Multiple Q's; OS freezes; SSD not recognised.

[idata]

I bought an Intel X25-M Postville 80GB a few weeks ago. Right after I got it, Windows 7 was installed (legal MSDN version).

Everything has been working quite fine. Except that sometimes the system will freeze. Nothing will work or respond.

I have the same Windows 7 version running on my laptop, there the system never freezes, and there's even more stuff installed and running.

Today I had 3 freezes so far. it keeps getting worse and it is starting to annoy me. Even when there is only Firefox running and this support site is loaded - I go to the Start button, and all freezes up.I've downloaded the Intel SSD Toolbox v1.2 - but it does not recognise my SSD. It says "Error connecting to drive".After some reading online, appearently one has to change some BIOS settings.I've been through the BIOS a few times, but couldn't find many SATA related settings.

Bios -> Main -> SATA4 (Intel SSDSA2M080) -> gives 2 options:

Extended IDE Drive: - Auto (selected) - NoneAccess mode: - Auto (selected) - Large

That were the default values, and I've not changed them as I have no idea what they mean.

Someone else posted here there was a SATA setting in the "Pntegrated Pheriphicals" part of the BIOS, but I have none there.

What else is there to try?

Thank you

[idata]

I think I had very similar issues. A couple of forums I've read said to change Windows 7 to performance mode (not balanced...which was what I had before). I believe performance mode does not turn off the hard disk (which is what I had previously).

Secondly, I heard there was issues with several anti-virus programs so I uninstalled AVG 9 and Malwarebytes and installed MSE (Microsoft Security Essentials).

Thirdly, I updated ALL drivers to the newest available drivers.

No freezes since.

Back info:

Windows 7 x64 Ultimate 40gb

Mac OSX Snow Leopard 120 gb

AHCI Enabled (Do not use Intel Matrix Driver...I hear it has freezing problems...I could be wrong though)

Newest firmware updated, but have not used the new toolbox optmizer

[idata]

Thank you for your reply.

First time I had the freeze was after I hadn't used the computer for a while, I suspected something alike and adjusted the power settings to never turn off the disk. Last freeze was this morning (several actually). There was only about two minutes between booting and freezing.

I have McAfee running. Is that one known to cause issues?

All drivers are up-to-date. Except for my mainboard, I've been to the website, downloaded an installer, but got a message that I'm not running Winodws XP or Vista, so the program won't burn me a CD :S

But according to the change log, there were almost no changes.

I have yet to update the SSD firmware. First I thought I'd get that toolbox to work. If that has issues accessing the disk, I assume the firmware tool would too.

I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate (x86)

SATA settings are posted in my first post, they are the only settings I could find. Where do I enable that "AHCI" ??

I've read that in multiple threads, but not where to set it 'something' to AHCI.