I am using the Kernel version 2.6.20 and did not have any problems with ICH9R - not in IDE mode nor AHCI (now everything is running in AHCI mode). Which kernel version are you using? ICH9R is quite new, so yours might be a little bit outdated.
Eh man, perhaps it is now time for you to switch to a more flexible distribution building up your system with specific kernels (and kernel options) for your drives/controller & graphics card and specific options for the software you want to install?
Have a look at
Gentoo. The installation handbook for 64-bit systems is the one for the amd64 arch
here.
Feel free to delete this comment.
The Gentoo distributions I installed are currently running very well:
- VIA Epia SP8000 800Mhz Via Eden CPU in 32-Bit mode.
- Notebook 2Ghz Pentium-M CPU, nVidia GeForce Go 6600 GPU in 32-Bit mode with VmWare-VMs installed.
- Server Core 2 Duo 2.13Ghz in 64-bit mode, nVidia 1950 Pro, P35 with ICH9R in AHCI mode for all HDs, with Xen-VMs installed.
I say this because I was using first Suse and after some time Red Hat but ultimately I switched a few years ago to Gentoo because of its flexibility and performance - I am still loving it - and if you start now fiddling around with VMs, specific hardware configs and software RAID and eventually LVM you'll end up having even more wishes that standard distributions won't be able to satisfy.
The downside is that the initial installation is manual and slower than Suse & Co., but once it's set-up and works you'll have less troubles than with the other distros. Have a look at
this for a small introduction.
Feel free to delete this post as it does not directly relate to your problem.