Asus Sabertooth X58 / Win 7/ ICH10R - RAID array not being recognized

[bc0203]

I am using a computer built around an Asus Sabertooth X58 Motherboard. It has the following drives installed:

Samsung 830 SSD (Drive C) and a TSST DVD-RW (Drive D) on the Marvell 91xx
6 x 2TB Seagate HDD set up in RAID 5 on the ICH10R (Drive E)
External 2TB Drives for Backup (usually turned off)

Everything had been working fine up until tonight; I went to get the properties of a file on the RAID array and Windows Explorer froze. I restarted Explorer but the window with Drive E was still displaying, so I logged off... which hung during shut down, so did a hard reboot.... at which point the computer would no longer boot all the way into Windows.

I tried running the boot repair facility under Win 7, as well as booting off an older image of the O/S, with the same results. At the recommendation of one of the posters below, I also reinstalled the Intel ICH10R drivers provided by ASUS, but with no change.

Using safe mode, I was able to determine that the computer hung during load of the SCSI PNP drivers for windows (classpnp.sys), so I unplugged everything except the motherboard, the video card and the SSD, then started re-adding devices one at at a time.

Using this method, I was able to figure out that Windows loads successfully with everything but the RAID array attached; the minute you add the RAID array back in and reboot, the ICH10R RAID BIOS reports that the array is running normally, with all drives showing "green," but the comptuer fails at load of the CLASSPNP.SYS.

I'm happy to report that the array was backed up less than 24 hours ago, so if the thing has to be blown away to troubleshoot further, it will be an inconvenience rather than a catastrophe. Still, what's the next logical step?

Some other possibly useful facts:

The install is 15 months old, last hardware change was upgrading to an HD7850 a few months back - the case has been closed since then.

The six drives in the array are quiet, making normal level of noise and drawing the usual amount of power (about 70 watts more than when the drives are unplugged)

I have a CoolerMaster Silent Pro 650W power supply so I don't think that power is the issue here.

Thanks for any help / suggestions you might be able to provide.

 

[Dereck47]

Do you have your O/S installation disk? Try to "Repair" your install and see if that works.

If you don't want to do that then boot into Safe Mode and see if you can install your motherboard's chipset drivers from there. Your motherboard might have PNP drivers that will overwrite Windows' default PNP drivers.

 

[bc0203]

Do you have your O/S installation disk? Try to "Repair" your install and see if that works.

One thing I left out of the post was I tried windows startup repair and eventually went to an image that was taken a bit more than a week ago. Since it rebooted, I didn't think it was necessary try startup repair on that image.

If you don't want to do that then boot into Safe Mode and see if you can install your motherboard's chipset drivers from there. Your motherboard might have PNP drivers that will overwrite Windows' default PNP drivers.

I re-loaded the intel drivers supplied by ASUS and it made no difference.

 

[r3z0nate]

It seems this Raid controller had nothing but problems. The only answers I've ever gotten by multiple people that were lucky enough to restore their system was to recreate your array using the exact settings as before. Make complete backups of all the drives and hope everything works from there.

I was unlucky enough to use the wrong program to backup my drives and have zero confidence restoring my setup will work, but I have changed the drives locations and lost another since it originally happened. I happened to have backups but I also have multiple types arrays and although I only need/want the 1+0 array I still hesitate

Do you have your O/S installation disk? Try to "Repair" your install and see if that works.

One thing I left out of the post was I tried windows startup repair and eventually went to an image that was taken a bit more than a week ago. Since it rebooted, I didn't think it was necessary try startup repair on that image.

If you don't want to do that then boot into Safe Mode and see if you can install your motherboard's chipset drivers from there. Your motherboard might have PNP drivers that will overwrite Windows' default PNP drivers.

I re-loaded the intel drivers supplied by ASUS and it made no difference.

 

[r3z0nate]

Give this a try

http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/showthread.php?t=312831

I am using a computer built around an Asus Sabertooth X58 Motherboard. It has the following drives installed:

Samsung 830 SSD (Drive C) and a TSST DVD-RW (Drive D) on the Marvell 91xx
6 x 2TB Seagate HDD set up in RAID 5 on the ICH10R (Drive E)
External 2TB Drives for Backup (usually turned off)

Everything had been working fine up until tonight; I went to get the properties of a file on the RAID array and Windows Explorer froze. I restarted Explorer but the window with Drive E was still displaying, so I logged off... which hung during shut down, so did a hard reboot.... at which point the computer would no longer boot all the way into Windows.

I tried running the boot repair facility under Win 7, as well as booting off an older image of the O/S, with the same results. At the recommendation of one of the posters below, I also reinstalled the Intel ICH10R drivers provided by ASUS, but with no change.

Using safe mode, I was able to determine that the computer hung during load of the SCSI PNP drivers for windows (classpnp.sys), so I unplugged everything except the motherboard, the video card and the SSD, then started re-adding devices one at at a time.

Using this method, I was able to figure out that Windows loads successfully with everything but the RAID array attached; the minute you add the RAID array back in and reboot, the ICH10R RAID BIOS reports that the array is running normally, with all drives showing "green," but the comptuer fails at load of the CLASSPNP.SYS.

I'm happy to report that the array was backed up less than 24 hours ago, so if the thing has to be blown away to troubleshoot further, it will be an inconvenience rather than a catastrophe. Still, what's the next logical step?

Some other possibly useful facts:

The install is 15 months old, last hardware change was upgrading to an HD7850 a few months back - the case has been closed since then.

The six drives in the array are quiet, making normal level of noise and drawing the usual amount of power (about 70 watts more than when the drives are unplugged)

I have a CoolerMaster Silent Pro 650W power supply so I don't think that power is the issue here.

Thanks for any help / suggestions you might be able to provide.

 

[bc0203]

I did check the link out to extremeoverclocking.com, and that did provide lots of information that ultimately helped me narrow down the problem to the motherboard. The key thing that helped with diagnosis was to reconfigure the RAID stripe, which got the system to boot with the drives attached), but then the status of the array was not correctly identified by Windows. At this point, ASUS said there was something wrong with either the mobo level power for the RAID controller or a BIOS problem, and they replaced the board under warranty.

 

[r3z0nate]

Was your board still under warranty? I would have love for them to have replaced mine but they did nothing but deny, deny, deny.

I did check the link out to extremeoverclocking.com, and that did provide lots of information that ultimately helped me narrow down the problem to the motherboard. The key thing that helped with diagnosis was to reconfigure the RAID stripe, which got the system to boot with the drives attached), but then the status of the array was not correctly identified by Windows. At this point, ASUS said there was something wrong with either the mobo level power for the RAID controller or a BIOS problem, and they replaced the board under warranty.

 

[bc0203]

Was your board still under warranty? I would have love for them to have replaced mine but they did nothing but deny, deny, deny.

Ironically, after ASUS had issued me an RMA for the system board, I tried one last trick which shouldn't have been necessary but solved the problem:

• 
  ■ In device manager, delete the Intel RAID controller, making sure to check the option to remove the device driver as well
  ■ Have Windows re-recognize the RAID controller.
  ■ Update the software using a floppy drive that has the intel drivers on it (thankfully I had a USB floppy around)

The array came back up in the correct configuration and everything worked correctly. Go figure.