E
Emicsec
Hello,
I've just finished putting together a PC out of old bits and pieces:
Motherboard: Asus Rampage Formula (X48 / ICH9R)
CPU: Intel Q9650
RAM: 8GB Corsair Dominator DDR2 PC2-8500
SSD: 2x Kingston A400 in RAID-0
GPU: 2x HD5870 using Crossfire
I've installed Windows 7 x64, as the hardware's all just too old to get driver support for Windows 10 and the installation worked fine.
The SSDs are in RAID-0, set up using the onboard ICH9R RAID controller and I think this is giving me "weird" behaviour with some Windows 7 elements:
Windows Update just won't work - it will either report "downloading - 0%" or "preparing to install..." and get no further - I've left it overnight, but with no progress. I've also been through all the troubleshooting steps I could find, including:
>restarting all services
>renaming the softwareDistribution and catroot2 folders
>installing and running the WindowsUpdate troubleshooter
>installing and running the Windows Update Readiness tool (KB947821)
>disabling all non-MS Services in MSConfig
>uninstalling antivirus
>disabling Windows Firewall
>downloading and running Reset-WindowsUpdate.ps1
>running chkdsk -f -r (it found free space marked as allocated and fixed that)
>running SFC
>deleting windows, resetting the RAID array and reinstalling windows
...but none of these has got Windows Update working.
I noticed that the Windows Update Troubleshooter always reports the error 0x80070057, which seems to be some sort of file-system / storage access based error, as one it couldn't fix. I've also found that, when I run the Windows Experience Index tool, it fails with the error "Failed to properly assess the disk. The parameter is incorrect" - I managed to repeat this by running "winsat disk" at the command prompt.
On top of all that, I found that the Intel Matrix Storage Manager (IMSM) failed to populate its panels, throwing the error "A plug in did not provide a page for the selected device - a plug in failed to load". As it looked like a RAID driver was probably at the root of all the problems, I checked and updated all out of date drivers using EasyDriver (from ASUS), but with no improvement. I then installed a different version of IMSM (v8.9 rather than v15.something), ignored the warnings that I was installing an older version and, what do you know, IMSM found the RAID array and populated itself successfully.
Windows update and winsat still don't work, though...the winsat error is the same.
So, I think I have a driver problem with the RAID array running through the ICH9R, which is stopping windows update from being able to access the drive in precisely the way it wants and, as a result, stalling it at "downloading 0%" or "preparing to install...". I've tried three different versions of the chipset drivers, though; the only difference is that IMSM doesn't work with two of them.
However - I previously installed Windows 7 x64 onto mechanical HDDs via the ICH9R controller in RAID-0 and windows update worked fine, so it seems to be a problem also related to my use of SSD based RAID.
I can install the updates one-by-one from the Microsoft Update Catalog, but it's a faff and, I've found, not all the updates actually appear there...
If anybody has any suggestions which aren't just "buy a new computer", I'd be very grateful to hear your thoughts,
Thanks
Continue reading...
I've just finished putting together a PC out of old bits and pieces:
Motherboard: Asus Rampage Formula (X48 / ICH9R)
CPU: Intel Q9650
RAM: 8GB Corsair Dominator DDR2 PC2-8500
SSD: 2x Kingston A400 in RAID-0
GPU: 2x HD5870 using Crossfire
I've installed Windows 7 x64, as the hardware's all just too old to get driver support for Windows 10 and the installation worked fine.
The SSDs are in RAID-0, set up using the onboard ICH9R RAID controller and I think this is giving me "weird" behaviour with some Windows 7 elements:
Windows Update just won't work - it will either report "downloading - 0%" or "preparing to install..." and get no further - I've left it overnight, but with no progress. I've also been through all the troubleshooting steps I could find, including:
>restarting all services
>renaming the softwareDistribution and catroot2 folders
>installing and running the WindowsUpdate troubleshooter
>installing and running the Windows Update Readiness tool (KB947821)
>disabling all non-MS Services in MSConfig
>uninstalling antivirus
>disabling Windows Firewall
>downloading and running Reset-WindowsUpdate.ps1
>running chkdsk -f -r (it found free space marked as allocated and fixed that)
>running SFC
>deleting windows, resetting the RAID array and reinstalling windows
...but none of these has got Windows Update working.
I noticed that the Windows Update Troubleshooter always reports the error 0x80070057, which seems to be some sort of file-system / storage access based error, as one it couldn't fix. I've also found that, when I run the Windows Experience Index tool, it fails with the error "Failed to properly assess the disk. The parameter is incorrect" - I managed to repeat this by running "winsat disk" at the command prompt.
On top of all that, I found that the Intel Matrix Storage Manager (IMSM) failed to populate its panels, throwing the error "A plug in did not provide a page for the selected device - a plug in failed to load". As it looked like a RAID driver was probably at the root of all the problems, I checked and updated all out of date drivers using EasyDriver (from ASUS), but with no improvement. I then installed a different version of IMSM (v8.9 rather than v15.something), ignored the warnings that I was installing an older version and, what do you know, IMSM found the RAID array and populated itself successfully.
Windows update and winsat still don't work, though...the winsat error is the same.
So, I think I have a driver problem with the RAID array running through the ICH9R, which is stopping windows update from being able to access the drive in precisely the way it wants and, as a result, stalling it at "downloading 0%" or "preparing to install...". I've tried three different versions of the chipset drivers, though; the only difference is that IMSM doesn't work with two of them.
However - I previously installed Windows 7 x64 onto mechanical HDDs via the ICH9R controller in RAID-0 and windows update worked fine, so it seems to be a problem also related to my use of SSD based RAID.
I can install the updates one-by-one from the Microsoft Update Catalog, but it's a faff and, I've found, not all the updates actually appear there...
If anybody has any suggestions which aren't just "buy a new computer", I'd be very grateful to hear your thoughts,
Thanks
Continue reading...