CamTron Posted May 21, 2016 Share Posted May 21, 2016 I have an Acer Aspire 5920 laptop from 2007 which came preinstalled with Windows Vista, and I decided to wipe the hard drive and downgrade to Windows XP today. As we all know, Windows XP lacks builtin SATA drivers, so it's impossible for the installer to detect SATA hard disks without either slipstreaming the drivers or loading a driver from an obsolete floppy drive. The BIOS in my computer allows me to set the hard disk to legacy IDE mode, so that it appears to the software as a PATA drive. I didn't want to go through the trouble of slipstreaming the drivers and burning another CD, so I set the hard drive to legacy IDE mode in the BIOS, and installed XP that way. Now I want the extra speed boost that SATA offers, but I'm having trouble installing the driver. I downloaded the Windows XP SATA AHCI Driver from Acer's website (link), but it refuses to install, giving me this error. Im puzzled, because Windows XP Home Edition is listed as a supported operating system, and I downloaded the driver from the Windows XP section of Acers driver list for this laptop. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dencorso Posted May 22, 2016 Share Posted May 22, 2016 Use Fernando's modded drivers, then change the Start to 0, then reboot and change to AHCI in bios. I think Fernando gives more detailed intructions (either somewhere here at MSFN or at his own forum), but that's the gist of it. Then, after all the effort involved, you may realize... ...it's not quite worth the effort (IMO, YMMV). Good luck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaclaz Posted May 22, 2016 Share Posted May 22, 2016 see also this: http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?444831-HOWTO-enable-AHCI-mode-after-installing-Windows jaclaz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dibya Posted May 22, 2016 Share Posted May 22, 2016 Try using Nlite. Please provide your dev id. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HarryTri Posted May 25, 2016 Share Posted May 25, 2016 Perhaps just changing the BIOS mode back to SATA before trying to install the driver may do the job. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CamTron Posted May 26, 2016 Author Share Posted May 26, 2016 HarryTri, That's not possible because my XP installation doesn't have SATA support, and switching to SATA mode in BIOS causes a blue screen of death since Windows can't read the hard disk. I tried both modes in Linux and didn't notice much of a difference, so I'll leave it with IDE mode. If I ever need to reinstall, I'll slipstream the drivers and use SATA mode. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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