IX48 GT3 and AHCI boot

[ChiefZeke]

Have an ABIT IX48 GT3 (BIOS 11) with Intel Core2 Quad9650 cpu and 8Gb of RAM.

Have multiboot installation: XP pro, XP Pro x64, Win7 32-bit, and Win7 64-bit.

Was successful in getting XP Pro and XP Pro x64 to boot with AHCI selected in the BIOS and appropriate drivers installed after XP Pro was installed. Followed the procedures outlined in: "How to enable AHCI on Intel ICH9 under XP - MSFN Forums" and "HOWTO enable AHCI mode after installing Windows - PC Perspective Forums".

Problem is that with AHCI selected in the BIOS there is no longer an option to boot from the CD/DVD drive when the system is started. This is a problem in that Win7 cannot be updated to AHCI compatibility after Win7 is installed - it must be installed with AHCI already invoked when the system is started so that Win7's install routine detects that AHCI has been selected in the BIOS and the appropriate drivers are then installed.

Also, I also found a procedure to slipstream the AHCI drivers; "Integration of Intel's SATA AHCI and RAID drivers" into the XP Pro source so that the user could install or repair install XP Pro with AHCI drivers except, again, no Boot from the CD or DVD option is available if the BIOS is set to AHCI.

Both hard drives are SATA devices as are my CD/DVD drive burners.

So my question is: is anyone aware of any kind of BIOS setting that will allow for AHCI and a bootable SATA CD/DVD drive? I did run across one posting elsewhere that said to use PATA CD/DVD drives to get around this problem but that is unacceptable in my case and really should not be a necessity.

And before anyone asks the obvious question; yes, the CD/DVD drives are there in Device Manager and Explorer once XP Pro is started.

Thanks for any help

[ChiefZeke]

Google is your friend.

After I posted the above question I searched Google and found the answer.

When AHCI is selected you must then go to First Boot Device and scroll down the list for the name/make/model of the CD/DVD drive you want to boot from. It seems AHCI modifies the list in First Boot Device to include more than a generic CD ROM drive - it lists the actual devices. Easy fix after all.