BSOD and AHCI

My son has a Sager 2090, XOTICPC. He's home from college for XMAS.
We get a BSOD, unexpected shutdown, BSOD is on screen for a microsecond, and it reboots, same scenario over and over. Windows Vista disks are back at school so we can't do a repair. I sense it is a driver type issue, go into bios and disable AHCI. We're good! Windows boots.

I should mention we have WD 500GB My Book Essential he uses at school for system backups and Ipod backups. Norton Ghost in use. I forget if it is SATA or PATA though think it is SATA. His HDD system drive I believe is SATA.

What went wrong?
What will not work because I disabled AHCI?
What's the real cause or real issue?

I should also mention he's got Vista 64 bit home premium.

 

Is this the answer?

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/...fter-enable-ahci-mode-on-sata-drive-in-vista/

Some of this is mumbo jumbo to me, a little over my head.

 

Bump.

Driver issue, maybe? HDD driver or video card driver?

 

Call Xoticpc's 24/7/364 tech support...work with their technicians...the support comes with your Sager NP2090, why not use it?

Christmas is the only day of the year they are closed.

 

Thanks, I'll try and work that in.We'll be travelling tomorrow and I may not have broadband but I'll give them a call. We had a warranty (hardware issue) when my son first got this in August and Xoptic turned us right over to Sager.
And Sager was really nasty about paying for the shipping back to them. But I understand the warranty is with Sager not Xotic. Just didn't understand when tech suipport is Xotic or Sager.

But I would rather deal with Xotic, I just have limited window before he goes back to school.

 

BTW, this is what Sager sent, a deadend link with no explanation of what to look for. If I knew what to update I might be able to figure it out (which driver to update)


http://downloadcenter.intel.com/filter_results.aspx?

strTypes=all&ProductID=816&OSFullName=Windows+Vista*+64&lang=eng&strOSs=150&submit=Go%21

You're right, I'll call Xotic

 

Please do call our own 24/7 support located on our Contact Us Page. They will gladly assist you.

 

Thanks, you have always been very responsive

 

The only thing you're really losing with AHCI disabled is Intel Turbo Memory support. It certainly is strange that Vista started giving BSOD errors because of AHCI, though.

 

Finally had time to contact Xotic PC support. Turns out it was not a chipset driver as Sager thought, it was a Robson issue. Downloaded the latest Robson update from a link sent by Xotic support and all is well.
We couldn't figure out why the update was needed and what had gone wrong but my son had similar, intermittant random startup and shutdown problems all along.

This also probably explains why dis-enabling AHCI got around the issue as without AHCI Robson won't work ( I beleive).

I want to commend Xotic support for extreme patience... we were on the phone for around 75 minutes (lots of shutdowns and startups required and a 20mb download that took longer than normal, even with broadband).

I will send an e-mail to Justin@Xotic to commend the tech that did such a great job.


I have learned to always try the reseller's tech support before Sager, that's for sure.