X25-M G1 + Win7 + ICH10 + AHCI = wierd BIOS hang

I'm not sure if this is the right forum for this, because I can't tell if the problem is the with the motherboard, the OS, or the drive, but I'm having a problem where installing Windows 7 RTM on my Intel SSD is causing my computer to hang in the BIOS drive detection process, before the BIOS even tries to boot the OS. Has anyone seen anything like this?

Hardware Config:

Gigabyte EX58-UD4P w/ F8 BIOS
Core i7-920 (not OC'ed for the moment)
ICH10R SATA in AHCI mode
GTX285 video card
6GB triple-channel DDR3
Intel 80GB X25-M G1 boot (ICH10 channel 0)
WD Caviar Black 640GB (ICH10 channel 1)
WD Velociraptor 300GB (ICH10 channel 2)

This system has been running Win7 RC 7100 for months now without any major problems.

The other day I got my retail Win7 Pro Upgrade in the mail so, without touching the hardware configuration or BIOS, I backed up my SSD boot drive and proceeded to boot from the 64-bit install DVD. The installer detected all the drives in AHCI mode, so I blew away the old boot partition and let the installer repartition. The install proceeded smoothly until the point where it rebooted the system for the first time.

Now here's where it gets weird. When the computer comes back up, it hangs at the point where the Intel AHCI BIOS is trying to detect all the drives attached to the SATA ports. Specifically, it hangs right before the point where it prints out 6 lines, enumerating what is connected to each port. It does print out the header line before that where it says 3 devices are detected, but doesn't go any farther than that.

If I reset to IDE/Compatibility mode, the OS boots, but goes into the "Safe Mode" menu screen. If I continue to boot normally, I think it hangs during the remainder of the setup process (I only tried this once so I don't recall the details)

The only way I can recover from this situation is to wipe the Win7 partitions off the SSD. After that the BIOS comes up normally until I try to install Win7 on the SSD again.

If I plug the SSD into my Silicon Image SiL3132 controller, everything installs fine, and this is how I have it running currently (SSD on the Sil3132, everything else on the ICH10R).

Anyone have any ideas what's causing this? It can't be a driver issue because Win7 hasn't even booted yet. The only thing I can think of is that maybe the ICH10R BIOS is trying to read some kind of partition or boot sector information off the SSD, and Windows 7 is putting something there that is somehow confusing it.

If it were me, I'd be removing every drive but the SSD on the ICH Chan 0 and trying again with one stick of RAM.

I did try that with no improvement. I also tried moving the SSD to other ports besides 0. One thing I did notice though, was that the Intel AHCI BIOS (or maybe its the motherboard BIOS, I don't know) prints what appears to be a two-digit diagnostic code in the upper right corner of the screen as it's booting. When things are working, it cycles through a number of codes, ending up on "10". When it hangs, the code stops at "23", so that might be a clue. Unfortunately I haven't had any luck finding information on the meanings of the codes.

i had someting similar happen
what i did was unplug all of my other SATA HD's in my computer
so had just the SSD plugin and it worked


make sure you set it as your primary HD in the bios
it won't reconzie it as a bootable hd if you don't
so i would try that first

Stupid me, didn't notice this was a year old thread....so nevermind

That's okay, it's interesting that you saw it with a totally different SSD brand (OCZ w/ Sandforce controller). That suggests the issue may be with the Intel's motherboard AHCI BIOS rather than the SSD's firmware.