HP Elitebook 8460p CD DVD Drive not detected

HP Elitebook 8460p
Dual boot Win7 and openSUSE 11.3 (i know … i know … not supported anymore but … )

BIOS setting for Device Configurations SATA mode set to IDE.

if i switch to AHCI mode, everything is fine i.e. CD/DVD drive works fine, because i have to have dual boot with Windows 7 i have to set it to IDE mode(win7 dont like AHCI, i have tried registry settings as well) under BIOS so that i can use Win7.

But when i boot to openSUSE cd dvd drive wont work (BIOS device configuration as IDE).

I think openSUSE suport IDE mode … isnt it ?

there is no as such way to specify which mode to use for CD / DVD and which for hard disk.

Also i have 120 GB SSD installated in this laptop.

any help?

So, to switch Windows 7 to AHCI mode, I found this one.

  1. Startup "Regedit
  2. Open HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE / SYSTEM / CurrentControlset / Services
  3. Open msahci
  4. In the right field left click on “start” and go to Modify
  5. In the value Data field enter “0” and click “ok”
  6. exit “Regedit”
  7. Reboot Rig and enter BIOS (hold “Delete” key while Booting

In your BIOS select “Integrated Peripherals” and OnChip PATA/SATA Devices. Now change SATA Mode to AHCI from IDE.

You now boot into windows 7, the OS will recognize AHCI and install the devices. Now the system needs one more reboot and voilla … enjoy the improved SSD performance.

Have you tried this to switch Windows 7 to AHCI mode?

Thank You,

Yes Sir, I have tried this but Win 7 hangs on startup… :frowning:

Also wondering Why openSUSE does not recoginise my CD DVD drive,… is it to do with the physical cabeling of the drive ? or something else ?

Hi, I have same spec another laptop with only Win 7, and SATA mode is set to AHCI on it…

Is it got to do something with SSD ?

It is recommended that AHCI mode be used with all SATA hard drives but may be even more important to get the normal speed up when using a SSD hard drive. I did switch a desktop from IDE emulation to AHCI with this registry trick but I can attest to the fact Windows can be fidgety on this point. I did also have success once in starting Windows 7 in Safe Mode and removing the SATA ports from the device tree and then doing a restart in AHCI and found it also worked.

Thank You,

I understand this may be asking too much and discussing win7 things rather than openSUSE… but i am stuck so…

I change registery setting and BIOS settings to AHCI.

reboot the machine into Win 7 - Safe Mode ,… it started loading serveral drivers but it stuck on following;

Loaded: \Windows\system32\DRIVERS\CLASSPNP.SYS

Not sure if it has loaded this one and stuck at the next driver … can you advice …

Thanks

So, as suggested in my previous, one could turn IDE emulation back on, run Windows 7, perhaps in Safe Mode and run the Device Manager in the Control Panel and remove all SATA (or IDE) adapters from the list. Reboot, turn AHCI back on and try Safe Mode again. Its just trial and error I must admit and asking about switching to AHCI in a Windows forum should be OK to ask as it need not be related to loading Linux at all.

Thank You,

Thanks very much, i think its the most i can get from this forum… thank you.

btw,… tried as you mentioned but no luck

Thanks anyway… much appreciate

You are welcome and I am very sorry to not have come up with a fix for Windows. It is frustrating I know and such issues have caused me to have to reload Windows in the past. These days though, I just run Windows 7 in a VM session from VirtualBox all running under openSUSE and it works like a champ for me. It is something to consider in the future. I make a backup of the disk image which is easy to restore, on any machine. VM’s do like lots of memory and disk space but run very well otherwise in most any PC. If you are short on disk space or memory, then trying a VM will not be for you, but an extra 2 GB of RAM and 40 GB or disk space can get you running your first VM in no time and something you should consider.

Thank You,

Hi All,

I have sorted this issue out,… bit and bobs from everywhere and some common sense… there is the solution if someone stuck with this. unfortunately this involved re-installing windows but as long as it is fixed i dont mind doing this.

  • Download RST driver from intel website: here is the link. http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=20110&keyword=%22rst%22&lang=eng
  • Extract the downloaded zip file to USB
  • Set BIOS config for SATA to IDE, otherwise installation wont progress and wont go further the Windows logo.
  • Now during installation for windows 7, when dialog appears to ask for selection of drive it also provide Load Driver option. Windows 7 claims that it has all the required drivers for AHCI but this is not true at least in my case.
  • So click load driver button and navigate to the USB where you have extracted above driver. Now browse til the final driver folder i.e. x64 or x86, whichever is applicable.
  • install Windows 7 as usual
  • Once in windows 7 update the registry by doing regedit and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE à SYSTEM à CurrentControlSet à services à iaStor. Modify the value data of Start to 0.
    now in my case, it was iaStor… but Microsoft says iaStorV or msahci (these both did not worked for me)
  • Reboot and goto BIOS… change IDE to AHCI and reboot…

bingo… what you can now see is Windows 7 is loading…

how i know why its iaStor and not iaStorV or msahci:
Because i have another laptop without SSD and i went to device manager and checked the drivers Intel … SATA AHCI Controller, right click → properties → Driver (tab) → Driver Details and it was pointed to iaStor file under System32… good enough clue for me and it worked.

I had to re-install windows because there was no other way to include those required AHCI drivers in windows installation because if i try to install those drivers in windows, because BIOS mode is set to IDE (to get into windows), driver complains saying this computer does not meet the minimum requirement for this software…

Also i have noticed that installation of windows 7 without Load Driver thingy … it does not have iaStor under registry listing so as the the driver under System32 folder.

But now its done and this problem is a history…

please let me know if someone has any comments on this… also this type of driver loading is called F6 Intel driver installation but picking up right regitry was the key…

thanks to all of you…