nForce AHCI drivers

Source

B. Integration of the nForce AHCI drivers

(only valid for AHCI supporting nForce mainboards with enabled AHCI)

Actual nForce chipsets (MCP65 and up) do support the advanced S-ATA-Features (z.B. NCQ) of the AHCI standard. Users of such systems usually have the BIOS option to set the nForce S-ATA Controllers to "AHCI Mode" instead of the "IDE Mode" (which doesn't require any separate textmode drivers). If AHCI is enabled, Windows Setup will not detect the S-ATA hdd('s) unless the needed AHCI drivers will be loaded (F6) or have been integrated into the OS CD.

If you try to get Windows XP or Server 2003 (32/64bit) installed onto a non-RAID nForce chipset system and should realize, that Windows Setup doesn't find any hard drive, the following procedure will be successful for nearly all users:

• get the actual version of nLite from here and install it (.NET Framework 2.0 required)
• depending on your nForce chipset and the OS you are going to install, download and unzip one of the following drivers:
  • a. for Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 (32bit):
    • for nForce 630i/620i/610i (MCP73), nForce 730a/720a/710a (MCP78) and nForce ION (MCP79) chipset mainboards (AHCI enabled):
      >32bit nForce SATA_IDE driver v11.1.0.43 WHQL (download link)<
    • for nForce 560/520 (MCP65) and nForce 630a (MCP67) chipset mainboards (AHCI enabled):
      >32bit nForce SATA_IDE driver v10.3.0.46 WHQL (download link)<
    
    
  • b. for Windows XP x64 or Windows Server 2003 x64:
    • for nForce 630i/620i/610i (MCP73), nForce 730a/720a/710a (MCP78) and nForce ION (MCP79) chipset mainboards (AHCI enabled):
      >64bit nForce SATA_IDE driver v11.1.0.43 WHQL (download link)<
    • for nForce 560/520 (MCP65) and nForce 630a (MCP67) chipset mainboards (AHCI enabled):
      >64bit nForce SATA_IDE driver v10.3.0.46 WHQL (download link)<
  
  
• create a folder named "nLiteCD" or similar and copy the whole content of the OS CD into that folder
• start nLite > point to the just created "nLiteCD" folder as source
• choose the tasks "Integrate Drivers" and "Create Bootable ISO"
• when the "Driver Integration" task comes up > hit "Insert" > choose "Single driver" > point to the prepared SATA_IDE subfolder
• check any of the shown INF files
• now you see the following popup window:
    nForce_AHCI_driver_popup_with_nLite.jpg (36.02K) 
  Number of downloads: 374
  let the "NVIDIA nForce Storage Controller (required)" enabled > hit "OK"
• let nLite burn the Image directly onto an empty CD/DVD
• boot of the just created CD > choose the destination partition > do a quick NTFS formatting > install the OS