RAID array freezes Windows 7 x64 when enabled

I have a Gigabyte GA-880GA-UD3H with an on-board SATA RAID controller that was working fine for about a year. I have 4x1.5TB drives in a RAID5 configuration.

After updating the driver set to the latest on the Gigabyte support site ("AMD Chipset driver 8.71") the system started freezing randomly. I figured out it has something to do with the RAID device by disabling it in the device manager. While the RAID volume is disabled I have a happy, stable system, and as soon as I re-enable the volume and reboot it runs for about 10 minutes and then freezes with no error in the event viewer.

The RAID BIOS reports that each drive is healthy, so I don't think it's because of that.

I've tried playing with advanced power management settings by setting the drives to never go to sleep, but that didn't help.

I haven't tried to rollback because I'm not sure where to get the old drivers or even what the version was.

I'd really like some info on how I can get this to generate some sort of log, or error so I know why this is happening, and also any help in tracking down an older driver would probably solve this as well.

Chris

Posted 2011-11-01T15:12:44.347

Reputation: 81

FYI: If the rollback button is available then the old driver files should still be present on your system – Tog – 2011-11-01T15:40:09.797

Can you expand? Where is the rollback button? – Chris – 2011-11-01T15:58:58.890

Apologies, but I'm not at a Windows7 machine right now so this is from memory:- Open the device manager as an administrator, right-click on the device, select properties, select driver tab. If the drivers are still available on your system, the "Roll Back Driver" button should be available. Just found this guide which should help:- http://pcsupport.about.com/od/windows7/ht/roll-back-driver-windows-7.htm

– Tog – 2011-11-02T08:12:37.503

Unfortunately that button is greyed out. I'm still experiencing the freezes if the RAID array is enabled via device manager. If it's disabled, the system is stable. – Chris – 2011-11-15T18:44:46.233

Another clue... This freezing problem doesn't happen in safemode, is there a way to figure out what drivers aren't loaded, or make a comparison between safemode and normal mode and maybe narrow down what's causing the freeze? – Chris – 2011-11-15T19:15:43.097

Try uninstalling the drivers completely. – Garrett – 2011-11-15T19:26:45.550

I am just wondering how can you actually disable the RAID driver? AMD uses a software RAID system, so unless your boot disk is on a different disk controller, disabling the RAID driver should prevent your system from booting. – billc.cn – 2011-11-19T06:55:05.773

Answers

You should maybe also update your BIOS and Chipset driver from the downloads found at your Gigabyte motherboard downloads. Ensure that you are getting downloads for the right motherboard version.

If you wish to go back to the driver version that worked, you can search and download earlier versions of your driver from some well-known website. You may also delete the driver completely and let Windows find your driver for you (if it can).

Using google search for Gigabyte GA-880GA-UD3H SATA2 Driver I found the following list of driver versions on softpedia.com. Some of them are listed below :

Gigabyte GA-880GA-UD3H (rev. 2.1) SATA2 Preinstall Driver 1.17.55.0 (June 29th, 2010)
Gigabyte GA-880GA-UD3H (rev. 2.2) SATA2 Driver 1.17.59.0 (February 4th, 2011)
Gigabyte GA-880GA-UD3H (rev. 3.0) SATA2 Driver 1.17.59.0 (May 17th, 2011)

You may use the date to try and find the right driver for you. If you wish my opinion, it would help me to know your current driver version and date, as well as the last time you updated the driver (roughly).

Before changing disk driver, make sure you have good backups (maybe even an image of the system disk), and at least create a system restore point to which you can return if a problem occurs. Remember also that a botched BIOS update can brick your computer.

harrymc

Posted 2011-11-01T15:12:44.347

Reputation: 306 093

Thank you for the info, however these drivers still didn't help :( I'm currently re-installing Windows 7, to see if this clears it up. – Chris – 2011-11-18T15:40:13.830

Windows Update is generally behind the manufacturer by months or years. So maybe the generic Windows driver will do the trick, or you may still have stashed somewhere the Gigabyte driver that used to work. Do this carefully and create system recovery points between driver updates, just in case. – harrymc – 2011-11-18T19:02:12.287

Expanding on harrymc's comment above (and i understand you're going through a reinstall) - but did you check if there was a restore point created before you installed the updated RAID drivers? You could then rollback to the old stable version...

Failing that did you originally setup the machine? Did you use the motherboard device drivers CD? Did you specify the RAID drivers as part of the install? (unsure if you still have to do this in Win7 setup?) If so these (older) ones are the ones to reinstall! (Just make sure you choose to over-write the new files with older).

If you didn't setup the system and/or don't have the drivers used then looking at the driver details in device manager might give you an indication... What differences do you seen between the controller in normal (crashing) mode and safe (working) mode? If there are default windows drivers being used in safe mode, yet Gigabyte drivers being used in Normal mode then you may not have been using Gigabyte ones to start with... Uninstalling them and using whatever Windows wants (ie 'default' ones) would give you a stable system again... :)

HaydnWVN

Posted 2011-11-01T15:12:44.347

Reputation: 3 192