Xp on Ali chipsets, Primary IDE must be set to 'PIO Only'

[soyabean]

If anyone has gotten Xp to successfully install on an Ali chipset Thinkpad, you'll notice you get an UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME blue screen on start, and you have to go into Safe Mode and change the Primary IDE from 'DMA if available' to 'PIO Only'. Even with plenty of ram, any thinkpad not using a 5400rpm hdd has just cut its performance in half.

Ignore all the UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME remedies out there - there is nothing wrong with the hdd and chkdsk and fixboot and mbr's won't do squat. Apparently Xp SP2 wants to speak to the hdd in UDMA2, but the Ali chipset seems to be skittish on that.

Drivers built into SP2 are the same version and build as ULi IntegratedDriver2.20 (ULi is the new Ali). But some blame is on the Ali IDE drivers, it can be re-written to support accordingly, just none exist.

So, Thinkpads of this nature are forced to live life in 'PIO Only' forever? Anyone cared to find a cure?

[eTools]

My T43 on an ATI chipset is running Windows XP just fine in DMA transfer mode. Although I did receive a blue screen error the day I got it, I have not experienced any such problems since.

Is there anything else unique to your system?

[soyabean]

ATI is the video chipset, ALi is the IDE controller northbridge/southbridge chipset