Once-a-month BSODs

[Evenkeel]

Thought I had them licked, but now I'm getting a whole new set of BSODS. A couple have happened a few days apart, but usually they come every 3-4 weeks.

I'll be working, and all of a sudden I'll get the bluescreen "WinXP has been shut down to protect your computer" etc. etc. There's only a stopcode--no driver name. I reboot and everything's fine. For awhile anyway.

I ran the sfc /scannow app, and apparently all my WinXP files are okay. The last time this happened (for hopefully a different reason) I did run Memtest and all was well.

I know I'm not able to give much info here--dclive is going to read the minidumps and post back here, so hopefully that will shed some light.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: Evenkeel
Thought I had them licked, but now I'm getting a whole new set of BSODS. A couple have happened a few days apart, but usually they come every 3-4 weeks.

I'll be working, and all of a sudden I'll get the bluescreen "WinXP has been shut down to protect your computer" etc. etc. There's only a stopcode--no driver name. I reboot and everything's fine. For awhile anyway.

I ran the sfc /scannow app, and apparently all my WinXP files are okay. The last time this happened (for hopefully a different reason) I did run Memtest and all was well.

I know I'm not able to give much info here--dclive is going to read the minidumps and post back here, so hopefully that will shed some light.

EK - Got the dumps you sent and the MPS Reports -

The Intel IASTORE.SYS is what appears to be causing it. It is:

Module[ 80] [C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\IASTOR.SYS]
Company Name: Intel Corporation
File Description: Intel Application Accelerator driver
Product Version: (4.0:0.6211)
File Version: (4.0:0.6211)
File Size (bytes): 467200
File Date: Tue Mar 23 05:13:58 2004


I suggest updating the driver by going to Intel's site and getting the latest version.

(Or removing the driver if it's not critical.)

 

[Evenkeel]

Originally posted by: dclive
EK - Got the dumps you sent and the MPS Reports -

The Intel IASTORE.SYS is what appears to be causing it. It is:

Module[ 80] [C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\IASTOR.SYS]
Company Name: Intel Corporation
File Description: Intel Application Accelerator driver
Product Version: (4.0:0.6211)
File Version: (4.0:0.6211)
File Size (bytes): 467200
File Date: Tue Mar 23 05:13:58 2004


I suggest updating the driver by going to Intel's site and getting the latest version.

(Or removing the driver if it's not critical.)

Oh for crying out loud!!! When I did my reformat a couple months ago to take care of the first issue I was having, I purposely did *not* reinstall the Intel Application Accelerator. And yet the ah heck still managed to sneak back on there? Gee, who needs viruses when you have Intel's pushy software?

Unless... is this driver required to run my RAID 0 setup? I have two, 200 GB SATA drives as my system drive lashed together as RAID 0. Can I safely uninstall this driver w/out affecting the RAID setup?

Secondly, how would I actually remove this driver? There is no entry for it in the "Add/Remove Programs" applet in Control Panel.

Thank you very much, dclive, for reading the minidumps and letting me know about this. Your help has been invaluable.

 

[dclive]

I can't comment on the hows and the whats because I don't have that software on my system. If possible, disable or power off the 2 SATA drives and see if the problem continues to happen, or call the vendor for support.

If it were my system, I'd first update the driver, and if that didn't work, I'd remove the offending driver (and remove the RAID pair if necessary) temporarily to see if the issue went away.

 

[Evenkeel]

Originally posted by: dclive
I can't comment on the hows and the whats because I don't have that software on my system. If possible, disable or power off the 2 SATA drives and see if the problem continues to happen, or call the vendor for support.

If it were my system, I'd first update the driver, and if that didn't work, I'd remove the offending driver (and remove the RAID pair if necessary) temporarily to see if the issue went away.

Thanks for the help. As to powering off the 2 SATA drives that make up the RAID 0 config, they are my system drives, so I can't do that. I'll hunt around at Intel for an update to the driver, and contact their tech support to see if I actually need this driver.

Update: I just checked--this is indeed the driver running the RAID lashup. It came (I think) from file Intel has you put on a floppy, and is installed via F6 when installing the OS. I'm pretty sure I had the most updated version last time I reinstalled the OS (it hasn't changed on their website since then.) I just used the Windows Driver Update thngy, and it said it couldn't find a better matchup for the driver, so I guess it's off to Intel for me.

This has started me wondering--how much of a performance gain am I actually seeing, running 2 drives in RAID 0? Since they are SATA drives, is is that much more than if they weren't in RAID? (This question isn't just for you, dclive, but for anyone who wants to jump in here.)

Is there a way to remove the RAID pair "temporarily", w/out losing my data? THis is the first system I've ever used RAID on, so this is a newbie question, I know.

Thanks again.

 

[dclive]

I've not been impressed with IDE RAID performance. I have had IDE RAID solutions with IDE hardware RAID solutions - LSI Megaraid IDE controller with 32M / 128M RAM caches on them, as well as Windows software-based solutions - and I've been disappointed with the speed.

On the other hand, I'm happy with a fairly old (2001-ish?) 10,000 RPM Fujisu SCSI RAID0 combo I bought a few years ago. 2 old 10k RPM SCSI drives, old MegaRAID 500 or somesuch SCSI RAID (hardware) controller.... it works out well. That's my boot drive; for my data drives, I just use plain IDE. The performance difference between that and IDE is obvious to me.

Only you can judge if you'd notice the speed. From a reliability point of view, just make sure you're backing up your data with reliable backups; RAID0 is very easy to lose. It just takes one bad bit on just one drive and you lose everything...

 

[Evenkeel]

Originally posted by: dclive
Only you can judge if you'd notice the speed. From a reliability point of view, just make sure you're backing up your data with reliable backups; RAID0 is very easy to lose. It just takes one bad bit on just one drive and you lose everything...

So in order to disable RAID, is the only way to do it to wipe the drives, disable RAID in the BIOS, and reinstall everything? I'm not sure what you meant earlier on "temporarily" disabling RAID--since the data spans both disks, how do I get all the data onto one disk before disabling RAID? It doesn't sound like it would work to create a backup/disk image, wipe the drives and disable RAID, then restore the image, because wouldn't that just put the wonky driver right back on there?

Sorry I'm sounding so confused, but this is new territory for me. And using RAID sounded like such a good idea at the time.

 

[dclive]

The bad driver would still be on there, but wouldn't load. Windows dynamically loads device drivers (much to the surprise of many on here, who swear by drivercleaner and similar utilities, Windows loads device drivers it needs - that's why they call it PnP; hard drives are an exception in that the registry has to know about it for you to boot from it, but still, the driver isn't actually fully loaded and retained in memory if it isn't needed.)

As for getting the data on one disk, 160GB drives are $10 these days (check the hot deals forums - it's something like that, AR, PM, etc., YMMV, etc., etc.) - you could GHOST it fairly easily assuming you aren't actually using all that space.

There are those that really like IDE RAID. I'm sure you can find a few of those people on here. I used to be one of them, but after using it for a while, I've gone back to 2 fairly obsolete SCSI drives in a RAID0 config instead. When I benchmark it, it's slower than IDE. When I boot from it and use it, SCSI is so much faster it isn't funny. I can do multiple things at once without even a slowdown - it's stunning.

 

[Evenkeel]

Originally posted by: dclive
The bad driver would still be on there, but wouldn't load. Windows dynamically loads device drivers (much to the surprise of many on here, who swear by drivercleaner and similar utilities, Windows loads device drivers it needs - that's why they call it PnP; hard drives are an exception in that the registry has to know about it for you to boot from it, but still, the driver isn't actually fully loaded and retained in memory if it isn't needed.)

As for getting the data on one disk, 160GB drives are $10 these days (check the hot deals forums - it's something like that, AR, PM, etc., YMMV, etc., etc.) - you could GHOST it fairly easily assuming you aren't actually using all that space.

There are those that really like IDE RAID. I'm sure you can find a few of those people on here. I used to be one of them, but after using it for a while, I've gone back to 2 fairly obsolete SCSI drives in a RAID0 config instead. When I benchmark it, it's slower than IDE. When I boot from it and use it, SCSI is so much faster it isn't funny. I can do multiple things at once without even a slowdown - it's stunning.

Fortunately, I do have a third SATA disk in my system, used for backups and deep storage--a 300 GB Maxtor--so yet another backup is no problem. But I assume from what you are saying that there is no way to take that data that spans the two RAID drives, and transfer to just one of the RAID drives, before disabling RAID? It would save a time-consuming step not to have to restore a disk image, but it's not the end of the world.

As far as using all that space, no, nowhere near! I'm only using about 10% of the total RAID capacity of the two drives, so putting everything on one disk is no problem. It's just that this is my first system build, and I'd heard RAID performance was a good thing, so I thought I'd include it. Oops. Guess I just have to pick a Saturday now when I can devote the time to fixing this. ANd don't worry--you can bet that I'll make multiple backups and Ghost images before I do this, even Ghosting to DVD disks.

BTW, I forgot to ask--did every single one of those minidumps point to the IASTOR.SYS driver as the culprit?

 

[Evenkeel]

An update:

I found a newer version at Intel: v. 4.7.0.6815--quite a few versions higher than the one I had. (My version wasn't even listed in the release notes.) It's dated 12/17/04, I think.

I had to do some digging to find it, as it was not included on the drivers page to my mobo (925XCV). Here's the URL:

Issue and update

Obviously, I didn't use the Microsoft Online Crash Analysis--I used the "dclive Online Crash Analysis". But it sounded like the basic issue, and it did offer an update to the driver, so I d/l'd it and installed. The computer rebooted after install w/out exploding, so, so far so good. I'm going to cross my fingers, as replacing files at so basic a system level gives me the willies. If I get another BSOD, I'll be sure to let you know.

 

[Evenkeel]

Found an even newer update: v. 5.1.0.1022, dated 6/17/05. I found it by doing a search on "IASTOR.SYS" on Intel's support page. It's under a technical document that leads to this page:

RAID v. 5.1 driver

Under "Software & Drivers", you'll see "Get the latest driver..." etc. Follow the links to download. For my board and BIOS, I get a message when starting the Storage Console that not all features of the console are supported by my BIOS, but I don't use the console anyway. It does support my chipset--ICH6R--tho it's not listed on my board's "official" updates page. Hopefully this latest update will do the trick.

 

[dclive]

Looks like you're all set!

 

[dclive]

Glad it is working for you.

As for reading the bluescreen's memory dumps, the best advice I can give is to go to www.microsoft.com/debug and click on the debug and symbols links and download the debugger and play around with it.

MPS Reports is simply text files of a collection of utilities telling information about your OS installation. Just run it and then open up that CAB and start reading the text files...

No certification is required - just some time and patience as you learn.