Clean Install BSOD fix for 1520

Hi,

After receiving my 1520 with Home Premium, and have already purchased a retail copy of Ultimate, I decided to do a clean install, wiping the HD and installing Ultimate. No need for the recovery partition since Ultimate includes Windows Complete PC Restore. Well, after figuring out MD re-install, the Vista install kept BSOD'ing after initial install and i got lucky and it didn't once. Then researched it a tad,and found that my Dell 1520 was set up AHCI instead of straight SATA. Went to Intel's site and downloaded the Intel Matrix Storage Manager .exe but never been too handy on how to extract the drivers only. After reading this page,
http://downloadmirror.intel.com/13806/ENG/readme.txt
and following step 7.2,

c:\iata76_enu.exe -a -a -pc:\[whatever path you choose here]

"When the command is run, the installation process begins; simply click through the dialogs as prompted. This will not install the driver, it will only extract the driver files to [path]. After the extraction is completed, the driver files can be found in [path]\Driver."

NOTE -due to formatting , I couldn't use the greater than or less than sign in the instructions-so I used the brackets instead.

(The instructions in section 7.2 confused me for awhile,cuz I assumed they meant from a command prompt,and not the run window.:confused2: )

I was able to extract the drivers to a folder and send it to a usb. After putting the folder on a usb, and loading the driver-(Intel SATA AHCI Controller) during the initial screens during Vista install-no more BSOD's!!!!

This might be old news to lotsa ppl, but sure had me confused for awhile.
Hope this helps ppl.:smile:

 

Yep, you absolutely have to do that - my instructions:

This really needs to be PINNED because I post this same exact thing (written by me) at least once a day here...

That problem is because the OS can't see the drive, but it does because you installed it...right? Typically, you assign RAID drivers and stuff so you can install on that drive because it doesn't see it...but this gets confusing, because it actually sees it. When it asks you where to install, you'll see an option to load drivers - you want to go to support.dell.com and download the Intel Matrix Storage Manager and load the drivers in there prior to installing. The problem is you need a special AHCI driver, and not the generic Microsoft one. Yes, this is really frustrating and I was the first person to post about this in the forums - I called Dell and they had no idea what I was talking about, I had to figure all of this out on my own...

If you don't know how to do this, or anything like that...and don't mind taking a *small* performance increase for ease just go into your BIOS and see the HDD operation mode from AHCI to ATA and then you can install Vista using ANY disk!

The direct download link for Intel Matrix Storage Driver is here:

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

If you are using a x64 version, the direct download link is here:

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

Oh, and this applies to the 1420, 1520, 1720, m1330, and I assume the m1730 as well

 

sorry-noob here-haven't figured out search yet, and thx for fillin me in too!! if i'd have seen yours, I wouldn't have wasted all my time figurin it out too, or double posting !!! and yup-even today Dell has no clue.