Installing ICH8R Driver during Vista install causing issues on Raptor X

BiGBrOwNPimpsta · May 31, 2007, 01:22 PM

Well I made a thread which was different from this one about SATA II issues plaguing me...low 3D Mark scores. Not what I was expecting from a Quad Core, 8800 GTS and a Raptor drive. Well a friend of mine told me to reinstall vista using the intel ICH8 drivers during install so I did. Everything works pretty much the same, I haven't seen a boost in performance but anything running off my C: drive (my raptor) seems to randomly stall sometimes. This could be IE, copying a file, playing a game it's as if the system crashes. Everything else can be seen and interacted such as windows and menus but its like a CD as if there is a delay in accessing it. I also checked the resource manager to check what is being read on the HD, and its never the same program or process stalling it.

I'm wondering should I reformat AGAIN without the driver? I loaded it on my other 2 drives and its fine. My music is on my WD 250 and if the system stalls the music still plays but WMP stalls due to it running of the Raptor.

Vampyromaniac · May 31, 2007, 01:36 PM

Are you sure your Raptor drive is healthy (run a hard drive diagnostic?)

Judas · May 31, 2007, 01:38 PM

erg.

I had the similare experience when i installed the ULi drivers for vista on my Asus A8R32-MVP, if i installed the drivers when vista's setup asked if i wished to (load driver manually), it would either crash/BSOD durring the setup, OR i'd have random BSODs while using vista.

However, if i ignored that part and let vista just auto detect the sata controller, and use the supplied driver, things worked smoothly.

What's interesting to note, is that the ULi specific vista driver is the exact same version of the ULi Microsoft vista supplied driver. Why there would be a difference, i'm not sure. But i've tried this with an intel ICH7R controller that i'm currently using, the vista supplied driver worked much better to setup, then i would manually install the updated or official driver from intel when i got the OS fully installed.

Maybe there is a bug with vista's setup for manually loading a driver?

Does the Raptor have a Capability mode jumper?

BiGBrOwNPimpsta · May 31, 2007, 01:38 PM

thats what I'm doing right now on ALL hard drives. running thorough chkdsk. It probably is the driver, but I want to know WHY my 3D Mark score blows!

BiGBrOwNPimpsta · May 31, 2007, 01:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Judas

erg.

I had the similare experience when i installed the ULi drivers for vista on my Asus A8R32-MVP, if i installed the drivers when vista's setup asked if i wished to (load driver manually), it would either crash/BSOD durring the setup, OR i'd have random BSODs while using vista.

However, if i ignored that part and let vista just auto detect the sata controller, and use the supplied driver, things worked smoothly.

What's interesting to note, is that the ULi specific vista driver is the exact same version of the ULi Microsoft vista supplied driver. Why there would be a difference, i'm not sure. But i've tried this with an intel ICH7R controller that i'm currently using, the vista supplied driver worked much better to setup, then i would manually install the updated or official driver from intel when i got the OS fully installed.

Maybe there is a bug with vista's setup for manually loading a driver?

Does the Raptor have a Capability mode jumper?

I probably will have to reinstall without the driver, that should be the solution. Funny you experienced that also with the ICH7R driver. I doubt I should see any performance hit either, I ran HD Tach again and saw no diff on all drives. Access times were fairly low with the raptor.

And what is the Capability mode jumper? To change SATA modes? We already discussed that its SATA150 only....but correct me if I'm wrong on wtf it is lol

Judas · May 31, 2007, 01:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vampyromaniac

Are you sure your Raptor drive is healthy (run a hard drive diagnostic?)

yea

http://support.wdc.com/download/?cxml=n&pid=1&swid=30

get the diagnostics (imo, i prefer to run the CD DOS version, boot from the cd, run through the diagnostics, do a thorough check, it may take a good hour or so)

BiGBrOwNPimpsta · May 31, 2007, 01:46 PM

I have it on CD, it does take some time but I will see. I'm pretty sure its the driver because it didn't occur before. Would reinstalling windows without reformatting be a good solution as well? It would overwrite the driver I installed correct?

BiGBrOwNPimpsta · May 31, 2007, 01:49 PM

and these stupid asian manufacturer sites have such poor layouts for driver downloads. I was so confused on the Asus site on what to download. Compared to intel, ati and nvidia they are crap. The slogans are so gay as well, "Rock Solid and Heart Touching". Unless I'm some freaking geek that is love with my computer, stability doesn't touch my heart. I'm not going to try to make love to my USB port by seeing awesome performance and stability...

just a little anger from my side

Judas · May 31, 2007, 02:03 PM

rotfl

I haven't played around with vista long enough to really see any good or bad things about doing a skin-graphed Vista install. I perfer to just stay the hell away from doing stuff like that unless it's absalutely nessary.

Course it wouldn't hurt to try it, it would just mean that if something were to go wrong, you'd have to format and install again.

As for the capability mode,

I had heard that while the Raptors are SATA1, that well with NCQ, being a sata 2 thing but possibly being on those newer 150gb raptor drives yet, that sometimes the SATA2-1 jump will act like a SATA1 NCQ mode to Strickly just SATA 1 mode. This is just a guess, but you'd have to refer to your raptors documentation.

Maybe there is a firmware update for your raptor, you could maybe email WD with your full model number and serial number of the drive you've got, and ask if there is a firmware update for it.

Necrosis · May 31, 2007, 05:50 PM

I was having the same similar issues /w my Raptor w/ Vista. Does Vista seems like it pauses for no reason?

GPSnoopy · Jun 5, 2007, 11:50 AM

BiGBrOwNPimpsta and Necrosis, did you manage to fix this "stall" problem? If so, how?

I have a similar problem: Vista Business, Asus P5B, C2D E6700, 2 GB, and a WD Raptor 150 GB on the ICH8 in AHCI mode. I have random stalls from time to time. Vista just stalls (although the GUI can stay more or less responsive, as long as a HDD access is not required) and the HDD led stays on, then after 20-30 seconds everything goes back to normal.

There is nothing in the Event Viewer. For Vista, everything seems ok.

The funny thing is that, before I installed the Business edition, I tried Vista Ultimate in evaluation mode (i.e. no key) for a few weeks on an old regular IDE HDD, and I never had any stall problem.

Erroneus · Jun 5, 2007, 02:31 PM

This is a known bug in the Intel driver.

Take a look at this page: http://www.intel.com/support/chipset.../CS-025783.htm

The regedit fix seems to work for a lot of people, not me though. Still getting some timeouts, gonna try the port 3-5 method.

BiGBrOwNPimpsta · Jun 5, 2007, 03:03 PM

I just used the fix, so I'm gonna see if it stops stalling. Necrosis is right about the random stalling, the CPU works fine so do the other drives I can tell. This is a driver issue and I formatted and reinstalled Vista did nothing. Once I fix this little issue my system will be working at 100%!

I scored a cool 9705 in 3DMark06, some light overclocking and tweaking will easily push it over 10k

PangingJr · Jun 5, 2007, 04:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Erroneus

This is a known bug in the Intel driver.

Take a look at this page: http://www.intel.com/support/chipset.../CS-025783.htm

The regedit fix seems to work for a lot of people, not me though. Still getting some timeouts, gonna try the port 3-5 method.

is this problem with your P965-DS4 or other board? i am wonder since i've never had problem with the Intel RAID on my Gigabyte P965 based boards.
anyway, Marvell used to issue a firmware update for the Marvell Yukon LAN onboard your board that fixed the similar problem,
and Gigabyte used to has the update available at the produce web page. have you ever seen the fix?

Erroneus · Jun 5, 2007, 05:06 PM

Yeah it's on my DS4.

I cant seem to find the firmware update for the Marvell Yukon you are talking about, all though i found a newer driver (10.14.6.3) then the one I'm using.