How to Enable AHCI in Windows 8 After Installation

Written on 11 March, 2012 by Imran Hussain 70 Comments

A lot of users have been messing around with AHCI after installing Windows 8. Some
users have reported that they can’t get Windows 8 to install without disabling AHCI.
Here at iTD, we haven’t faced any such issue though we have a quick fix for such a
situation. It’s very easy to enable AHCI after installing Windows, although it isn’t
visible to users as a simple switch on/off option.

What is AHCI and why should you care?

AHCI ( Advanced Host Controller Interface ) offers native command queuing and hot
plugging through SATA host controllers (Serial-ATA) for hard drives. In simpler
terms, there’s no reason you shouldn’t use it.

So, how do you enable it? Do you have to reinstall

Windows 8 again?
No. You can enable it without losing any data.

Enabling AHCI in Windows 8 requires going through the registry ( yes, it’s still there!
) but it’s slightly different than how it was done in Windows Vista and Windows 7.
You still have to modify a registry key but the key is different now. Follow the guide
below to enable AHCI in but make sure that you’ve backed up your data as well as
registry, just in case.

1. Exit all applications

2. Go to the start screen and type in regedit.
3. If you see the UAC (User Account Control) dialogue box, just click continue.
4. Locate the the following registry subkey:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\storahci\

5. Locate the Error Control entry which should have a value of 3. Right-click on
the entry name, select Modify, change the value from 3 to 0 and click OK.
6. Open the StartOverride folder and locate an entry named 0 with a value of 3.
Change the value to 0 by following the procedure in step 5.
7. Restart and enable AHCI in your system BIOS