Windows always got a bag of fun stuff to keep us busy with. But sometimes the fun is over and you need to reinstall it from scratch. As my Laptop was running with the original install since quite some time now, I guess it’s time to clean up.

So let’s get to work by inserting the windows cd which boots fine until the disc selection shows up. No discs detected. Huh? What the hell happened? – The laptop got SATA discs and those were invented way after the initial release date of Windows XP.

But a peek into the bios eases the situation: there is a compatibility mode for the hdd controller which makes it possible to access the hdd with the default ide drivers.

Now the setup runs fine and everything is installed. But we are not ready yet as we still need to get rid of the compatibility mode for the hdd for a nice speed gain. Reboot, Changing the bios settings and…? Right, a bluescreen. Windows dislikes it if it’s loosing its hdd which forces us to use plan B:

The drivers for our SATA Controller is in the Intel Matrix Storage Manager, available from the intel website. Unpacking it is quite easy: setip -a -P”c:\intelstuff”. But that’s not all we’ve got to do. The package got a drivers folder that contains a file named iaahci.inf which we’ll be using as the driver descriptor for feeding it the device manager. From there we update the IDE controller’s driver. Using ‘Have Disk’ and pointing the assistant to the iaahci.inf file will present us a list of ‘possible’ drivers.

Don’t be scared of windows complaining about that the driver isn’t made for the device – remember: we’re still using the compat mode – so windows doesn’t know better. If you pick the right driver, windows will boot fine after the requested restart. If you have chosen the wrong one, you’ll be presented a fine bluescreen.