Install Windows XP on SSD with AHCI mode

Install first Windows XP 32bit on the SSD with IDE mode enabled.

Download Intel® Matrix Storage Manager

IATA89CD.exe

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/17882/Intel-Matrix-Storage-Manager

Open CMD
Navigate to IATA89CD.exe with cd

Extract:
IATA89CD.exe -a

Navigate to

C:\Program Files\Intel\Intel Matrix Storage Manager\winall\Driver

Copy/paste all files from that folder into C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers

Open Device Manager

Go to IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers
Rightclick to update driver on one of them

Select “Install from list or specific location”

Select “Don’t search. I will choose the driver to install”

Select “Have Disk…”

Browse to C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers

Select iaStor.sys

Click OK

Select driver from the list

“Intel(R) ICH9M-E/M Sata AHCI Controller”

Redo these steps on other controllers until you get a BSOD.

Be sure to change the BIOS to AHCI mode when rebooting the system!

Note: Use winsetupfromusb to load the ISO to your USB Thumb drive
http://www.winsetupfromusb.com/files/download-info/winsetupfromusb-1-6-exe/

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SSD Enhancements

Disabling background disk defragmentation

Key Name:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Dfrg\BootOptimizeFunction\ Name: Enable Type: REG_SZ Value: N

Disable Background auto-layout:

Key Name: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\OptimalLayout Value Name: EnableAutoLayout Type: REG_DWORD Value: 0

Disable update of filesystem’s “last access timestamps”

“Key Name: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem Name: NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate Type: REG_DWORD Value: 1

Disable Prefetch

Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters Name: EnablePrefetcher Type: REG_DWORD Value: 0

Optionally: Go to the system settings and disable the swap file (pagefile) unless you are very low on system memory, and disable the system restore service unless needed. You can also move the temporary and log files directories away to non-SSD media if available, see below.

Now, close the registry editor, reboot and you are done. Easy, wasn’ t it? Remember not use defrag utilities on SSD disks! For additional details, please refer to – http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms912916(v=winembedded.5).aspx — Some of above information is collected from there.

Partition alignment

Align your partitions so that they start and end at 4k disk blocks. E.g. read this post on Anandtech. Any modern partition tool will do this automatically. I recommend GParted. However the Windows XP partitioner is old and will do this wrong in most cases. The reason is that modern drives, including SSDs and hard disks, operate on 4k data blocks at a time. If the partition is misaligned all partition blocks stretch across disk blocks. If a partition block is processed the drive will need to actually process two disk blocks! This slows disk operations down.

File system settings

If you format the partition, make sure to set the file system allocation block size to 4k. For XP, it is best to choose NTFS as the file system and 4096 as the Allocation Unit Size, check Quick Format, and hit “Ok”. Am I missing something crucial? Please tell me, it will be appreciated.


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