XP pro installation on Pavilion

[Guest]

I bought a new laptop last week with XP Home installed (German version). As I
am more comfortable with English, I also bought OEM XP Pro CD to install.
Unfortunately, neither HP (laptop mfg.) nor Microsoft is able to confirm me
about drivers. Before moving to XP Pro, I did make recovery disk of XP Home
(German version). I also made a list of Drivers. Now comparing it to the new
list, I am missing SATA AHCI Contoller. I downloaded all Drivers from HP
support site and did exactly what it instructed. Unfortunately, no help.

Can any please help to confirm if my intallation is fine without this driver?

 

[R. McCarty]

Newer motherboard Chipsets provide for 2 operational modes for
SATA controllers, IDE or AHCI (Advanced Host Controller
Interface). Depending on how the BIOS is setup controls whether
XP requires no F6 (Install time) drivers to be provided or not. If the
controller is set to IDE mode then XP will not need the AHCI driver.
AHCI mode provides the ability for new SATA drives to utilize their
NCQ (Native Command Queuing) similar to a feature that SCSI has
had for some time.

Usually the AHCI driver is provided by the Chipset manufacturer -
such as Intel.

 

[Guest]

Hello McCarty, thanks for your effort and explanation. I am no Hardware
professional but I think i do understand it. Actaully, i saw couple of
drivers in my previous installation and now see only one (which looks also
different).

Earlier with XP home, I had:
1. Intel (R) 8280 1G (ICH 7 Family) Ultra ATA Storage Controller - 27DF
2. Intel (R) 8280 1GBM SATA AHCI Controller

And now with XP Pro I see:
Intel (R) 8280 GBM/GHM (ICH 7 -M Family) Serial ATA Storage Controller 27C4

I did F6 during installation and used the floppy drive (that I made by
downloading the drivers available on HP support website) but there seems to
be nothing different in Device Manager Listing.

Can you still help?
Thanks a lot.
Best regards!