Dell Inspiron 1545 Sata drive ATA / AHCI

Hello guys, got a inspiron 1545 recently with a SATA 320 gb HDD / 4gb ram with Windows Vista Home Basic. Like most of us I hate Vista. So I created a partition & installed XP. Used a program "EasyBCD" to setup dual boot. I get the dual boot screen at startup. But only XP boots. After a little probing, came to know that there are only 2 options in the BIOS for SATA operations. AHCI & ATA. If I select ATA I can boot only to XP. If I select AHCI then I can boot only into Vista. Searched around but the solutions were a bit over my head. Really appreciate if anybody could come up with something in lay mans terms. Thanks in advance.
Zamlock

 

There is nothing wrong with Vista, how long did you use it before concluding you hate it? In fact, I think most of the users here quite like Vista.
You know you won't be able to take full advantage of your hardware without Vista, right?

On to your question...
You'll need to be re-installing XP in AHCI mode.
To do this, you need to create a disc with AHCI drivers.
You have an Intel GM45 chipset, so these are the drivers you need.
In order to integrate them to your XP disc, you will need to download and install nLite.
Just follow on screen directions, and when you get to the screen where you choose tasks, choose "Integrate Drivers" and "Create a bootable CD."
In order to integrate the drivers you downloaded, you must first extract them.

 

You can also install XP in ATA mode and install the AHCI drivers post-install; there's a couple guides floating around on how to do this. Just makes things a little easier if you don't wanna mess with nLite. I personally just don't install the AHCI drivers at all; I've never had a problem running in ATA mode.

 

I tried to follow your advice and created Boot CD and integrated drivers from the link provided. But the problem is not solved. I still keep getting the "blue screen" and changing BIOS in ATA mode doesn't help much. Can you please share any other ideas on how the problem can be solved? Or share any resources that may give solution? Thanks in advance.

Dan

 

Be more specific. What hardware do you have? What code do you get?
You're probably trying to load XP from a SATA optical drive and getting BSOD code 0x0000007B, but without more info it's hard to help you.

 

I have Dell Inspiron 1545, 3GB RAM and 150 GB Hard Drive and Vista Home Premium 32Bit and Intel Duo-core processor (capable for 64-bit system). I uninstalled Vista and integrated drivers as provided by this link, but it didn't work. And then I tried to change in BIOS ATA versus AHCI, and tried to install XP original and then the updated with drivers from the link above I gave. An error I get is "A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer" and so on. The technical information is:
*** STOP: 0x0000007E (0x0000005, 0xF748E0BF, 0x78DA207, 0x78D9F08)
*** pci.sys - address F748E0BF base at F7487000, DateStamp 3c0bfadb

Hope that helps! I look forward to hearing you!

 

Oh, forgot to say, I have laptop Inspiron 1545. Thanks again!

 

Well, if you changed to ATA mode, it should not have bluescreened.
In fact, the stop code for 0x0000007E is generally not related to missing AHCI drivers... though I believe the P45M chipset has no PATA, and therefore the ODD is SATA, and that can get sticky... so it's possible.
The first issue though that I see is that you integrated RAID drivers, which are actually not the same as AHCI drivers. If you check out my first post in this topic, you might want to try the method I suggest with the drivers I suggest.

 

I followed your advice, it is still the same problem: blue screen at initial step of installation, and the same errors (i.e. 0x0000007E). That is weird.

Dan

 

Run a memtest and hard drive test.
Sounds like you might have gotten unlucky and have some bad hardware.

 

Hi,
I wanted to ask: I integrated SP_2 into the boot CD with drivers you described in post 1. The problem persist, but now I am getting different error type:
*** STOP: 0x0000007B (0XF78D2524, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)

Do you think you can explain what that means?

 

One last question. Looks like it finally started installation process. Having the SP_2 into nLite and burn with drivers and I have re-checked ATA option and the setup looks like ok. Do you recommend to re-check it to AHCI once I am finished with setup? Or should I leave it to ATA? Thanks in advance.

 

Ah, your disc was Pre-SP2 before... explains the 0x0000007E.
Stop 0x0000007B during setup is usually because you're loading from a SATA optical drive. By setting to ATA mode, you're not actually using the AHCI drivers. You cannot set it back to AHCI mode after the installation, you're stuck there. Switching to AHCI post install will cause the system to bluescreen on boot.

 

Ok, thanks a lot for your help. I appreciate it.
Merdan

 

Hello Hep
I want to learn more about chipsets compatibility and how to find drivers for them from web and burn with XP so I can use for other types of computers. Do you know any resources where I can learn more about it? I have never worked with AIHA and ATA stuff? Thanks in advance.

 

I don't really have any resources except my own brain... I do this kind of thing a lot, and though I strongly suggest that people give Vista a chance, especially on higher end systems/newer systems like the Inspiron 1545, putting XP on unsupported hardware is somewhat of a hobby of mine. Just finished a DV7 for a client, and got EVERYTHING working. I don't think anyone else has done that, most specify that the remote, media buttons, data protection system etc don't work. Well... they do for me. Actually the HDMI port is untested.

A trick is to get the specific laptop model, then google "laptop model specifications" or "laptop model chipset"
So here, we google "inspiron 1545 chipset" and find that is has the GM45 chipset. We know (or at least I know, if you don't look it up with another google search) that this is an intel chipset, so go to intel's website.
Go to downloads... go to chipsets... laptop chipsets... mobile intel 4 series chipset (or whatever chipset you find)
Select any of the Windows XP versions, they'll all be the same drivers
Download the "32-bit Floppy Configuration Utility" and use the files in that.

And that's it.