AHCI and RAID on HP Compaq Elite 8000, 8100, 8200, and 8300 Business PCs - Technical White Paper

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Enhancing existing Vista or Windows 7 images from IDE mode or native AHCI mode
Vista and Windows 7 have a native AHCI driver. If Vista or Windows 7 was installed while in IDE mode, a registry change
will allow users to gracefully switch to AHCI mode using the Microsoft driver. See the Microsoft Knowledge Base Article
at
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976/en-us .
Corporate IT may be able to update an existing Vista or Window 7 image that was created in IDE mode to use the Intel
AHCI driver. The process requires inserting the Intel AHCI drivers into the image in a pre-installation environment using
the appropriate OS Tools.
Required software to insert the Intel AHCI driver:
• Windows Preinstallation Environment (WinPE) CD
• Windows OPK (OEM Preinstallation Kit) CD
• PKGMGR.EXE (Package Manager)
The OPK CD is not available for general download. It must be obtained through a Microsoft authorized distributor.
PKGMGR.EXE is a tool that installs, uninstalls, configures, and updates features and packages for Vista and Windows 7.
For more information and instructions on OPK or PKGMGR.EXE, go to http://www.hp.com.
The process is as follows:
1. Boot into WinPE.
2. Run PKGMGR.EXE from OPK
A sample command line is:
pkgmgr.exe /o:"C:\;C:\Windows" /n:"C:\AddAHCI\HP-AHCI.xml"
Where C:\AddAHCI\HP-AHCI.xml contains:
<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<unattend xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v3" xmlns:wcm="http://
schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State">
<settings pass="offlineServicing">
<component name="Microsoft-Windows-PnpCustomizationsNonWinPE"
processorArchitecture="x86"
publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral"
versionScope="nonSxS">
<DriverPaths>
<PathAndCredentials wcm:keyValue="1">
<Path>C:\AddAHCI</Path>
</PathAndCredentials>
</DriverPaths>
</component>
</settings>
</unattend>
3. Reboot the computer.
4. Enter F10 Setup and change SATA Emulation mode to AHCI.
5. Reboot the computer into the OS.
An existing Vista or Windows 7 image using the native AHCI driver can be updated to use the Intel AHCI driver (iastor.sys).
The driver can be downloaded from
www.hp.com.
NOTE: Be careful when moving an image to computer with a different chipset. The Device ID of the AHCI controller must
match what is in the INF or the AHCI driver will fail and the computer will not boot.