Today I would like to discuss a few useful tricks for Windows XP x64. But this time around, it’s at least partially about stuff that you can’t easily find on the Internet anymore, whether it’s the information or the actual software part that’s missing. There are several software components that are sometimes hard to use or find for XP x64. Some are even hard to set up for regular 32-bit Windows XP. The following solutions will be discussed: • 1.) The ASPI Layer (digital media access) • 2.) UDF 2.5 (for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD access) • 3.) exFAT (some modern cameras etc. Need this file system) • 4.) EXT2/3/4 (for Linux and UNIX compatibility) • 5.) Universal SSD TRIM (keep your SSD clean, tidy and fast, like on modern systems) So, let’s start with #1: 1.) The ASPI layer: Edit: Note that in the meantime, the FrogASPI solution described here is no longer the only option. Another one that works even for 64-bit applications accessing the ASPI layer has been found, see further below!

Download Hiren’s Boot. Antivirus: Free standalone anti- virus and anti- spyware on- demand scanner (downloadable) (Windows Freeware).

1.a) FrogASPI: One of those things that have been abandoned by Microsoft is the ASPI layer, the Advanced SCSI Programming Interface. Meant as a way for digital storage media access it was most prominently used to read from optical drives digitally (also on ATA, not just SCSI), so you didn’t need to rip audio CDs via MSCDEX on Win98 or via the crappy analog link from your drive to the sound card. ASPI can also be used to access other types of storage devices, but this is the most important part. Some older software, like my beloved Xing AudioCatalyst (an ancient CD ripper including the Fraunhofer mp3 encoder) might still need ASPI to access audio CDs. However, Adaptec stopped shipping ASPI drivers for Microsoft Windows after Microsoft had abandoned the API and introduced its own replacement called SPTI, the SCSI PassThrough Interface. As a matter of fact, you can still install Adaptecs ASPI layer on 32-Bit Windows XP, as it includes a working 32-Bit kernel driver. So for 32-Bit XP, it’s still fine.

However, there is no such driver for XP x64 (and also not for 32/64-Bit Vista/7/8). So, no ASPI at all? For a loong time I indeed had to live without it, until I found that french guy named Millenod (That’s his nick name, I will not disclose his real name) who had written a 100% userspace ASPI layer, that would work on any newer Windows operating system on x86, no matter the bitness. This is called FrogASPI, and unfortunately, Millenods website for it is down by now. In its core, it is actually just an SPTI wrapper. Back in those days, I even wrote the guy an email, thanking him for his work. Here is a part of his reply: “FrogAspi is effectively an SPTI wrapper.

I decided to work in “user” mode, instead of kernel ones, for many reasons. It was for me the fastest way to implement a generic ASPI layer, which is not OS specific as drivers.” -Millenod, Developer of FrogASPI After renaming the FrogAspi.dll to the proper name wnaspi32.dll and putting it into%WINDIR% SysWOW64 for 64-Bit Windows, it can be used by any ASPI-enabled application. For 32-Bit Windows, please use%WINDIR% system32!

See, what Adaptecs own aspichk.exe has to say about what we just did: You’ll see that some files are reported as missing. You do not have to care about that though, ASPI32.SYS would’ve been the 32-Bit kernel driver, WOWPOST.EXE is a 16-Bit Windows ASPI helper tool, WINASPI.DLL the corresponding 16-Bit Windows driver. None of those are needed. Now, that FrogASPI is mapping all ASPI calls to SPTI, we can begin to actively use it even on 64-Bit Windows. See AudioCatalyst for instance, with ASPI being available: AudioCatalyst reading the Postal Original Soundtrack CD using FrogASPI As you can see, everything works just fine. Oh, and besides, in case you want AudioCatalysts CDDB feature back (as shown in this screenshot), just add the following lines to your AudioCatalyst.ini, sitting in the programs installation folder, this’ll switch from the now-broken CDDB to FreeDB. • CDDBServer=freedb.org • CDDBHTTPPath=/~freedb/cddb.cgi • CDDBLocation=Random FreeDB Site • CDDBTCPIPPort= 8880 • CDDBConnectVia=TCP/IP You can download FrogASPI right here: • [] Unfortunately I cannot give you a download link for Xing AudioCatalyst, as it’s commercial software even today.

1.b) StarBurn ASPI (An update from 2016-12-05): In the meantime, user Steve Sybesma has [] about a different solution provided by []. With their recording software comes a native ASPI layer for both 32-bit and 64-bit systems with full compatibility for even 64-bit programs that want to use ASPI.

I decided to fetch the necessary DLLs from their SDK and release them in the form of a standalone InnoSetup installer for Windows 2000 and newer. The installer will auto-detect your operating systems’ bitness and will install the 32-bit ASPI layer on 32-bit systems as well as both the 32-bit as well as the 64-bit one on 64-bit systems. Here it is: • [][] (DLLs only) It has been successfully tested on Windows 2000 Pro SP4, Windows XP Pro SP3, Windows XP Pro x64 Edition SP2 as well as Windows 10 Pro x64. If you don’t want to trust my installer, that’s fine as well of course. You can just install the StarBurn software from its original source, it should give you the same level of ASPI support, just with more additional stuff being installed! Now, to #2, the UDF 2.5 file system for HD-DVDs and Blu-Rays: 2.) UDF 2.5: Now this one was a real bitch.

It took me months to finally get it nailed! UDF 2.5 is a file system. And it’s used for basically two type of media: HD-DVD discs and Blu-Ray discs, including the most modern 3D Blu-Rays. It just bugged me like hell, that I couldn’t access the discs as I normally would in Windows Explorer or on the command line. Windows XP simply does not have the proper file system kernel driver. And while it’s relatively easy to find one for 32-Bit WinXP, it’s immeasurably harder to find the single one existing driver for Windows XP x64. I’m not even sure if it still exists on the web.

One day I came across a person whose name I forgot, but that guy had searched the web for months just like me, and he found the driver just before it went offline. So he re-uploaded it, with his single file sharing link in some post on some unknown website being the only thing that saved my bacon. Maybe one day, somebody will find the XP x64 UDF 2.5 driver here on my site after desperate searching?

So, the only existing driver has been developed by Panasonic/Matsushita, a company that also builds optical drives. It works on Windows XP x64 as well as Server 2003 x64. And here it is, together with the Toshiba-made UDF 2.5 driver for regular 32-Bit Windows XP just for completeness: • [] (HD-DVD, Blu-Ray) • [] (HD-DVD, Blu-Ray) Again, I would like to emphasize that it took me months to find that freaking 64-Bit XP driver, I’m not even sure what Panasonic/Matsushita developed it for, but here it is for your enjoyment. After installation and reboot, you can browse a HD-DVD or Blu-Ray just like any CD or DVD disc, see here: The Blu-Ray folder structure of the german uncut version of “The Boondock Saints”, viewed using the Panasonic/Matsushita UDF 2. Macgourmet Deluxe Serial Number there. 5 driver for XP x64 And now, #3, the exFAT file system: 3.) exFAT: exFAT is a successor to the older FAT32 file system that uses a 64-bit address field instead, allowing for larger than 4GB files, the most notorious limitation of regular FAT. ExFAT is now being used on newer cameras and other handheld devices for memory card formatting. Since the comparably heavy-weight NTFS is typically not used on such devices, exFAT is the replacement we get. Also, exFAT is the official file system for SDXC and Memory Stick XC cards, so they may very well come exFAT-preformatted!

The only sour part is, that exFAT is kind of proprietary (Microsoft), like NTFS. That’s a bit crappy, but well. I have however already written an article about exFAT on XP x64, so I will just link to it. ExFAT is also very easy to get for both 32-Bit and 64-Bit flavors of Windows XP: • [] (Article), [] (XP 32/64-Bit) And now, finally, some free file systems from the Linux world: 4.) EXT2/3/4: EXT is one of the most widely if not the most widely used file system in the entire world of Linux. It has also been ported to other systems like BSD, Solaris or ReactOS. And also Windows actually, although the implementation is not the most seamless you can dream up. But still, you can get read/write access to all currently used EXT versions under Windows, even the fast new EXT4.

The software that I found most useful for this is called [], short for EXT2 file system driver. It comes with the actual driver plus a helper tool for mounting and for enabling write access. It would be nice to just be able to mount EXT filesystems seamlessly from the start, without having to use that mounting tool, but we’re not that far yet it seems. However, drives can be configured to auto-mount later, so you need the tool only once for each drive. Write access has to be enabled by hand. Currently, ext2fsd supports the following systems: NT 5.0 (Windows 2000), NT 5.1 (Windows XP 32-Bit), NT 5.2 (Windows XP x64, Server 2003), NT 6.0 (Windows Vista), NT 6.1 (Windows 7, Server 2008).

Where not explicitly mentioned, it supports both 32-Bit and 64-Bit versions of said operating systems. And here is what it looks like in action: A Linux-created EXT4 filesystem mounted on XP x64 for read/write using ext2fsd The only strange thing is, that ext2fsd calls the EXT4 file system “EXT3”. It shouldn’t.

But other than that, it works just fine. I haven’t tested a lot of r/w, but so far it worked fine, without any corruption or anything. The helper tool also gives you a function for flushing the write cache, and a nice statistics window for monitoring the file system usage while mounted. It also allows the user to manually unmount of course. Even mkfs is there, so you can format drives as EXT under Windows, the only useful tool missing would be fsck for checking & repairing such filesystems.

But you can’t have everything I guess. So, usage is not as seamless as it would be with native NTFS/FAT32/exFAT drivers, but it’s ok and it greatly boosts the Linux interoperability of XP x64 and other Windows systems. Also, EXT filesystems can easily be used in other UNIX-style systems like Solaris, BSD or MacOS X, so this allows a lot of different systems to exchange data easily using removable sticks or harddrives. Since it of course supports large files (>4GB) and it’s more easy to handle across a wide spectrum of operating systems, unlike exFAT it might one day become the #1 choice for data exchange, replacing FAT32 and NTFS in that field. However, today, NTFS on Linux is probably a lot more widespread than this EXT driver on Windows, so there is still a long way to go. Of course, there is a downside to this too: All the POSIX permissions like ownership, read/write/execute bits etc. Just do not work on Windows.

You can neither read nor write any such meta data using ext2fsd. I have neither checked the umask that ext2fsd uses yet, nor what ownership it sets, but I would guess it’s root:root with permissions 777 or rwxrwxrwx. But whatever it is, you will most likely need to take care of that when mounting on your UNIX-style system. I hope this was helpful, if you have any comments about these helpful add-ons, just post away! 5.) Universal SSD TRIM: This is a 2014-11-03 edit of the original article. Usually, I would tell users who would like to use an SSD on Windows XP or XP x64 to re-align their partitions with a [] after installation to get proper alignment, and more importantly to use either Intel, Corsair or Samsung SSDs so that they can TRIM their SSDs properly using their respective manufacturers’ XP-compatible software tools, maintaining full write speed over the entire life time of the SSD drive.

It seems that I can now finally confirm, that the latter criterion no longer needs to be met. Basically, I found an easy way to TRIM any SSD on Windows XP or Windows XP x64, as long as the following logical criteria are met: • The SSD itself needs to support TRIM. Well, that was obvious. • The controller driver needs to support TRIM. Now I can’t speak for just any driver, but I have tested this on Intels ICH10-R and an ancient ICH7-M, both worked just fine with AHCI drivers installed. Usually, AHCI is what you want. Avoid IDE/legacy PATA modes.

You may need to configure this properly in your systems BIOS and you may need to retrofit AHCI drivers in XP if your system was installed using IDE mode to avoid bluescreens on boot. If you need help doing that, please ask away in the comments. So, what’s the solution? It’s called the ADATA SSD Toolbox!

Basically, ADATA developers seem to have forgot or were actually never instructed to install an artificial vendor obstruction inside their software. So what they did was to write an SSD toolbox that just complies to the SATA standard, implementing its TRIM command for any compatible SSD, no-holds-barred! I have tested this on an Intel 320 SSD, as well as on a Crucial m500 SSD now, despite no official XP support being present. Optimization: ADATA Toolbox detecting an Intel 320 SSD ADATA SSD Toolbox TRIMming a Crucial m500 SSD So there you go! Now pretty much any TRIM capable SSD can be made to accept TRIM on Windows XP and XP x64!

Together with gparted for partition alignment, we have a full-featured SSD solution for XP, leaving nothing to be desired! Download the ADATA SSD Toolbox here: []. By is licensed under a.

Posted by at 18:45 Tagged with:,,,,,,,,,,,,, 60 Responses to “A few useful XP x64 tricks: ASPI, UDF 2.5, exFAT, EXT2/3/4, universal SSD TRIM” •. I’m trying to use Siren Jukebox on Windows 10 64-bit. It installed just fine with no error whatsoever, but no joy because the DVD drive is not found by that application. The FrogASPI driver is detected by Siren Jukebox, because the Computer tab under About Sonic Foundry Siren Jukebox shows it as you see below: SCSI/IDE: Not using ASPI Description: Frog ASPI Company: Frog ASPI / Millenod Version: 0.29.4.10 This shows the same way regardless of which combination of checkmarks are selected for Use ASPI or Use SPTI or detect unknown drives. No matter what I do, the DVD drive is not detected by Siren Jukebox. I got a small clue on this however A free app called FairStars CD Ripper also has that exact same problem unless you check the box called “Use Native NT SCSI Library”, then it finds the DVD drive just fine. So, it seems there’s a little bit more to it than just the ASPI driver or else Windows 10 64-bit isn’t making proper use of FrogASPI as used with Siren Jukebox to allow the DVD drive to be visible.

FairStars CD Ripper makes use of the identical FrogASPI driver, but again, you have to make a change I mentioned above to allow the DVD drive to be found. I’m finding with a 2nd DVD drive that it also does not find that drive as well. Within the program files for Siren Jukebox is one that lists compatible CDs: sfcdi.cfg That may be the whole issue. It’s being restricted to use only drives it knows about (even though detect unknown drives is selected). It also claims it’s “Not using ASPI” even though it shows FrogASPI was detected: SCSI/IDE: Not using ASPI Description: Frog ASPI Company: Frog ASPI / Millenod Version: 0.29.4.10 I tried every combination of everything I could think of including changing the OS compatibilityno dice.

I tried Adaptec’s wnaspi32.dll as well (which is also detected). Hello Steve, Unfortunately, I’m not a Siren Jukebox user, so whatever advice I can provide will be very limited. Just one thing: “Use Native NT SCSI Library” should indicate the use of SPTI instead of ASPI. Cause that’s what SPTI is: NTs’ native SCSI library.

What sounds weird is that FrogASPI is being detected and yet Siren Jukebox says “Not using ASPI”? In any case, there is a more detailed discussion about getting Siren Jukebox to work [], where some users got it to do its job on Windows 7. Of course, Windows 7 isn’t Windows 10, and that may apply to its SPTI layer as well.

So far, I haven’t tried this on Windows 10 at all, as my only Win10 machine is a convertible tablet with no optical disc drive whatsoever. Maybe I’ll try and fool around with this stuff on a Windows 10 VM.

I have one here, but not enough time right now. If I don’t forget, I can try and look into it for a bit some time next week.

Kept poking and poking at this problem. I finally got a huge crack further toward breaking this problem when I used this MUCH NEWER version of an ASPI driver from Rocket Division Software/StarBurn Software. SCSI/IDE: Not using ASPI Description: ASPI for Windows Company: Rocket Division Software, StarBurn Software Version: V15.5 ‘Patriot’ Build 20150703 For the first time ever, my CD-ROM drive was recognized, but it’s not available. I got an Unknown Drive popup saying the drive may be unsuitable. The interface and disc were shown as Unknown. Below is the information from the Computer tab of the About Sonic Foundry SIREN Jukebox window: CD Drives: Drive D:’HL-DT-ST CDRWDVD MU10N A106′ Interface: (-1) Adapter: Port 000 (0) Available: No I’m going to see if I can edit sfcdi.cfg and add that one in manually to see what happens. Checking the box for unknown drives was not enough to get that working.

When using the ASPI driver you must check the box “Use ASPI on Windows NT” or the drive is not vislble at all. Hey Steve, My apologies, but I’ve rearranged your posts, so that they’re now all in one cohesive thread, making it easier to follow the entire thing. And thanks for pointing out Starburn! I’ve had no idea that that software existed. It might be a good replacement for FrogASPI I guess, I should definitely give it a shot. It also fits with the original articles’ goal of getting ASPI to work on WinXP x64, because Starburn seems to support everything starting with Windows 98.

If it works well (=better than FrogASPI), I might wrap a very simple installer around just the WnASPI32.dll files, so a slimmer ASPI-only version of it can be redistributed (Starburns’ license seems to allow for that). Thanks Thrawn, the only trick left is getting Siren Jukebox to be able to recognize the drives that it now acknowledges exist. I had the problem on two drives. I wonder if SATA has something to do with it.

The last time I used Siren Jukebox, my drives were all still 40-PIN ATA/IDE. BTW, editing the SFCDI.CFG file didn’t seem to work. I could try reinstalling the app with the new WnASPI32 waiting for it in the folder it will install to, but I worry about the activation codes I just got last week getting tossed out again. There is also a trick here (Resolution #6) I will try first: After I make the change and reboot, I’ll report back. Hello again Steve, I did several things today, the first part being to rip the ASPI DLLs ( Bin Core StarBurn Core msvcrt Release i386 WnASPI32.dll & Bin Core StarBurn Core msvcrt Release amd64 WnASPI32.dll) out of the StarBurn SDK. Then I built an InnoSetup installer around those.

The installer will correctly detect 32-/64-bit Windows and install just the DLLs necessary for each available architecture. With this you don’t need the rest of the StarBurn software at all. The DLLs are freeware as per the []: • [] ( drivers/DLLs only) I have just tested this to work on the following operating systems: • Windows 2000 Professional SP4 (NT 5.0) • Windows XP Professional SP3 (NT 5.1) • Windows XP Professional x64 Edition SP2 (NT 5.2) • Windows 10 Professional x64 (Build 1607, NT10.0) Now, as for the Siren Jukebox test, I installed it on a Windows 10 VM (my host is 64-bit CentOS 6.8 Linux, so yeah). To make sure I’ve been feeding the right stuff to it, I verified that I’ve been passing a real SATA drive to the VM, see here: VirtualBox setting for the StartBurn ASPI + Siren Jukebox test (Click to enlarge) Then I fired Windows 10 up, installed StarBurn ASPI using my own installer as well as Siren Jukebox 2.0c according to [] by FixitMAD. After that, I set Sirens’ advanced CD settings to force ASPI only: Forcing Siren Jukebox to use ASPI (Click to enlarge) Still, Sirens’ “About” screen reported that ASPI wouldn’t be used on the now-detected (but according to Siren, still unsupported) drive: Siren still not showing ASPI being used?!

(Click to enlarge) I just gave it a shot nonetheless, given that my passthrough SATA drive was now being detected! I don’t have any original audio CDs here, but I bought the FLAC version of Hidden Orchestras’ track “Flight” this weekend, so I just burned that to a CD, put the disc in the drive Windows 10 was being fed, and see what happened: Siren Jukebox ripping an audio CD using StarBurn ASPI on Windows 10 Professional x64 (Click to enlarge) So this worked for me! Unfortunately I do not have any physical Windows 10 machines with optical drives, but I do have a machine with Windows XP Pro 32-bit using a PATA drive (but connected to a controller working with the SCSI-style drivers of a SiI 0680 ATA/133 controller!). I gave it a shot using StarBurn ASPI as well, and ripping a CD from it worked just as well.

So, what was it exactly that I did? • Installed Sonic Foundry Siren Jukebox 2.0c • Installed Sonys’ registration repair tool (which fixed Sirens’ registration system) • Installed StarBurn ASPI using my installer • Launched & registered Siren • Switched ASPI (and only ASPI!) on in the advanced CD settings • Restarted Siren • Started happily ripping my CD from a SATA drive on Win10 x64 as well as from a PATA/SCSI drive on WinXP x86 I don’t think I did anything too differently from you though, so I’m not sure if any of this can actually help you. Edit: I’ve added the StarBurn stuff to the main article, as this has some advantages over FrogASPI. Hey Ric, I heard that before, but wasn’t sure anymore, so I did a bit of research, [] for instance. It’s related to BD-R burning, with SRM+POW meaning “Sequential Recording Mode + Pseudo-OverWrite”. In essence, this mode is for multi-session discs. If you write a file with the same name and location to the disc in any subsequent session, both files are sitting on the disc physically, as it’s BD-R, not BD-RW.

You can’t really overwrite files on a BD-R. However, the newer file will be the only one shown to the user, and this is called “pseudo-overwrite”, because it looks like the file had been overwritten, when in fact that’s not true.

I guess that POW feature needs some cute little tricks in the UDF file system to work, and it seems that psecbdr.sys filter driver’s doing the magic. I wouldn’t remove it, otherwise such discs may have problems being read on the system I’m guessing. Hi Marco, Just to make sure: What exact operating system are you using? Regular Windows XP 32-Bit or Windows XP x64 Edition? If you click Start / Run or press +, enter winver and hit, you should be able to make sure. The 64-Bit version would give you something like this: winver.exe on Windows XP Pro x64 Edition SP2 The regular 32-Bit version would give you something akin to this: winver.exe on Windows XP Pro 32-Bit SP1, image is I have to ask, because you said you installed the Toshiba UDF 2.5 driver, which is exclusively for the 32-Bit version of Windows XP. Just making sure you’re not running XP x64 and trying to run a 32-Bit kernel driver.

Hi Marco, I studied the technical documentation I found, but it seems UDF 2.5 is the standard file system for all BD media, likely including the discs you burned yourself. You may still want to check your burning softwares’ settings, especially regarding file systems.

Maybe there is a glitch somewhere, since commercial discs seem to work fine. I have to admit, despite owing a burner, I actually never burned any BD-R media, so I only have commercial movie discs available. I don’t even have a BD-R blank media right here, so I can’t test that right now. Deskjet 930C Driver For Windows 7 here.

I may try at a later time, but no promises there In the meantime, your best bet would still be to double-check all the settings of your BD burning application. Hey again Marco, Today I took the time to buy a BD-R disc at a local electronics store. All I got was a single layer BD25, but that should suffice, UNLESS your drive in the XP machine CANNOT read DUAL layer discs, and that’s what you’re burning to!!

In my case, it’s this disc: Maxell BD-R 25GB (click to enlarge) I think the choice of software is critical here, so I used the free tool [], picked all my Timescapes movie files plus Big Buck Bunny, and chose the UDF file system exclusively to make sure there is no “accidental” XP compatibility layer woven into the disc. Check out my settings here: Settings for the UDF 2.6 @ XP test burn (click to enlarge) Actually, I pushed the bars a little here and went for [] instead of just the base [] used on most Blu-Rays. 2.6 is a minor revision otherwise compatible to 2.5, introducing only pseudo-overwrite support when burning media. So I picked only the newest possible file system here. Hi Friend, I have a question.

I have compaq cq41 laptop. When I formatted my laptop with windows 32 bit operating system.

I have also installed w7 service pack 1. Its dvd drive is not reading UDF dics (burned dvds by nero or any burning software) while it reads company level cds normally. I have updated all drives using driver booster. And done almost all the tricks which I found over internet.

When I have updated intel 5 series ATA driver it had worked for first time and again when I chaged the disc it again reading it as a blank disc. I am in problem form more than 4 months. Please help me if you have any suggestion. Hello Chandan, I have to admit, I’m a bit of a loss here We need to clarify what’s going on exactly. You’re saying you’ve installed WinXP 32-Bit, but also have Windows 7 SP1?!

Both show the problem, WinXP and 7? Also I am not sure what a “company level CD” is supposed to be.

And I have no idea what “driver booster” is? Some of those crappy “we download adware for you” tools? Please don’t use them. They rarely help.

Actually, they never really help. I presume that installing the [] won’t help either, as that’s exclusively for UDF 2.5 on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs. You could still try that, but I don’t think it’s going to do much good. Maybe (I know people say this a lot, and it’s rarely actually true, but hey) it’s a drive failure?

You could try to create an image of an affected disc using Nero or maybe the free tool [] and then mount the image to a drive letter using []. That way, we’d know whether the problem is linked to your physical drive or not. This could help in further analyzing and narrowing the problem down. I am sorry I can’t be of more help here at the moment, but it’s just hard to figure out what’s going wrong for you remotely. Maybe you can try the image creation and mounting to see whether it’s truly a file system problem? I was beginning to think I was the last person on the planet using xp64!

But the stuff here should help me eek out another decade out of the old OS. As you offer, I would like your help with retrofitting ACHI drivers. I’d like to enable trim for 2 samsung ssds.

I tried installing samsung’s magician tool, but it just won’t install, as admin, or anything else. Samsung were no help they said trim wasn’t supported under xp. My mobo is an asus P5Q turbo, ICH10R, Current driver: Intel ICH10 Family 4 port serial ATA storage Controller 1 -= 3A20 (2 – 2a26 on 2 port) Legacy ATA mode selected in bois (I get bsods if I enable ACHI) I assume it’s just a case of updating the current driver in device manager with the intel ICH10R ACHI RAID driver I downloaded from asus, then enabling trim with the Adata tool?

If it isn’t, please let me know!!! Hello maxcellerate, It’s not too hard, but it IS dangerous. So I would suggest you use Acronis or Clonezilla or some other tool to back up your system partition first! This might otherwise result in a completely unbootable system!

First you need the plain ICH10R kernel drivers from the F6 floppy disk, these can be conveniently downloaded from ASUS: • [] from the [] Please unpack the driver to some arbitrary location, then right click your ATA storage controller in device manager, and update the drivers for it. Point the installer to the location where you unpacked the files, pick the subfolder Driver 64Bit. Choose the iaAHCI.inf when asked (iaStor.inf is for RAID, don’t pick that, as this may result in failure later on!).

Windows should now BSOD on boot because the AHCI driver is being loaded, looking at an ATA controller, thus panicking and killing the Windows kernel. Go to BIOS and change your SATA controller mode from legacy ATA to AHCI. If all dies painfully, restore backup and switch back to legacy. If it worked, all should be good now. What I do not get however is why Samsungs SSD Magician won’t work for you. I just tried to install its latest incarnation – version 4.4 – on an XP x64 test machine and it installed and worked just fine.

You got.Net 3/4 with all updates? Maybe some system components are missing. Thank you Sooo much for that.

I’ve already got a clonzilla image of my C drive and the AHCI driver, so fingers crossed I’ll try it when I don’t need the computer for a couple of days, just in case. As to Magician, I’ll download the latest, may that it, mine came with the drives and is 3.2. It did seem like it was looking for somthing though, I got this error about half way through installation: “an error occurred while trying to copy a file: Data error (cyclic redundancy check}” – Wot eva that means! Thanks again, I’ll let you know how I get on.

Attention, Internet Explorer User Announcement: Jive has discontinued support for Internet Explorer 7 and below. In order to provide the best platform for continued innovation, Jive no longer supports Internet Explorer 7. Jive will not function with this version of Internet Explorer.

Please consider upgrading to a more recent version of Internet Explorer, or trying another browser such as Firefox, Safari, or Google Chrome. (Please remember to honor your company's IT policies before installing new software!) • • • •.