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System Hangs when SATA-AHCI Support is Enabled

Problem:

  • The system hangs and "reboot may be required" is shown in the lower left corner of the BootIt BM desktop.

  • When in Partition Work, the system hangs when the BIOS (direct) bus method is used.

  • The system hangs for a while then shows no partitions on the drive.

Condition:

  • The SATA-AHCI option in BootIt BM is enabled.
  • The system uses SATA hard drives.

Cause:

  • This occurs when the BIOS attempts to access the SATA hard drive and either times-out or is unable to return.

Solution:

  • Disable the SATA-AHCI option in Settings; or

  • Reboot the system using Ctrl+Alt+Delete when you see the "reboot may be required" message.

Details:

BootIt BM includes support for bypassing the BIOS when accessing SATA drives. Due to system specifications actually in use, this requires BootIt BM to initialize and communicate directly with the SATA controller.

Unfortunately, the hand-off mechanism as implemented by many systems is one direction only. This means that once one of those BIOSes gives up control of the SATA controller, it won't attempt to take it back. As a result, when a BIOS request is issued for a SATA drive, the BIOS hangs up.

When Partition Work is opened and the BIOS (direct) method is selected, BootIt BM attempts to match BIOS drives to SATA drives. If it can't--such as when a BIOS doesn't provide the correct information needed--then the BIOS is used to access the hard drive. When Partition Work is closed, BootIt BM releases direct control of the SATA controller and all future SATA hard drive requests are handled by the BIOS. These future hard drive requests can occur if you choose an option that requires BootIt BM to read from a drive or load information from the BootIt BM partition itself.

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