: I done everything exactly You said but …

    \2nd) Open file NR. 2. and extract the whole folder to wherever you like. \
    I’ve opened this file but it is .exe file and there is no folder, did I miss something? When I start this file it prompt: \Insert floppy to write\.
    When I extract it from f6flpy32.zip it extracted to f6flpy32.exe!?!?
    I can not continue further without clearing this step, please help!

21. Sparkion wrote, on September 3rd, 2009:

    

    @ Nebojša

    Hi Nebojša, of course i’m not entirely sure whihc file u downloaded at step 2. But if it is relly an .exe (executable file) then it is possible that it is a self-extracting file. click on the .exe file and check if it is. If so, then you still can put those files in any folder you choose, or in a new folder, as long as you remember wher you put it.

    Let me know if this .exe is a self-extracting file. And if it worked. If not i’ll look into it.

    Good luck!

22. Nebojša wrote, on September 3rd, 2009:

    

    As I said, I’ve opened this file but it is .exe file and there is no folder. It just prompts: “Insert floppy to write”. Obviously, it is some kind of utility from Intel for making floppy. It has same name as Your suggested file.
    Can You give me the link for right one f6flpy32.rar (or zip)?
    I searched through Google and I found lot of them and I downloaded 5/6 of them, and the latest version of iastor.sys is July 12.2007 and version is 7.6.0.1011, is this OK?
    I found it on rapidshare.

23. Nebojša wrote, on September 5th, 2009:

    

    Dear Sparkion,
    where are You, can we continue our discussion?

24. Nebojša wrote, on September 5th, 2009:

    

    I tried all as You said but no success … any idea?

25. Nebojša wrote, on September 5th, 2009:

    

    !! EUREKA !!
    I succeed … finally … after 3 days …
    Here is the problem: You said: “Under IDE ATA/ATAPI-Controllers, right-click the first INTEL(R) Controller, and update the driver.”

    But, under this controller I have 2 INTEL controllers with SAME DESCRIPTION!!!
    I select first and do everything as You said and didn’t succeed because … I had to select first and to update driver, and after that have to select second controller and to update … and after this it succeed. It is not enought to select and update first sata controller, it has to be for ALL SATAs which are visible under this device!!!!

    Maybe this was the reason why other people from this forum didn’t success …

26. Sparkion wrote, on September 6th, 2009:

    

    Well done Nebosja! Glad you succeeded.

    To clarify: Where i say: Look for the first INtel driver with the description SATA controller. I didn’t of course mean: Update only the first driver..
    What it says is: LOOK for the first INTEL Driver in the list with description ‘SATA controller’ . So, not other controllers. But of course if there are more INTEL SATA CONTROLLER with the same description, of course you need to update them all.

    It’s a matter of speech.. NOT with the emphasis on “FIRST sata controller in the list” but… “first SATA controller in the list”. (words in capital letters are the emphasis, that is how I meant it.)
    So of course you have to interprete the english text right.

    Furthermore, not everybody has twice the same SATA CONTROLLER in the list. So, IF that is the case, of course u need to update/replace all of them, otherwise the process will never succeed of course!
    Of course you can tell by the number of al the people that wére succesful.

    As with everything in life: everything succeeds or fails because of interpretation.
    (and attitude and perserverance )
    Which u showed to have, Nebojša

    Glad so many people could be helped out by this manual so far!

    Sparkion

27. Nebojša wrote, on September 7th, 2009:

    

    Some impressions after this intervention:
    1. faster boot
    2. faster shut-down
    3. faster copy from USB flash to HDD and vice-versa
    4. battery life: I didn’t notice anything special … maybe it prolonged battery life …

28. erkme73 wrote, on September 25th, 2009:

    

    I’m having a hard time finding the files you specified… were there links, that aren’t there anymore, or am I just missing something obvious?

29. Sparkion wrote, on September 25th, 2009:

    

    Hi erkme73

    If the links don’t work, try to use the search function on the intel site. For example, the name of your AHCI-chipset version.

    Good luck, let me know if it worked out for you.

30. Nebojša wrote, on September 27th, 2009:

    

    to erkme73:
    You can try on http://www.driverguide.com, membership is FREE, and they have huge base of drivers/firmwares

31. CP wrote, on October 16th, 2009:

    

    Hello,

    I just wanted to say thanks for the thorough guide It worked fine on an ACER Aspire One 531 machine (Atom N280 CPU, 1GB DDR, etc.), exactly as expected!

    Great tutorial!

32. Pinth wrote, on October 31st, 2009:

    

    Thank you very much. I did every thing you stated here to a Acer Aspire 4636Z. no issues. works fine.

33. lung wrote, on October 31st, 2009:

    

    Hi,
    Would this work on Windows 2003?
    Ta

34. marpaulson83 wrote, on November 2nd, 2009:

    

    Hi,

    @Sparkion : thanks for the great guide. I am having some issues with the installation though.
    1: I’m unsure as of how to EXACTLY determine what AHCI chipset I am using.. Please advice. I have seen Device Manager being mentioned, but can’t find it there.

    2: I’ve seen people mention multiple Intel SATA Controllers, and in my device manager this is listed under IDE ATA/ATAPI:
    Intel(R) ICH8M 3 port SERIAL ATA 2828
    Intel(R) ICH8M Ultra ATA 2850

    (plus primary and secondary IDE channels.)
    Does this mean I need to update driver on both the SATA and Ultra ATA controller?!

    I’ve downloaded IATA88CD.exe and the corresponding 32bit floppy thing.

    3: In the registry document, am I supposed to remove the ” quotation marks? Or copy and paste AS IS, as you wrote above. I’ve got the error UNICODE message that was mentioned earlier.

    The first time I followed your guide, step by step, as soon as I changed from IDE to AHCI and rebooted I got a blue screen error message and the only way to recover was to revert to IDE and boot from last known working configuration..

    Please help, anyone Thanks!

35. Sparkion wrote, on November 2nd, 2009:

    

    @ Cp and @ Pinth: You re very welcome, glad it worked

    @ Lung:

    I’m not sure it would. I did not test it with windows 2003. Since some of the system components in windows 2003 are fundamentally different then in windows XP, I wouldn’t be surprised if it did not work.

    If however you could find the same registry keys in W 2003, it might work.

    @ marpaulson83:

    If you don’t see everything in device manager, check in the menu: ‘ show hidden devices’ and look again.

    Your SATA chipset is ICH8M 3 port SERIAL ATA 2828.

    Search on the intel site for the serial ata drivers which support ICH8M!!

    It should work with those.

    I cannot explain your blue screen right away. But if u have the right dirvers and you work in the right order, as described it will work

    Of course don’t use the quotation marks.
    And make sure you paste ,excactly the text that is in italic font, in your registry file.

    Try again and let me know.
    It should work. Good luck

36. marpaulson83 wrote, on November 2nd, 2009:

    

    @Sparkion:
    I got it to work now, thanks though. I don’t know what did it, but I got serial ATA drivers that support ICH8M, removed the quotation marks and installed drivers only for the first Intel device.

    Thanks!

37. Pinth wrote, on November 3rd, 2009:

    

    If you are confused in selecting the driver
    1. right clik on My Computer icon select proporties and clik hardware then device managers
    2.note down the IDE ATA/ATAPI – controller type and the numbers stated there,
    3. then select the corrsponding AHCI driver.

    Pleae note – i am not an expert. but this is how i selected the AHCI driver. it worked for me. (ACER aspire 4736z)

38. @njo wrote, on November 12th, 2009:

    

    Hi Sparkion,

    I got Acer Aspire 2930 and just wanna ask if the same method will work with it?

    It got ICH9M and after looking at Intel site, I got the following Intel Matrix Storage Manager:
    – iata87enu.exe
    – IATA88ENU.exe
    – IATA89ENU.exe
    – STOR_allOS_8[1].6.0.1007_PV.exe
    – STOR_allOS_8[1].7.0.1007_PV.exe
    (Confused: which one/s will I use?)

    And since I’m sure be needing that “f6flpy32″ zip/rarfile or something like that, how can i get one from Intel that’s compatible with my laptop?

    I’m really not that techy when it comes to these things but I’m sure be working my butt out here (just kidding… ) to make this work for me…

    I’m tired of using vista, it sucks…!!!

    H E L P …!!!

    @njo

39. TomekSK wrote, on November 27th, 2009:

    

    It will work i just did it on my Aspire 5935G wit the iATA89ENU.exe

40. Nishanth wrote, on February 8th, 2010:

    

    Can i do it on my Acer 4736Z laptop. If I change to IDE and install the OS, then if I dont change it again to AHCI, will there be any problem regarding the performance or any other issues??

41. Sparkion wrote, on February 8th, 2010:

    

    @anjo:

    Apologies for the late reply. let me know if it worked out allready for you. If not, reply to this again on the forum.

    @Nishant:

    If your laptop model supports AHCI, yes it will work.

42. Nishanth wrote, on February 9th, 2010:

    

    Actually, I dont know this all procedure when i bought it. I tried to install xp, but when I faced the issue, I took it to the hardware techie and he installed it.

    Now, it is in AHCI mode.

    Then, 2 months past and I wanted to format it since it is affected with virus and spyware. Now, again I face the same issue. I came to know after browsing the net about the actual problem.

    I have one doubt—- now it is in AHCI mode. I thought he too changed to IDE and done it.
    After installing OS, will it be automatically changed to AHCI mode.

43. Sparkion wrote, on February 9th, 2010:

    

    @Nishant:

    Be more clear please:
    Do you have windows XP installed allready on your laptop?

    If yes, check in your bios and your device manager if it is running the HDD in IDE-mode, or in AHCI.

44. Nishanth wrote, on February 9th, 2010:

    

    Ya, now xp is installed in it. I checked the BIOS, it is in AHCI mode now.

45. Nishanth wrote, on February 9th, 2010:

    

    Actually, it came with pre-installed DOS.

    — Then I tried to install XP on it.
    — I faced that error screen and I took it to the hardware center and he installed the OS, but as I dont know all this, I didnt observe whether he changed in the BIOS or not while he was installing OS at that time(i.e. 2 months back).

46. Sparkion wrote, on February 9th, 2010:

    

    It appears that your XP-laptop is running in AHCI-mode, but i doubt on such an old model you ll notice the difference in performance between IDE-mode or AHCI-mode.

    However, if you want to be sure u can sent a screenshot from the whole EXTENDED! tree of your device manager to me so i can check. Especially the screenshots of your isntalled controllers.

47. Nishanth wrote, on February 9th, 2010:

    

    Is that such an old model? Dont think otherwise, just wanted to know.

    I will definitely send it to you. Now, I am in office. I will put it tomorrow for sure.

    As you said, I used to suspect about its performance from the 1st time usage onwards itself and finally came to a decision that its normal for its configuration.(Dual core–2.1GHz and 3GB DDR2, 320GB HDD).

48. Morris Lee wrote, on February 10th, 2010:

    

    @Nishanth,

    Dual Core 2.1Ghz, how would DOS be preloaded??

    Note: Do not confuse the CMOS BIOS Setup utility with DOS, as they are 2 completely different things

    Morris Lee

49. Nishanth wrote, on February 10th, 2010:

    

    Hi sparkion,
    Will you please give me your mail id? I will mail you my device manager’s screenshots.

50. Sparkion wrote, on February 11th, 2010:

    

    Hi Nishanth,

    I doubt you have dos pre-installed on your laptop. I agree with Morris Lee, probably wiht first startup u had to install the automtically activated OEM-installation.

    I cannot give you my email trough this forum. I dont want to expose it. but if u know another way or u want ot give me yours i email you back personally and then u can send me your screenshots teh installed controllers in your device manager

    BUt again, if you say that in your bios AHCI is selected and not IDE, then it must be that your hard drive si working in AHCI mode.

51. Nishanth wrote, on February 11th, 2010:

    

    ok…I understand.

    I think I am sure, its operating in AHCI mode. But, let me confirm with you. Here is mail id— “nr1234nr@yahoo.in”.

    You just send me a test mail, I will attach them.

52. Gaby wrote, on February 12th, 2010:

    

    Hi… I need help!!! I’ve read all but down ide ata/atapi i dont have any ahci intel controler, but when i re install xp the machine was in this mode and i changed to ide so i can do the installation so i dont know what to do… i need to pass to ahci because computer is to slow and sound in not good… I have a aspire one d250-1151 kav60 1.13
    sorry I hope you undestand me… I dont speak english but there is no info in spanish and I’m really tired of this machine…
    Help please

53. Morris Lee wrote, on February 12th, 2010:

    

    @Gaby,

    I doubt that switching to AHCI right now will help your case, “sound in not good”, if you mean that it makes noise when in operation, then it is most likely that it is the harddrive is dying hence the slow down and the noise.

    As a matter of fact, I am on IDE mode for my 7200RPM drive, I don’t see any difference when switched to AHCI mode.

    Morris Lee

54. Sparkion wrote, on February 12th, 2010:

    

    Gaby,

    I agree wit Morris Lee.

    For most users, ahci doesn’t improve speed that noticable. Only boot-up time maybe.
    And only for people with very huge harddrives.

    And it definitely will not solve your sound problems.

    So, Gaby, take our advice:

    Set your BIOS to IDE. And reinstall XP in the normal way.

    By the way, your english isn’t that bad

55. Marco wrote, on February 17th, 2010:

    

    Hi Sparkion;
    Thank you very much for your information.
    3 days trying to make this machine work, 3 or 4 XP reinstall and notihing, until I discover your blog.
    Very clear and specific.
    My machine is an Acer Aspire One D250, XP SP3, now running with AHCI.
    PS: I used the newest fw’s version from Intel website and followed your instructions.
    Regards;
    Marco

56. Marco wrote, on February 17th, 2010:

    

    Hi Sparkion;

    Thank you very much it worked, first time!
    Boot and reboot faster. Atom’s workload is much much lighter.
    Aspire One D250, XP SP3 Portuguese-Brazil.
    PS: newest fws from intel website.

    Regards;

    Marco

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