Clean install of Vista with AHCI on 1420

I did a search on AHCI here and it seems people had to load the drivers in order to reinstall/install Vista on their laptop. I did a clean install of Vista without loading any drivers. It installed fine and in Device Manager it has the Intel ICH8M SATA AHCI Controller. Does that mean it installed correctly? I always thought you had to load the drivers prior to installing Vista.

 

Does this mean Vista automatically loads ahci drivers during install?

 

Can anyone help?

 

Anyone? I don't want to install all my apps and fix my settings and then find out I didn't install it properly.

 

The AHCI drivers must be loaded only for XP Installation and for Vista I suppose it already has them.... Vista comes with a huge native driver base....

 

Do I still need to install the AHCI drivers from support.dell.com?

 

No. If you were able to get Vista onto your hard drive, you already have the drivers you need. They would have been included on your restore CD.

 

If you have the latest AHCI drivers then it is well and good to install them.... Or if you are cool with what you have already then leave it as such

But for XP you need to install the AHCI drivers to make the hard disk work in SATA...

 

Vista DOES NOT have them!

You MUST install this:

http://support.dell.com/support/dow...1&impid=-1&formatcnt=1&libid=41&fileid=205611

That is for all x86 OS's from Win2k to Vista...

x64 version is at a different link, for x64 XP and Vista:

http://support.us.dell.com/support/...eid=R154201&formatcnt=1&libid=0&fileid=205616

 

I installed Vista without loading those drivers and it automatically loaded Intel AHCI drivers.

 

Then you must of gotten extremely lucky...either that, or AHCI is disabled in your BIOS...

 

In his first post he said:

Doesn't that mean he has the AHCI drivers installed?

 

Just because the AHCI drivers are installed, doesn't mean it's enabled in the BIOS...I believe ATA and AHCI drivers are both the same. Nonetheless, he just got extremely lucky...and hopefully stays that way for his sake that he doesn't run into any issues later down the road.

 

AHCI is enabled in the BIOS, that's the default setting actually.

 

I'm aware it is, I'm just baffled as to why you added no drivers or anything...what media did you use?

 

I used the Vista reinstallation dvd the 1420 came with.

 

I m 95 % sure the AHCI drivers for that chipset is already in the Vista DVD.... And only for XP you need to disable AHCI in the BIOS and switch to ATA mode during setup or load the AHCI drivers using some other means.... There are many threads regarding this all over here....

And also I heard many people did a clean hassle-free install of Vista on their laptops and nobody so far complained saying Vista Setup was unable to detect their hard drive....

The links you gave are of course the drivers but I presume they are really not needed during the vista setup...

 

Ya, that explains a lot...then you didn't do a "clean install" you just reinstalled everything that Dell gave you, of course the driver is on there.

The AHCI drivers are NOT on the disk...and you do not need to disable AHCI in the BIOS for XP. I know there are many threads, they all have me in them...but you have NO IDEA what you are talking about. It CAN detect the HDD, just it has trouble booting to it because it doesn't have the AHCI driver. They ARE REQUIRED during setup.

 

I deleted the OS and Recovery partition, and created and formatted the new partition. I think that counts as a clean install.

I've been reading other boards and it looks like Vista does have AHCI drivers.

 

A clean install means using a non-OEM disk and only generic RTM versions straight from Microsoft.

Vista does have AHCI drivers, yes that is true...but only generic AHCI drivers which are not compatible with this chipset. Believe me matsuya, I know what I'm talking about...

 

I realize this is a bit off the topic of this thread, but has anyone here had any luck geting AHCI to work with Media Direct? Loading Media Direct on my Vostro 1500 while AHCI is enabled in BIOS always leads to the dreaded BDSOD, which leads me to believe that the appropriate AHCI drivers are not present in the Media Direct image.

 

I seriously beg to differ, I used the Vista Reinstallation DVD with my laptop and it didn't install any of the Dell bloatware, that constitutes a clean install by any definition I have ever known. I'll even give a source.

The AHCI drivers on that disk are absolutely fine with the new Inspiron don't worry about using them.

 

That's strange, because I had some (but not all) of the Dell bloatware on mine when I reinstalled Windows to send mine back...

But anyway, I'm not contesting the AHCI drivers on the disk provided has them...but if you are using a STORE BOUGHT disk or from MSDN or TechNet or anything like that - DIRECTLY FROM MICROSOFT it WILL NOT WORK!

 

Hmm, that is strange, the only thing I have is some Dell branding in Windows, but I wouldn't consider that bloatware. The only things I have that are Dell programs on my laptop, and because I installed them, are Quickset, Webcam Manager and the Resource CD.

 

I did have the branding when I got my laptop at first but after an installation with the attached OEM disk from Dell I have no branding or bloatware of any kind....

 

I also install vista from dell VISTA oem DVD... when I put in the drivers CD, and tried installing the driver from device manager, it said You already have driver installed.. or something like that