BSOD 0x0000000e Windows 10 CU Dual M.2 drives NVMe; Dual NICS

[Tanyac]

I have been testing Windows 10 in a dual boot scenario with Windows 7 for the last couple of months. My Windows 7 boot drive is a 960 Evo 1TB. My Windows 10 boot drive was a 750 Evo 250GB.

I just removed the 750 and upgraded it to a 960 Evo 250GB, so my ASRock Fatal1ty Gaming Professional I7 now has 2 NVMe SSDs... 960 EVO 1TB (win7), and the new 960 EVO 250GB (win10).

Several attempts to install windows 10 have all failed with the 0x0000000e error, saying a device needed was not connected and PC needed to be repaired blah ... blah ... blah..

I found a few threads here discussing the error, but none with two NVMe SSDs.

Googling the error suggested I try the bootrec /fixmbr, /fixboot and bcdedit /rebuildbcd solution but that did not work. Whilst I got past the error at the time, the next boot failed with the same error code.

I removed the 960 Evo 250GB and put the 750 250GB back and did a clean install and it worked fine. It's only when I have the two NVMe drives installed this is a problem. Both drives are M.2 of course.

After More tests: This problem appears to be related to the Ethernet ports. If I disable both ports in the BIOS PC will boot 100% of the time. If I disabled one or the other, or leave both enabled the PC will fail a boot every 2nd or 3rd time.

So I have to disable NICs in BIOS, boot into Windows 10, restart, enable the NICs and boot. Then I can use system for another 2 or 3 reboots then it will BSOD with 0x0000000e again.

I've reported the issue to ASRock, who I have little faith in as they've never been able to resolve any issues for me, assuming they even respond to the ticket. Many of the support requests seem to fall into a black hole.

I thought about reporting the issue to Samsung, but except for my Seagate ST2000VN001 all other drives are Samsung, and with the SATA EVO drive there is no problem, and the 1TB NVMe drive has been working for almost 6 months, so it doesn't appear to be an NVMe issue.

Iv'e also checked to make sure there are no drives on the SATA ports that the M.2 slots share resources with.

I've repeated the install and tests over a dozen times now and it is definitely related to the NICs

The issue is the same with the default drivers installed by Windows and and the latest Intel drivers from the ASRock website.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[13thmonkey]

wow. give us a tl;dr

Any chance of helping?

OP - So with both M.2 drives in place it will intermittently not get past bios, if the two network ports are enabled? Or will fail part way through windows startup? which one.

 

[Tanyac]

Thanks for taking the time to read the post and respond.

OP - So with both M.2 drives in place it will intermittently not get past bios, if the two network ports are enabled? Or will fail part way through windows startup? which one.

The first one. On [typically] the 3rd boot it will get the BSOD immediately after the POST - There are no spinning dots at the point it fails. At that point I have to disable both NICs in the BIOS, let the system boot normally, then go back into the BIOS, enable the ports, boot succcessfully and I get 3 more boots until the next BSOD.

 

[13thmonkey]

So it's OS independent (not booted yet, so drivers etc. are not relevant at this point.

Any bios updates available?

 

[Tanyac]

So it's OS independent (not booted yet, so drivers etc. are not relevant at this point.

Any bios updates available?

No. I'm actually on a beta BIOS now, The latest stable for this mobo is v1.4, I'm on v1.52 beta.

As the mobo has dual BIOS, my BIOS(A) is 1.52, and BIOS(B) is v1.4. It've tried both, on stock settings, and my usual minor overclock. I've also tried with fast boot disabled.

I'm assuming it's before Windows has started to load because I didn't see the spinning dots.

This is how my cold boot works..

Turn on power, wait 20 seconds for POST screen to appear
POST screen shows for 10 seconds then hands off to OS
Windows 7 - "Starting windows" Appears 2 seconds after post screen goes blank.
Windows 10 - Spinning dots appear 2 seconds after post screen goes blank.

It is after the POST screen goes blank and the before spinning dots appear that the BSOD occurs.

What's perplexing is this ONLY happens on the Windows 10 boot. Windows 7 works perfectly 100% of the time. So if it's not OS related, shouldn't Windows 7 being having similar issues?

 

[13thmonkey]

That will be driver related.

In win10 if you disable the NICs in device manager, what happens?
What happens in safe mode with networking on, in case it is some software that the starting of the NICs enables to continue and that software is actually the problem.

Sounds like the bad install is related to these problems, solve one and you solve the other.

Given that the Z170 was after win 10, can you download the latest ISO? or slipstream the drivers into win10.

 

[13thmonkey]

precisely which mobo, there are a dozen with similar names.

 

[Tanyac]

precisely which mobo, there are a dozen with similar names.

ASRock X99 Fatal1ty Gaming Professional I7.

I believe I've found the problem. After days of testing and retesting. There are two critical factors.

1. The driver on ASRock's site is dated Jun 20 2016. They state that this is the latest driver at that time. It's actually a 2015 driver released just as Windows 10 was first released (25th June 2015). I was also told that this is the latest "compatible" driver for this motherboard.

It's not. The latest version is 22.3, dated April 27th This year and is compatible with both my I-218 and I211-V ports.

2. The Beta BIOS I was given by ASRock was to solve an install problem with NVMe on the M.2 port when using Fast boot and Windows 7. It contributes to this problem.

To get the system to work I had to upgrade to v22.3 of the LAN driver from the Intel site. I also had to permanently disable Fast boot in the BIOS (Even though it's not an issue for W7, W10 won't boot with fast boot enabled), AND revert to v1.40 of the BIOS. v1.52 will not work at all.

As Windows 10 supports NVMe out of the box (albeit rather poorly), I had no install issues to the new drive.

I suspect that it's not entirely the LAN driver's fault. From the research I've done, it appears that really, the issue lies with Windows 10 and the way it processes initialization of devices (more specifically through winload.efi).

I've spent the last day and a half doing repeated tests and installs. I'd say it's safe to call this resolved.

Despite the frustration, this has been a good learning experience. It certainly hasn't helped my impression of ASRock's technical support

Thanks for all the help and patience. And apologies for my verbosity

 

[Tanyac]

That will be driver related.
Given that the Z170 was after win 10, can you download the latest ISO? or slipstream the drivers into win10.

Good idea, but didn't have to.

 

[13thmonkey]

Great fault finding, the verbosity is not a problem, it will help others, you won't be the only one. Not sure if you can, so i'll give you the BA.