Dell Insprion 620/Vostro 260 NO Bios Setting for AHCI

Before (ATAPI):

After (AHCI):

Next step is to get a SATA III card in there on the PCI Express 2.0 port. The SSD is a samsung 840 pro so good for 500mb/s read and write.  Are any particular expansion cards recommended? I'll pay up to about £30/$50. Any more and you might as well get a new motherboard for about $90 and get PCI-e 3.0, usb 3.0, sata III, etc, etc.  Am assuming the Inspiron 620 case is standard ATX?

Most of the budget SATAIII addin card are not able to handle all the bandwith of SATA3 because they are using a PCIex x1 slot. So it doesn't matter.

And, in all case, you shouldn't be able to blindly find the difference between two identical PCs, one using SATA2 and one SATA3: Except on a heavy hammered server, you can't have the queue depth needed to hammer the SATA2 bus.

I'm unearthing this old thread with a question:  I just got a used Inspiron 620 (ebay), and promptly upgraded to the latest available bios (MS-A08 from Jan 2013).  Of course, it was then that I realized that my drives were showing up in ATA mode vs SATA.  So, now I've already got the latest bios installed unpatched.

I've got the AmiBCP tool and I'm confident about doing the patching I need (and no, the MS-A08 bios does not enable AHCI, in case you are wondering).  

Original question (see edit below):

So, my question is simple:  How do I FORCE a reflash of my patched MS-A08 bios? Obviously I'm not using the Dell .exe  at this point.  There are the AFUWIN.EXE and AFUWINx64.EXE files in the extracted files.  (I'm using Windows 7 64-bit).  Am I to assume I'm running the x64.exe file with the appropriate options?  I'm no PC noob, but I haven't done manual flashing in a while, and would want to get this absolutely right.

Assume the following for procedure:

Patched MS-A08.BIN file

Windows 7 x64

What should the command line be for proper flashing?  

Thanks!

Edit:  After posting this, I see I've got some flaky things going on with my 620.  Since I didn't notice this behavior until flashing to MS-08, I'm going to try and do a two-fer, and patch an MS-04 for AHCI and then downgrade to that.  The flakiness:  All of the sudden the pc won't boot completely from a cold boot.  It's not a Windows problem, either, as even if I go into the Setup/Bios, it will freeze up and not let me move around with the keyboard.  If I don't bother going into the setup, it just stalls on "Starting Windows".  What's odd is that if I actually DO get into Windows and do a simple "restart" from Windows, it boots back fine.  It's only the so-called cold boot that's the issue.  I'm starting to get some buyer's remorse about this pc, lol.  Should have done more homework before pulling the Ebay switch.

I've been thinking about the question I asked about running the patched bios file (now indented/highlighted with yellow), and now it makes sense.  Tell me if this is right:  

• Run the regular bios update exe file.  
• When exe GUI comes on screen (waiting for user input), go to the temp folder that it created and use AmiBCP to make the appropriate changes outlined earlier in this thread.
• Save changes with AmiBCP to the temp folder location the original file lived in.
• Since the bios .exe GUI is still on-screen, go ahead and commit to the flash.  

Hi Slikkster,

Great job. Thanks for posting the detailed instructions. Very helpful. Obviously, the BIOS downgrade is the complicated part, and only applies if that's what a user needs to do.

Have done all these steps with patching but still no option for AHCI, double checked files in AMIBCP and they seemed to be changed correctly, just not showing anything extra in bios.

Sounds like you might have missed a step in the patching process.  Have you checked each of the changes LitwDell shows in yellow on page 2?  Did you save patched bios to the same location as your original unpatched (so it overwrites it vs. creating a separate patched file)?  Just thinking out loud.  If you're not seeing the SATA AHCI options, you must have done something wrong.

I want to modify my inspiron 2020 aio to enable ahci, but did not successful. Can anyone give me a help?

The offical bios is here:

www.dell.com/.../inspiron-one-20-2020-aio

I know this is a user forum. Dell's surpport staff could not solve this problem, so I came here to see if it can be help.

No.:emotion-9:

Thanks Erwan, I have uploaded zipped bios folder to my skydriver

https://skydrive.live.com/#cid=0E07B226AF5151DD&id=E07B226AF5151DD%21116

Why No ?

Because, even if you are not a Dell Rep, you ask like one and do not want us to modify bios to allow something that was restricted by Dell ?

In that particular case, It will be really a pity if Dell locked the bios in SATA (non ahci) mode for such a recent computer.

To be sure, as i can't extract the bios file as i don't have any inspiron 2020, i need the files in it: double click on the .exe, go to %temp% directory, there will be a new directory in it (i think in A04 named folder). Zip everything in that directory and give a link to it and I will have a look at it.

I don't know if above link is working, or, try this one

http://sdrv.ms/13T4Hgo

hi. Skydrive's link is working, but the bios is a new UEFI bios. I've never patched an uefi bios and will not risk giving you a modded bios I can't verify on my own.

thanks Erwan, this is a difficult one. actually, I have follow your way to modify it, but it was not working. then I have to wait to see if dell will update it in new bios.