Intel ICH10R ACHI drivers problem (Windows 7)

[B3bis]

Update: I will post a full solution and explanation as a separate answer so the community can benefit from it in the future.

I am trying to do a new installation of Windows 7 (possibly Ultimate but doesn't matter) on my newly bought SSD Crucial M500 240GB. My chipset is ICH10R (X58) and I have 6 SATA2 ports on Intel controller and 2 on Marvell Controller. I am trying to install my SSD on one of the Intel controllers. So changed the mode to ACHI. Installation of windows goes well only without (!) loading the drivers at installation time. I have already tried with two different installations from scratch and nothing worked. Everything goes well and I install my system my other drivers etc. When I try to install the driver of Intel for ACHI (overwriting the default not so good windows drivers) my system starts getting errors (WHQL driver errors for random already installed drivers), windows updates stops working returning errors even before searching for updates etc. If I uninstall the driver everything gets back to normal.
Details: I am using the original driver given from asus for my mobo:
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P6T_WS_Professional/
I already tried installing the driver not with the setup utility but from windows device manager.
The driver installed correctly (after reboot system wouldn't show safely remove for HDDs) but the problem appeared again.

[strike]Last but not least I have some concerns about another driver I have installed conflicting with this one. It is the USB3.0 VIA driver ( http://via-labs.com/en/products/vl800/index.jsp ). I had installed this after the ACHI driver and I am not sure whether the problems existed before installing the VIA VL800 driver. Though, afterwards uninstalling this driver made no change. On the other hand Intel's ACHI driver made everything broke or back to normal either with VIA driver installed or without. I also may be guessing totally wrong and VIA driver has nothing to do with it.[/strike](confirmed that it is not the card)

Any suggestions? Anyone else had problems with Windows 7 + Intel ACHI ICH10R driver? Intel's support is not of a big help anywhere in their site.

 

[photonboy]

Hi,
1) I don't know what drivers you are referring to. I followed your link and for INTEL, there's only the Main Chipset driver

2) There are SATA/AHCI drivers to install but they are only for Marvell, so I guess Intel gets everything from the Chipset software.

3) Once you install the CHIPSET software for Intel, you can UPDATE it from Intel's site but use the AUTOSCAN feature (it will install a small piece of software first).

4) USB3?
I can't find this either in the Windows 7 64-bit download section.

Is it possible you are in the wrong spot?

Some TIPS:
1) Update the BIOS if not up to date,
2) run MEMTEST www.memtest.org (full pass)
3) Install ONLY the software from the motherboard support site, for Windows 7 64-bit (for now)

4) LATER you can update the Intel and Realtek audio drivers from Intel and Realtek.

 

[photonboy]

Update:
I see your USB3 is via an addon card. Obvious now. I suggest removing the card physically until the problem is sorted out. Again though, not sure which driver you are installing as the only ESSENTIAL one is the "Chipset" driver.

 

[B3bis]

Update:
I see your USB3 is via an addon card. Obvious now. I suggest removing the card physically until the problem is sorted out. Again though, not sure which driver you are installing as the only ESSENTIAL one is the "Chipset" driver.

I read your answer after trying a third and fourth format. From this point I can verify that it is NOT a problem of the addon card (you guessed correctly about that, I forgot to mention it). With clean installation I installed only Chipset drivers from intel with the auto utility and then tried to install the driver. There IS a driver if you look at either the support section of the motherboard's site or search at Intel's site. At no avail. Chipset utility indeed installed an Intel (?) driver though no changing much on the system (still every HDD showing up as removable as windows default drivers usually do) . When I tried to install the ACHI drivers the problem came back. No solution for now as it seems.

Btw, bios is always up to what is it should be, rams always checked when bought and in some intervals later. I do not install other software than what official sites have for download. Just to let you know, the pc is running pretty 100% perfectly if I do no install this driver. Still I wanted too. I am too disappointed from Intel from now on. No professionalization in their drivers. And their controllers are said to be the best even in server builds.

I tend to believe the problem is signing of the drivers. Once I had them installed I booted with the option to not enforce only signed drivers and things went more normal. Maybe 100% normal. Shame on Intel about that.

 

[Szyrs]

You should be downloading the SATA drivers for your motherdoard from the Asus product page that you linked in your original post. The direct download link for that driver is: http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/misc/utils/IMSM_V8901023.zip Or you can navigate to the drivers yourself on the link you provided bu clicking the "support" tab.

You should not need to install drivers at the time of your windows installition unless your SSD does not appear when you select the drive for install (ie a PCIE SSD) or unless your driver clearly states to do so at the time of your windows installation (usually only required for RAID mode)

 

[B3bis]

You should be downloading the SATA drivers for your motherdoard from the Asus product page that you linked in your original post. The direct download link for that driver is: http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/misc/utils/IMSM_V8901023.zip Or you can navigate to the drivers yourself on the link you provided bu clicking the "support" tab.

You should not need to install drivers at the time of your windows installition unless your SSD does not appear when you select the drive for install (ie a PCIE SSD) or unless your driver clearly states to do so at the time of your windows installation (usually only required for RAID mode)

Have already (of course) tried the Asus drivers. To be precise it was my first and failed attempt. Be sure that I have tried all the easy made solutions. The problem seems to be deeper than just installing other drivers. The drivers DO work but destroy everything else.

 

[Szyrs]

So you have done a clean install of windows, installed the chipset drivers from your product page at Asus and everything works ok at that point, or there is a problem? If there is a problem, what is your problem?

Then you go on to install WHQL AHCI drivers from the Intel website "When I try to install the driver of Intel for ACHI (overwriting the default not so good windows drivers)" - but why? The AHCI drivers on the Asus website ARE intel drivers, they are not made by Asus and the are not "not so good" - you yourself state that everything works fine with them! You say that you hae tried all of the "easy made solutions" but as the saying goes, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

At the very start of your post you said that you purchased an SSD and so changed your SATA mode to AHCI, correct?

What was it originally? IDE? There are known issues with converting from IDE to anything else once you have installed windows, you can google for fixes but many people find that a clean install with the proper BIOS settings is the only solution.

If your SATA was in RAID mode, then you have no reason to switch to AHCI mode. AHCI does not support RAID and you will obviously have issues with maintaining your array in AHCI mode. RAID mode however DOES support AHCI and any SSD or HDD that is NOT part of a RAID array will revert to AHCI mode, even though your BIOS says RAID.

If I have totally missed the point here then please explain your problem again. Asus has a sterling reputation for customerand driver support - much better than any other motherboard manufacturer, in my opinion. The drivers on their website have never caused me issues and I'm quite surprised to hear that they are causing issues for you.

 

[B3bis]

To take it from start. I do have done a clean installation of windows with the correct settings in BIOS and I do know that changing from IDE (my previous setting) to ACHI sometimes asks for a clean installation. So no this is not the case. I have changed bios mode to ACHI (I do not use raid at all for neither of my two controllers). I made a clean instalaltion of windows. Everything is fine till now (except that if I try to load the ACHI drivers of Intel in the installation of Windows, Windows will then return an error and won't proceed). So clean installation, Windows's drivers. Installing chipset drivers from ASUS' support page. Everything fine. Installing IMSM drivers (ACHI SATA drivers) from ASUS' support page and the OS get corrupted. Windows update won't work. Other drivers won't load etc. In some cases I get messages about not signed (WHQL) drivers. If I choose to boot windows without WHQL signed drivers enforcment *SOME* things work again. If I uninstall Intel's ACHI drivers (and Intel's Matrix Storage or the driver alone) everything works perfectly again. Nothing else changed. System is Windows 7 x64 retail (no sp, but same happens even if I go on and install all windows updates before installing the drivers).

Btw, although partly off topic, two other things. I want to clear out (because many people are confused about that) that you *can* boot an installation of Windows which at installation time had different IDE-ACHI mode. You just run a specific Microsoft Fix It utility before changing mode (Done it and it works. Some say that it will not always work, but it haven't happened to me yet). Also I referred to Intel's drivers as better ones because of the generic nature of windows drivers (generic drivers will always be missing some hardware specific features and enchantments) and also because of the highly annoying feature they (Windows's native drivers) have to show HDDs at the safely remove menu (probably taking in consideration the hot swappable nature of ACHI).

 

[Szyrs]

Yes, you can switch from IDE to AHCI but it can be a pain and as you say, some people still have issues after applying the fix, either by tool or manually changing the registry.

Just a couple more stupid questions - are you installing the driver by the F6 method and have you tried installing the AHCI driver alone, or have you been installing both the Storage Matrix and AHCI driver? I only ask because they are both in the same package and you mentioned that you have tried uninstalling them one at a time but not installing them that way.

I understand what you mean about the drivers included in windows but I would still say that the drivers on the Asus support page are intel drivers..

 

[Szyrs]

I can only see three pages on the intel site offering such drivers, the most recent is the 2010 driver, which is specifically aimed at a server board: "ICH10R AHCI Driver for Microsoft Windows* (32 & 64 bit) for Intel® Server System SR1680MV"

The other is dated march 2009, so I'm guessing you're not using that one.. (8.8.0.1009)

The last is the very same one that is on the Asus download page.

Is it possible that you are using the one dated 2010? If you look closely you will notice that it is the same driver (8.9.0.1023) packaged to use with windows server, not windows 7. Of course this owould only be possible if you'd downloaded directly from intel and made an oversight at that time...

Other than that, I'm perplexed. I see no other detail that would cause windows to react so unprecictably...

My only solution would be to go for th older 8.8.0.1009 driver - you would possibly get rid of your issue with the safe removal icon but they are not the lastest drivers...

 

[photonboy]

I'll take another look at the drivers, but for now here's some important info.

*Get Acronis True Image (can use FREE version if have a Western Digital or Seagate drive though Seagate has a different name) then make a full BACKUP IMAGE once Windows has been installed.

Then, prior to installing any driver you think may cause issues you can make a backup image (to a physically separate drive) so you can easily RESTORE if you have any issues.

 

[photonboy]

AFAIK, this is the EXACT procedure you should be following so can you VERIFY that's what you've done?

1. BIOS to AHCI
2. SSD attached to the Intel Sata controller (not Marvell).
3. Other SSD/HDD's unhooked for now.

4. Install Windows 7 64-bit.
5. Download and install the exact Chipset driver-> Version 9.1.1.1020 (from the Asus site you linked)

*So we are all in the same page, exactly WHERE does your problem occur. You've explained it before but it's getting confusing.

 

[B3bis]

After a lot of trial and error and research I am back with an explanation and a solution.

The problem is "Advance Format (4K)" for discs that was not supported back when ICH10R came out. As of this, the drivers provided by ASUS which are NOT any more updated have a bug (or more) and cannot deal with disks with 4K bytes per sector (as Crucial M500 in my situation). Later drivers (almost the latest before support was dropped for this chipset) by Intel issued this problem and solved it. Because of Intel changing branding on their support software and really nowhere-to-find ICH10R's support, I will be posting direct links to latest drivers supporting ICH10R with 4K support.

More about the 4K problem, explanation, technical, etc:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/hh848035%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

Latest drivers to support ICH10R:
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=22194&ProdId=2101&lang=eng
(Here you can find Intel Rapid Storage Technology 11.7.0.1013. The latest as of 09 April 2014, 12.9.0.1001 won't install on a ICH10R system so better of avoid it)

Other discussions that helped:
https://communities.intel.com/thread/35607

A lot of thanks and respect to anyone who tried to help me in this forum! It is really much appreciated!