Good afternoon; first of all, thank you for sharing the skills in this forum.

I find myself in a quite odd situation.

I have a(n overly) complex system, based on a triple/quadruple bootloader:
- Win10
- Win 7
- 2 Legacy Windows XP (1 regular XP Pro, 1 "Audio" XP, with a limited configuration for audio purposes).

All working good, with the ability to boot from each of the partition with IDE as SATA option in the BIOS.
The mobo is an Asus P9X79 Deluxe, the SSD is a Samsung 850.

I made the mistake of turning on "AHCI" in the SATA options in the BIOS - I have external eSATA ports that I struggle to use with an external drive enclosure -.
Not only I didn't solve the eSATA ports problem, but I found myself in the situation in which I messed up with the multiple bootloader...

Apparently, Win 10 boots fine with AHCI (but doesn't anymore if I try to go back to IDE, presenting an "INACCESSABLE_BOOT_DEVICE" error after the boot system selection); but Seven (not to mention XP and XP Audio) does not, ant they require IDE.

Is there a way to go definitely back to IDE (which is the lower common denominator of my system: XP Audio will not install AHCI driver, and I don't need the potential performance improvements coming from AHCI)?

Hope my question doesn't seem too trivial, but I couldn't find any guidance.
And yes: the next system that I am building will have multiple disks, each one with a single OS and bootloader.. :)

Tranfa

Windows XP and Windows 7 make excellent bedfellows on a dual or multiboot system with both running in AHCI mode. You must install XP first then 7.

Windows 7 and Windows 10(build 1607) do not make good bedfellows however. I do a lot of testing with Nuhis NTLite and on many occasion a w10 test install royally messes up my system causing chkdsk to run on all partitions if it hasnt already totally screwed up the booting process leaving the pc totally unbootable which has happened on many an occasion.

Hi and thank you to both.

EmmaRoyd, my purpose is to avoid reinstalling anything from scratch, if possible (the system is an old one that I will maintain for legacy purposes, and the new one is already in route).
The whole multiple bootloader architecture was working well, before I took the decision of going AHCI in order to solve a problem (and instead I opened another one... :) )

Fernando, the AHCI driver in Win10 should be the Asmedia 106x SATA Controller (I will have the PC available later today so I'll double check).
There should be no AHCI driver installed for Seven or XP, which explains the behavior of these OS.
What prevents me to install the AHCI driver in each of the OS is the fact that the Audio XP partition has very limited functionalities, and I'm sure that could work only on IDE - hence the path you suggest seems the best one.
A noobish question: where could I find the PCIIDE.SYS driver in order to install it?

Thank you again!
Tranfa

@Tranfa , i can only report my own findings with an AMD A88X system, i work with audio and video.

Uhm...in Device Manager, under "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers", I have only two instances of "Standard SATA AHCI Controller" (both presenting mshdc.inf as Inf Name).

I don't find "Intel SATA AHCI Controller" among the devices, so I don't know what and how to update.

@EmmaRoyd:

Emma, the XP was actually lighted through NTLite; this happened around 2010, and I've lost the instruction I followed (they were in an Italian audiophile forum that has been discontinued).
I still have the image though; would it be of any help?

Interesting...the driver installation (possible only through the "Have disk", as you pointed out), is taking ages....and doesn's seem to come to an end...

It doesn't allow me to stop the wizard...

Sorry EmmaRoyd,

The partition with Audio XP was created with nLite (not NT, my bad).

But the issue of the neverending installation is on the Win10 partition, not the Audio XP...

I need to add the IDE drivers in Win10, not Audio XP...

@Fernando , I have edited some of my posts that do not directly relate to the driver question. :)