Discoveries: Swapping 960 EVO out and 960 PRO in

[BonzaiDuck]

Here's a link to a fairly recent thread over in "Operating Systems" forum:

Event Log Errors

There is a history of peculiar Windows 10 (and Windows 8.1!) Event ID 219 warnings at boot-time. Some involve USB devices; others suggest SATA devices. The source is "Kernel PnP." The message thrown is "The driver \Driver\WudfRd failed to load for the device . . . . . . . { . . . [key] . . . } . . . . "

This and Distributed COM errors which require changing Permissions for the indicated registry keys seem common to folks using Windows 10, and the 219 warnings have caused frustration to people tracing back to Windows 8. So we attempt to clean up -- or at least identify -- the causes.

The Event 219 "WudfRd" errors seem benign. For me, they pointed to two identical HGST TravelStar drives I have for media recording/storage, and image backup. So that one went on the back-burner for a while, and I may just leave it alone unless I can discover the proper tweaks. And for my indications, it seems to show a timing problem loading the drives' driver at boot-time. After boot-up, the drives test out just fine in every respect.

But I stumbled onto something else.

I had initially "experimented" with a 960 EVO 250GB NVMe M.2 PCIEx4 drive and configuration. It was solely intended for caching regular spinner drives, and the "experiment" mostly worked -- at least for one OS at a time in my dual-boot system.

The NVMe driver for the 960 EVO and PRO from Samsung (version 2.1?) is exactly the same as far as I can tell. But I'd decided to swap in a 960 PRO drive after removing the EVO -- removed for the time being, anyway.

So this morning, in the course of reviewing other indications, I happened to look at my Device Manager tree under "Disk Drives." With the PRO drive running in the system for more than a week or so, I discover that it is indicated as "Samsung 960 EVO 250GB."

I had also noticed that CrystalDiskMark results fell significantly short by 500+ MB/s on the Pro. I would be lucky to get a sequential read score of 2,900 or just under 3,050.

I had also suspected my PRO drive performance was under par. After I "uninstalled" the entry for the EVO 250GB and rebooted as required, of course I would expect that the PRO drive would be properly recognized when Windows reloads the driver. And it did just that.

And now CrystalDiskMark offers up a sequential read score within 100 MB/s of spec.

Meanwhile, the key-code for one of my 219 warnings has changed, while the other one remains the same. These keys -- searched in Regedit -- point to the two spinners I mentioned.

The plot thickens! Before I can sort out anything else of particulars about this matter of the EVO "ghost" drive, I can only suggest to people that swapping these 960 drives in and out should merit some attention to how they show up in Device Manager. Can I say exactly why? Not yet. Not yet.

But I'd suggest uninstalling from Device Manager the drive chosen for removal before you swap in the replacement. This may be an issue specific to the 960 PRO and EVO, I can't say.

 

[john3850]

Uninstall the NONPRESENT old unused drives in device mgr under hidden stuff.

Make a batch file in notepad named setdev then Paste in line below.

set DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES=1
start devmgmt.msc

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Uninstall the NONPRESENT old unused drives in device mgr under hidden stuff.

Make a batch file in notepad named setdev then Paste in line below.

set DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES=1
start devmgmt.msc

Thanks. You're a prince for volunteering this info.

Somehow I could be mistaken, but I think this might also be tied to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE . . SOFTWARE\Microsoft . . . . Windows Mobile Devices, which dovetails with my investigations about Warning Event ID 219.

Looking in the registry, I find several keys which point to hot-swap drives in my system, and other mobile devices like USB sticks which had last been connected to the system a month or more earlier.

I find a complaint history around the web about Event ID 219 to include a lot of people working with laptops. The history begins with Windows 8.0/8.1, and continues to the present with Windows 10. There is this general whine about Microsoft ignoring a fix to this "problem" for years. But Event ID 219 is a "Warning" -- not a "Critical Error" -- not an "Error."

When I "uninstalled" the 960 EVO entry in DM, one of the two yellow-bangs in center of my attention changed the { . . } key indicated by the Event Log entry. So I re-examined the Registry for the new key entry, and found the approximately eight keys -- including my Lexar USB flash drives.

So I'm wondering (a) if it would be actually normal to have these Kernel_PnP 219 warnings, how many should I have? And (b) how this might relate to my observations on DM and your suggestion?

Just guessing, but if I have two hot-swap disks in my system on different controllers, then maybe I should expect two of these ID 219 PnP warnings at startup.

Gotta -go. . . . . Will finish this post when I return from a dental appointment . . . . gotta go . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
OK -- I'm back. I assume you mean to create the batch file with the TWO lines at end of your post, John3850?

And I should run this batch file -- when? I suppose I could name it [anything].BAT

later and another thought: does the order in which the drives are listed in DM indicate the order in which they are enumerated at startup? My two hot-swap HGST drives are at the top of the list, and the Sammy NVMe drive is third . . . .