Crashing (BSOD) when you close Sandra?? Evian.sys is evil

[RBuck]

Evian.sys is a packaged service with Promise Fasttrak drivers build 42 and 44. Promise pulled both of these drivers due to a rash of problems. You can use build 42 or 44 drivers, but be sure to disable the Evian "service". In order to see the Evian service in Win2K you must load Device Manager and toggle the View hidden devices option. Then you will find it. Set it to disabled and you can then close Sandra without BSOD and enjoy a much more stable system.

Thought I'd pass the tidbit along.

 

[kylef]

I just ran into this today, and luckily searched the forums before I posted a message. Thanks for the tip, RBuck!

If you don't mind me asking, how did you find out about this problem? And are there updated Promise drivers that I can get for my MSI K7T Turbo-R motherboard?

Thanks!!

Kyle

 

[kylef]

Also, what exactly does evian.sys do? The only info I could get was that its display name is "PtiCache"...

And I can't find ANYTHING on Promise's website about the problem.

 

[kylef]

Hmmm.... I just noticed that after disabling the "Evian" Service, I can no longer open Internet Explorer... I get an internal error, and it gives me the option of reporting the problem to M$ (LOL).

Hmmm... So it looks like I can either turn Evian off and avoid BSODs but not be able to run my web browser, or I can turn it back on and just get BSODs all the time.

What's up with that?

 

[kylef]

OK... I'm now advising everyone NOT to follow RBuck's advice above... I just had serious issues with Explorer.exe and various other system programs, resulting in a forced reboot.

Once I booted in Safe mode and re-enabled the Evian driver, things were back to their normal "instable" state.

 

[RBuck]

I've disabled the evian "service" on 5 different systems running the MSI TurboR mainboard with different configurations so far with ZERO problems. Either you are doing something wrong, or have a configuration unknown to me. Contact Promise support, they will advise you to disable Evian.sys or move to the release drivers on their site. You will notice that build 42 and 44 drivers cannot be found on their site because they were YANKED!! The Evian caching module was never intended to be used with Win2K.

 

[kylef]

Ok, here goes:

I am NOT using build 42 or 44 of the FastTrak drivers. I was originally using version 1.30 build 60, which came from MSI's website. I then tried version 2.0 build 6 from Promise's website, and I STILL had the problem with Evian.sys.

I don't know what you mean by "release" drivers, because I believe I AM using their "release" drivers AFAIK.

I'm thinking at this point that by simply re-installing the newer drivers over the old ones, I did not eliminate the old "evian.sys" dependency. But since Win2k cannot boot from my drive without the promise driver installed, I cannot remove it and then re-install it without Wiping Windows.



<< Either you are doing something wrong, or have a configuration unknown to me. >>



This is quite possible. I don't pretend to be an all-knowing expert, although I have been around the block a few times.

Here's how I did it. Logged in as Administrator, I went into Device Manager and checked &quot;Show Hidden Devices&quot;, expanded the &quot;Non Plug-and-Play Devices&quot; subtree, and right-clicked on the Evian service to select &quot;Properties.&quot; I changed the &quot;Boot&quot; option to &quot;Disabled.&quot; I then rebooted. Please tell me if I did something wrong, because I would really like to know.

The only devices in my system are a generic ATAPI CD-ROM drive, my bootable IBM 75GXP hard drive (on IDE3), a Linksys EtherPCI II card (slot 3), and an ATI Xpert98 PCI video card (slot 2). I don't think this sort of configuration is unreasonable.

If I don't hear anything more I will certainly contact Promise tech support.

 

[RBuck]

So, are you using the onboard controller? You said 1 ibm drive connected to IDE3, so I am assuming you created a 1 drive stripe array?

That is exactly how I disabled evian.sys, so you did nothing wrong. I don't claim to be an expert either, but I do want to help.. I'll hop over to their site and see if there are new drivers, I don't recall a build 60 driver, maybe theres been some new releases..?

post more in a few..

 

[RBuck]

Ok, just went to their site and it appears to be having problems, but using their FTP site ftp.promise.com if you go to the controllers\ide\fastrak100 area you will find the build 33 driver which I was talking about. FT100D130b33.zip -> In this file you'll find there is no evian.sys file. This is the driver that does not use evian.sys. Now then, I personally have not used this driver because I do not know if it will work with the onboard controller, and didn't want to find out the hard way. But when I was dealing with this issue Promise kept referring to this driver as the current release driver, and referring to the build 44 and 46 drivers as beta which were released at one time but pulled due to problems with the caching component (evian.sys). They were very hesitant to help me because my controller was onboard (and good luck getting support on it from MSI or any other mainboard manufacturer) but advised me to either install the build 33 drivers, or disable the evian.sys service. I've been using the driver provided with the mainboard (which is build 46) and just disabling the evian service as previously described with absolutely no problems, my system is extremely stable.

Additionally, I am running the beta overclockers bios. But shouldnt have anything to do with this incident.

 

[kylef]

Thanks for the help so far, RBuck.

I too flashed the 1.00b16 BIOS on my board. Do you get an error &quot;Unknown Flash type&quot; immediately before your OS loads? I can't figure out what that means...

I just installed the version 1.30b33 drivers and disabled Evian and uninstalled PtiCache and rebooted. After boot, I checked Device Manager to make sure Evian was gone. It was.

But when I exited from Sandra, guess what? BSOD! in &quot;Evian.sys&quot; yet again!

Man, this is seriously getting annoying...

 

[kylef]

Here's a question for you: did you install the Win2k drivers as a fasttrak 4d39 or 4d34? (I think those were the options)... I didn't know which one to pick, as I couldn't find any such model number anywhere...

 

[RBuck]

I installed the drivers at the time of Win2K install, pressing F6 repeatedly at the first screen. The only choices I had were: Promise Fastrak100 Lite controller Windows 2000 and Promise Fastrak100 Lite controller Windows NT 4.0. So obviously I chose the Windows 2000 option. But remember, I used the included floppy with the mainboard, and after Win2K was installed my version numbers (found in the details of the controller in device manager) were build 46. I haven't installed the Build 33 drivers, all I did was disable the Evian service in Device Manager.

You can also track down Evian.sys in the registry and give it a startup value of 4 (disabled).

 

[kylef]

Hmmm... I've been inspecting the Device Manager, and as far as I can tell, I don't think the drivers are actually CHANGING when I &quot;Update&quot; them. Do you know of any other way I can change the drivers without wiping Win2k completely?

 

[kylef]

OK. I just did a wipe of Win2k and just as I suspected, the drivers were never really changing. So I've been using 1.30b60 (from the MSI website) the whole time.

The Promise FastTrack drivers version 1.30b33 and 2.00b6 DO NOT WORK with the embedded controller on the MSI K7T Turbo-R. Win2k can't find any hard disk drives if those drivers are used.

I'm going to try using the ones from MSI's website one more time. The disk that had the original drivers on it (build 42 or 44) has been wiped, so I can't revert to them. I'm going to attempt using build 60 again; if they don't work again, MSI's tech support is getting a nasty e-mail.

 

[RBuck]

Eww crap man, do you have a storage space somewhere? I could upload the drivers I have..

 

[RBuck]

Ugh, just downloaded the drivers on MSI's site. Your right, build 60, wtf are these!?! Wonder what Promise has to say about this build of driver.. I have not tried these drivers.

 

[kylef]

Do I need to install the Promise RAID drivers even if I don't use the controllers? 'Cause I just moved my drive back to the Via IDE controllers (I'd had too many headaches and I decided to throw in the towel) and just when I thought I'd done the smart thing, Win2k gives me a BSOD on install:

IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL in ntoskrnl.exe

So, since this usually has to do with drivers screwing each other up, do I assume that even though I don't have a drive on the Promise RAID controller I STILL have to load the drivers?

 

[RBuck]

No. You should have an unknown device after install, but other than that no, you dont have to install the driver if you arent using it. This is beginning to look like something other than the promise controller BSOD on install is a bad, bad thing.. you are running in 16bit compatibility mode during install, no way you should be crashing! Start troubleshooting, yank everything but the video card and try. If you can remove some RAM do so, go to the bare bones and see if you can get it installed.. Then slowly add back your components.. Good luck man, sorry to hear of your woes.