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17966
May 4th, 2011 13:00
iaStor.sys BSOD after Windows April updates
2 days after the big April Windows updates (I'm running XP) I started getting this annoying iaStor.sys BSOD every few days.
The computer boots fine and it never happens when I'm actually using the computer. It only crashes when I'm NOT using the computer.
The computer is left on all the time, and I'll come back after not using the computer for awhile and boom it will have restarted automatically due to this problem. When it boots back up it says there was a serious problem blah blah blah and error info points to iaStor.sys.
I am running a RAID 1 so I need the iaStor.sys. I've done a ton of searching on this but can't find any solution.
I have no viruses. Ruling out a hardware problem I checked the memory with memtest and I've also tested both drives using every possible method and they check out fine. I just replaced one drive about a month ago, and the other is a few years old.
One thing that seems to be related is that I have disk errors, but I'm not sure if they are causing the crashes or they are a result of the crashing. If I run chkdsk /f it fixes them and then says everything is fine, until the next time it BSOD's a few days later and then chkdsk reports errors again.
I found an old thread that suggested changing a disk setup parameter before booting, then re-installing the intel matrix storage manager, and then changing that setting back to Autodetect/ACHI or whatever. I did all that, and that didn't solve the problem either.
Surely I can't be the only one having this problem, but it's weird that I can't find any recent info on this. Most of the threads and info I'm finding are from many many years ago when there was apparently a known issue with iaStor.sys on various Dells.
Anyone out there have any input for me? Thanks!
P.S. The relevant bit from the minidump is this part:
Unable to load image iaStor.sys, Win32 error 2
*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for iaStor.sys
*** ERROR: Module load completed but symbols could not be loaded for iaStor.sys
And the entire minidump is as follows:
Unknown bugcheck code (8086)
Unknown bugcheck description
Arguments:
Arg1: 00000000
Arg2: 00000000
Arg3: 00000000
Arg4: 00000000
Debugging Details:
------------------
CUSTOMER_CRASH_COUNT: 1
DEFAULT_BUCKET_ID: DRIVER_FAULT
BUGCHECK_STR: 0x8086
PROCESS_NAME: services.exe
LAST_CONTROL_TRANSFER: from b7e7de55 to 804f9f1e
STACK_TEXT:
b84cfe60 b7e7de55 00008086 8afca000 8aab7c02 nt!KeBugCheck+0x14
WARNING: Stack unwind information not available. Following frames may be wrong.
b84cfe88 b7e487dc 8afca000 8052b99c 8b001000 iaStor+0x39e55
b84cff24 b7e493b5 8b001000 ffdff000 806e7ae4 iaStor+0x47dc
b84cffbc b7e83faf 8b001000 00000000 ffdff980 iaStor+0x53b5
b84cffcc 80545eef 8afca728 8afca000 00000000 iaStor+0x3ffaf
b84cfff4 80545a5b a7d3d978 00000000 00000000 nt!KiRetireDpcList+0x61
b84cfff8 a7d3d978 00000000 00000000 00000000 nt!KiDispatchInterrupt+0x2b
80545a5b 00000000 00000009 0081850f bb830000 0xa7d3d978
STACK_COMMAND: kb
FOLLOWUP_IP:
iaStor+39e55
b7e7de55 ?? ???
SYMBOL_STACK_INDEX: 1
FOLLOWUP_NAME: MachineOwner
MODULE_NAME: iaStor
IMAGE_NAME: iaStor.sys
DEBUG_FLR_IMAGE_TIMESTAMP: 46a947b4
SYMBOL_NAME: iaStor+39e55
FAILURE_BUCKET_ID: 0x8086_iaStor+39e55
BUCKET_ID: 0x8086_iaStor+39e55
Followup: MachineOwner
0 events found
RoHe
10 Elder
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45.2K Posts
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May 4th, 2011 19:00
Since you already reinstalled iastor, it sounds like the problem is elsewhere. You may have a failing hard drive. Since you have RAID1, your files are being backed up which is a good thing, unless they're both failing... :emotion-3: Might be prudent to back up on external media until you resolve this issue.
You may want to reboot and press F12 before XP starts to load. Go to Utilities Partition and run extended hard drive tests. Or you can create a bootable disk to run Dell's 90/90 hard drive tests. Note down any error messages that are reported.
I''m wondering about this error message: WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for iaStor.sys
Does your PC clock have the correct date/time? If it's wrong, that might cause a problem. When was last time you replaced the motherboard battery, which holds the date/time and BIOS settings? If the battery is weak/dead, the clock may be wrong.
I run XP SP3 on my D8400, but not with a RAID setup. I'm running the hard drive with AHCI which requires iastor. No problems here after any recent Microsoft updates. And I haven't seen any other posts on these forums about this kind of problem since the April updates.
Ron
goatweed
10 Posts
0
May 6th, 2011 07:00
For the record, I am having issues with the same driver since the latest update. The primary difference is that I can't even get into my system, not even in safe mode. I have run dell diagnotics on the drives and they seem to give it a passing grade.
dsiomtw
3 Posts
0
May 6th, 2011 08:00
I stumbled across a possible solution that involved re-installing Intel Matrix Storage Manager, and then editing the registry parameters for iaStor. There's a parameter called LPMDSTATE which basically needs to be set to 0 for each port, otherwise there's a special AHCI mode called Linked Power Mode (LPM) which causes many drives to freak out (my Raptors included). Basically it tries to put the drives to sleep or something, and they stop responding for 30+ seconds. I guess it's mainly for laptops or something. I read about it here:
http://derek858.blogspot.com/2009/01/windows-7-intel-sataahci-lockups.html
It hasn't been long enough to know for sure but the symptoms and description would perfectly explain the problem I was seeing, so I'm guessing and hoping that this will solve my problem after changing them all back from 1 to 0. The only thing I can think of is that somehow the LPMDSTATE parameters got changed to 1 - possibly during a recent Windows update.
Your problem sounds a lot more serious. If the drives check out fine it sounds to me like a badly corrupted file system and/or virus. I know there are several common viruses that attach themselves to the iastor.sys file, although I don't believe they cause what you are seeing. But look into that. If I were you I would make a bootable disk that would allow you to copy over a clean version of iastor.sys to the drivers folder, and also run "chkdsk /f /r". Good luck!