Sorry if something similar has been asked before… but here goes:
When you do a fresh install of Win10 on a machine with a pair of SSDs (or HDDs, doesn’t matter) configured as RAID1 already, won’t Windows already install a 14.x RAID driver to the environment upon OS installation straight away?
If this is in fact the case, and then you want to use the best driver for ICH8R (namely Intel RST v11.2.0.1006 WHQL), then how can you avoid downgrading from RST(e) to RST which seems to be a very bad thing to do according to this forum…?
Reason I am asking - I have been using Win 10 for a while now on my system (with ICH8R) with RAID1 but so far there has been a couple of horrible BSODs that actually corrupted a few files here and there. So I am considering a fresh OS install but this time with the BEST RAID driver installed.
Thanks for any help.
Oops… answering my own question here… seem Fernando has already answered this question in another thread:
Problems with ICH10R / Windows 10.
Thanks…!!
Spent an entire day backing up, wiping my RAID SSD clean, downloading the latest Win10 (10586) image, modding the installation image, and then doing a clean installation of Win10… fingers crossed no more blue screen of death and I will never have to go through an ordeal such as this anymore.
(my old Win10 installation was dying on me with what I believe was corrupted system files and register entries…)
Win10 now running on RAID driver 11.2.0.1006. Thank you Win-RAID Forum for making this possible.
@seemebreakthis :
Thanks for your feedback!
You are welcome.
Enyoy your Intel RAID system using the by far best RAID driver!
Hello Fernando - I actually have a question unrelated to RAID… I understand you are releasing modded drivers that you have added digital signatures to. Can I ask how it is done? Reason being, I have an unsigned driver for an old device in my system, and I don’t want to have to switch on ‘test mode’ and see that ugly desktop watermark only to accommodate the unsigned driver, so if I can I’d like to add a digital signature to a .dll file within the driver that is unsigned.
Searched through your forum but apparently I could not locate the post teaching how to add digital signature for free.
Thank you!
You can install each unsigned driver even while running Win8/8.1/10 after having disabled temporarily the “Driver Signature Enforcement”.
I have never seen such watermark after having installed an unsigned driver.
I do not offer such guide to avoid any problems. You should consider, that neither Microsoft nor the chipset manufacturers like any modification of the original drivers done by the users.
It has been about a month since I re-installed Win10 with RAID driver 11.2.0.1006. No more BSOD so far. It is becoming evident the system is totally stable now.
Lesson learned - If you use ICH8R (and I suspect other ICHxR Intel RAID chipset too), and you have RAID enabled in your system, it is probably a good idea to MOD the Win10 installation image to replace the RAID driver with 11.2.0.1006 before you actually start doing the installation.
Thought I’d give a quick update here now that more than a year has gone by.
My system has survived 2 major Win10 updates with my Raid-1 configuration holding up just fine. One thing I noticed very recently (after upgrading to Win10 creators update, ver 1703) however is that the driver version has been updated to 13.2.0.1022 without me even knowing. My guess is that the driver must have been replaced during the creators update installation, and possibly during the previous Anniversary Update installation (ver 1607) as well. i.e. the driver may have been updated even more than once. Thankfully however, I haven’t encountered any BSOD issue related to RAID driver as of this moment.
If you want to be absolutely certain, during any major upgrade i guess it is advisable to download / modding your USB image with the RAID driver properly replaced (with 11.2.0.1006) according to the procedure elsewhere in this thread, rather than doing an online Win10 upgrade like what I did. Otherwise you will end up with a 13.2.0.1002 RAID driver (fingers crossed this still won’t give me any issue).
And I think I am only asking for trouble if I try now to downgrade the driver back to 11.2.0.1006, am I right?
Cheers.
@seemebreakthis :
Thanks for your report. Regarding the consequences I totally agree with you.
Yes, you can try it (after having done a backup of your important data), but you probably will get a BSOD while rebooting.
My driver has been further updated automatically, either through the latest Fall Creators Update, or maybe even one of those automatic Windows Updates. So now it is on 13.44.0.1026:
I didn’t like what the updates did to my system, but so far there hasn’t been any negative impact. Just thought I’d share this piece of info.
@seemebreakthis :
As you already suspected, the Intel RST RAID driver v13.44.0.1026 is the in-box driver of Win10 v1709 (“Fall Creators Update”) and has been automaticly installed during the update to that version.
By the way: The in-box Intel RAID driver of the upcoming Win10 v1803 will be v15.44.0.1010 dated 02/07/2018 and this will be a problem for RAID users with an old Intel Chipset system.
I’m late to the party. My searching has led me here. My problem is that the boot screen shows that one of the 4 HDD’s has an error and that the RAID is degraded. I can’t access the RST UI to repair the array. My normal approach in the past was to install an older RST version that worked for my system. The install stops and popup explains that it won’t install because of missing .NET 4.5 (iirc) and when I try to install the .NET the install stops and the popup indicates that the version is already installed or it is a newer version.
My searching hasn’t helped much and the discussion on this board seem to be the most pertinent to me. Any help, suggestions, guidance, request for additional info or explanations would be much appreciated. TIA, -Tom
Details follow:
OS
Win10 Pro
V1803
OS Build 17134.191
Device Manager Shows
Disk Drives, RAID 1 Volume
Driver 10.0.17134.1
Date 6/21/2006
Storage Controllers, Intel Chipset SATA RAID Controller
Driver 15.44.0.1010
Date 2/7/2018
Boot Screen
Intel Matrix Storage Manager
ROM V6.1.0.1002 ICH8R
Raid 10 (RAID 0+1)
@littlenut :
Welcome to the Win-RAID Forum!
The Intel MSM RAID ROM v6.1.0.1002, which is within your mainboard BIOS, doesn’t match at all the Intel RST RAID driver v15.44.0.1010 you are running.
So the first step to solve you problems would be to check, whether an update of the Intel RAID ROM BIOS module to RST v10.1.0.1008 or even to RST v11.2.0.1527 will be possible.
Which mainboard/system model from which manufacturer do you use?
Another option is to do a fresh install of Win10 v1803 or v1809 by using an OS image, where the in-box Intel RAID driver has been removed and an older Intel RST driver (e.g. RST v11.2.0.1006 WHQL) has been integrated into the BOOT.WIM and INSTALL.WIM. The related guide can be found >here<.
Good luck!
Dieter (alias Fernando)
TY Dieter. Great direction/places for me to start looking and sort this out. The info on my MoBo follows. This is very much appreciated. I’ll be back to update outcome(s). Regards, -Tom
Mainboard
ASUS Commando
Intel P965
ICH8R
Hi Tom,
I know it has been two months, but I have only noticed something new in this thread today.
But seeing you mentioning ICH8R which is the same chipset I have, I want to see if my experience can help you in any way.
Take a look at [Guide] AMI (non-UEFI) BIOS Modding (4) and [Guide] AMI (non-UEFI) BIOS Modding (5) . Also the OP of that entire thread was what I followed to flash my BIOS from a very old RAID ROM (like what you have) to 11.2.0.1527. It is totally worth the effort. Currently running Win10 1803 RAID 1 with zero issues.