Windows 10: Fail to Boot after Intel RST Install - Repair Apparently Impossible

Upgraded to Windows 10 from 8.1 a week ago. 120G SSD, Windows image sits on 111 gig partition with a 450mb "recovery" partition showing up (??) in disk management and diskpart. Installed Intel RST drivers today and it has been downhill ever since.

File system looks intact - I now have the drive out and on a usb external. All of my efforts to mend image in situ have been fruitless.

I have tried pretty much every option in the automated recovery environment with no success. Windows will not boot into safe mode in spite of reverting the machine via command line back to legacy boot sequence.

A 128 gig usb flash disk with an O&O backup disk image made two days ago somehow got corrupted and is now unreadable. System restore point not set (for whatever reason I thought it was). This is the third machine in my house that has been upgraded to Windows 10 and the installs have all begun to run together in my mind. This is a perfect storm of boneheaded error on my part. Not a good evening for me so far...

I ran a series of mbr restore commands as specified in this link. Nothing has helped. Recovery environment simply does not see a valid windows installation. When rebooting after hitting F8 for safe mode, I get the light blue "Your PC needs to be repaired” and “Error code: 0xc0000225" screen. So not even a safe mode to reverse those pesky drivers.

I also followed the instructions in this link without getting the system to boot.

After selecting "startup repair" in the recovery environment, the SrtTrail logfile shows "The operating system version is incompatible with Startup Repair" maybe because the only installation disk I have is 8.1? Is there even a 10 startup disk like the old vista and 7 iso's out there?

I suspect windows is not seeing the drive because the RST drivers are preventing the system from seeing the drive even when in the recovery environment. Intel warned me before installing them that they were irreversible. Maybe the solution would be to change some registry values via command line, but I need some help with that if anyone is inclined.

The reason I have avoided a clean re-install is the sheer volume of applications I have, as well as having to wait on windows 10 to do its thing, then download again, etc. I would like to somehow get this drive to boot.

Thanks in advance for any advice or help.

geoff

:)

 

Intel RST Service & Windows10

Same situation here - Intel RST running a cache SSD under Windows 7 Pro, now not working properly after Windows 10 upgrade. Notification icon says "not running" and double clicking on it fails to open the Intel application. The service is however still running
and a check via Task Manager / Processes shows it taking about 20% of processor use about every five seconds.

Intel's Driver Update Utility fails to identify the RST driver, so I've manually downloaded the updated Intel RST driver (14.5.0.1081 - stated as being suitable for Windows 10) from the Intel website. Should I simply install the new driver (SetupRST.exe)?

Many thanks for any help!

 

Intel® 82801IR I/O Controller Supported RST Version with Windows Server 2016 / Recovering from Crash

Hi,



I made the mistake in installing most recent RST on an older Intel S3200SHV Server board with Intel® 82801IR I/O Controller, evidently all hell broke loose as i got spinning dots at reboot. In order to address the issue I set the controller
to IDE after unplugging one of the drives. I did some research and apparently version 10.8.0.1003 is the latest one that would work with this legacy controller, can anyone please confirm this and if so, how can i go back to my RAID setup if the server no longer
boots when set to RAID (Latest RST has already been uninstalled).



Your suggestions are greatly appreciated

 

I'm not familiar with your motherboard, but have you tried connecting the hard drive to an alternate Sata (Asmedia if you have it on your motherboard) port. Also, try sitting the bios to IDE or raid. Longshot but worth a try

 

Thanks Snakeyes,
There is a pair of Gigabyte onboard RAID sata ports not controlled by ICH10. I connected the image drive to one and reset the bios to IDE both on the ICH10 controller and the Gigabyte. No joy.

Another thing I did was download the actual windows 10 iso image with the tool on this page. That made a significant difference in the way that the startup repair behaved. At least it attempted to repair the boot files. But after an exhaustive series of repair attempts, I threw in the towel and reset windows. I am in the process of re-installing my applications as I type this. Again, thanks for your input. - geoff

 

I feel your pain. Been there. Best of luck

 

What version RST did you install?

 

14.6.0.1029

I have no beef with the drivers - likely caused by some conflict with the GSATA (Gigabyte) onboard controller drivers installed a couple days ago.

 

That's what I'm running with two RAID arrays on the RST, no problems. What a bummer, man. Hope you get it fixed.

 

Thanks DJG,
Apparently 10 (as well as 8.1) provide sufficient drivers for ICH10R functionality, I was just trying to get the GUI back because I like keeping tabs on my arrays. Live and learn. It may very well be that this new image would not take issue with RST, but I'm not going to take that chance, at least until I set a restore point and create a backup image on storage media *Smile - geoff

 

I experienced some problems when selecting RAID writeback cache mode with the previous RST version, but not with this latest one. I also like to use the app to keep tabs (pun intended) on my arrays. I do have to say I can see no appreciable speed difference turning on writeback so far.

 

There was a time when SSD's were new and much more expensive than they are now, I would put two or three smaller drives in a RAID '0' to provide enough space for an OS partition. The performance gain was a nice by-product for gaming and write-back cache mode certainly came in handy - this was back in the day before SATA III and OS-native TRIM. As the technology has improved (and gotten cheaper) I do not typically put an OS image on an array, but I do have two old WD 750 gig Caviar black drives that are my main storage, and are in a RAID '0' - they are 6 years old now, and show no sign of decay, but they won't last forever and having what used to be know as Intel Matrix Storage Manager to look at them and analyze them gave me an extra sense of security.

 

I have my OS on a 2-ssd RAID 0 that is awesome quick and have never had a problem under normal circumstances. When working out my OC I often go through several BSODs and the RAID 0 keeps ticking. Once in a blue moon after several bad BSODs I notice some different behavior, like the firewall starts asking the same old questions again. At that point I do an image restore (I always back up before heavy OC workouts). But even then the system is still working. I keep my data stuff on a RAID 10.

 

Well, after doing some investigating, I am finding that it is possible the whole reset was not necessary. I will never know for sure, but my suspicions are based on a fail to boot this morning (I know, after everything I have been through).

I use Raxco Perfect Disk for defrag purposes, and I ticked the option to do a boot time defrag on my system partition. After reboot the machine went into a BCD fail error screen - one of the same ones I had seen in my ordeal before. I double checked my bios before changing back to a restore point and the HDD boot order had changed to my RAID 0 storage array.

I reset the bios boot order back to the SSD that contains my system partition - no boot - same BCD black death screen. I went back into the bios - reset the HDD boot order back to the RAID array. Voila - booted up normally after Perfect Disk did the boot-time defrag.

This is extremely odd. The bios only sees the RAID array as a viable boot drive. Is it possible that RST tatooed some boot signature on the RAID disk and now the in-built Windows 10 ICH drivers defaults to that boot signature and ignores my SSD??? Looking in disk management I find sure enough that a partition on the RAID array is marked system, active and primary, where my actual system drive is marked boot, page file, active, crash, and primary. I would think that not being marked "system" would prevent the drive from booting even though it is marked "boot."

I know there must be a way to correct this - likely from the command prompt.

This is weird, and in all my years of fiddling with computers and such (about 20) I have never seen anything like it.

 

Have you tried doing a Startup Repair with the Windows install DVD?