Windows 7 - AHCI before install - Was actually USB3 issue

[CelticWhisper]

I'm having a spot of trouble with getting Windows 7 installed on a laptop (Lenovo IdeaPad S405). Can anyone tell me exactly where I'm supposed to put SATA AHCI drivers so they will be visible and accessible during the W7 install process?

I'm trying to setup W7 on this system with AHCI pre-enabled and while I've found hundreds of sites explaining how to enable AHCI after the OS is already installed, I'm getting headaches trying to install the OS with AHCI already turned on. I downloaded the controller/chipset driver from Lenovo's website and extracted it to the USB drive, but when I browse for a driver at the "Select the driver to be installed." window, I only see the following drives:

Windows8_OS (C:)

LENOVO (D:)

Boot (X:)

I thought Boot might be it but I created a "Drivers" folder at the root of the flash drive and I'm not seeing it in that directory.

Help?

[Detection]

You mean once you enable AHCI, Win 7 setup can not see your HDD?

Not sure I follow, if you have AHCI enabled in the BIOS and setup can see the HDD, you don't need to do anything else

[CelticWhisper]

Okay, I figured out what I was doing wrong. It wasn't a SATA/AHCI issue as I first thought - I had the install media in a USB3 port and W7 doesn't have a generic USB3 driver - only a USB2 driver. Moved the install flash drive to a USB2 port and that did the trick.

Still interested in this though - is there any way to incorporate device drivers into a W7 install like you could do with XP?

[Detection]

Okay, I figured out what I was doing wrong. It wasn't a SATA/AHCI issue as I first thought - I had the install media in a USB3 port and W7 doesn't have a generic USB3 driver - only a USB2 driver. Moved the install flash drive to a USB2 port and that did the trick.

Still interested in this though - is there any way to incorporate device drivers into a W7 install like you could do with XP?

http://www.rt7lite.com/

[CelticWhisper]

You mean once you enable AHCI, Win 7 setup can not see your HDD?

Not sure I follow, if you have AHCI enabled in the BIOS and setup can see the HDD, you don't need to do anything else

To clarify for anyone reading this in the future: Yeah, what Detection said is what I thought was happening - with AHCI enabled, Win 7 setup couldn't see the HDD. See post #3 in this thread for what actually happened.

http://www.rt7lite.com/

I appreciate it, but...urg. There's no way to do it without third-party tools?

[Detection]

To clarify for anyone reading this in the future: Yeah, what Detection said is what I thought was happening - with AHCI enabled, Win 7 setup couldn't see the HDD. See post #3 in this thread for what actually happened.

Ah yea I did that with my currect motherboard too, its actually asking for the DVD\CD driver which I also took for it not seeing my HDD until I shifted USB ports

I appreciate it, but...urg. There's no way to do it without third-party tools?

Not that I know of, I guess if you knew where to put them, you could use something as simple as an ISO creation tool after you have extracted the 7 ISO and copied your drivers to their respective places but I don't know if they are inside of other compressed files or just in folders

[CelticWhisper]

'sokay. Thanks anyway - I know I've heard about RT7lite before so it's worth a shot.