My iaStor Problem Solved!

Disabling the on board Realtek RTL8187 Wireless device and uninstalling its Vista x64 device driver has resolved the iaStor timeout problems on Nighthawk.

After 14 hours without a single iaStor timeout problem, Nighthawk was shutdown, all USB ports (except for the Realtek RTL8187 Wireless device) enabled in BIOS, and Vista Ultimate x64 restarted. Nighthawk has now been running in this configuration for over 36 hours without a single iaStor timeout problem.

Why did I disable the USB ports to begin with?

The on board Realtek RTL8187 Wireless device is actually a USB device!

The USB Universal Host Controller 2831 uses the same IRQ as the Intel(R) 82801HR/HH/HO SATA RAID Controller - 13 (19). The USB and USB2 Universal Host Controllers also utilize memory resources right next to the memory resources allocated to the Intel(R) 82801HR/HH/HO SATA RAID Controller (more commonly known as the Intel ICH8R Controller.)

In fact, the memory resources allocated to the Intel(R) 82801HR/HH/HO SATA RAID Controller start at address FEBFF800, which immediately follows where the memory resources allocated to the USB2 Universal Host Controller 2836 ends at address FEBFF7FF.

A poorly written driver for a USB2 devices, e.g., the Realtek RTL8187 Wireless device, can easily cause a problem for the Intel ICH8R Controller if it writes outside its allocated address space, even by just one address location!

ASUS has just released ASUS WiFi-AP Solo driver V1285-7.3.13.0 for VISTA 32bit/64bit, a beta driver. I am not going to touch it. Fortunately for me, I have no need for the on board Realtek RTL8187 Wireless device.

iaStor Timeout Errors

Running Vista Ultimate x64 on Nighthawk without any USB ports is not an option for me.

Yet, Nighthawk has been running without any more iaStor timeout problems for over 20 hours since I disabled all of its USB ports.

I had to figure out a way to get my USB ports back on Nighthawk without suffering iaStor timeout problems.

I noticed that the Realtek RTL8187 Wireless 802.11g device driver Version 6.1272.106.2007 was still installed. I decided to uninstall this device driver using the Vista Control Panel Programs & Features, shutdown, enable the USB ports, and restart.

The Vista Control Panel Programs & Features invoked the Realtek RTL8187 Wireless 802.11g device driver to uninstall itself. This is evident from the messages displayed during the uninstall process.

Almost immediately, Vista informs me that "A drive in a RAID 0 volume is failing. Try to back up data immediately." I immediately checked the Event Log, and sure enough, there were 45 iaStor timeout errors!

Very interesting!

I started the Intel Matrix Storage Console and marked the "failing" drive as "normal," and restarted Nighthawk with the USB ports still disabled.

Nighthawk has been running stable in this state for over 14 hours now.

My next step is to shutdown, enable the USB ports and restart Nighthawk. I'm going to do this immediately after publishing this post.

Vista Reliability Monitor

One of the best features of Vista is its "Reliability Monitor."

Vista's Reliability Monitor assigns a "Reliability Index" from 0 to 10 to your system daily, based on the number and frequency of the following types of failures:

• Application Failures
• Hardware Failures
• Windows Failures
• Miscellaneous Failures

Vista's Reliability Monitor also tracks all software installations and uninstalls, which is very useful for correlating failures to software changes in your system.

Vista Ultimate x64 (RTM Build 6000) was installed on Nighthawk on January 20, 2007. As one can see from the System Stability Chart, it was very stable with a Reliability Index of 10 from its Vista installation until February 1, 2007.

What happened with Nighthawk on February 1, 2007?

On February 1, I installed a new driver (and software) for my Hauppauge PVR150 TV Tuner card in an attempt to make it work with Vista's Windows Media Center.

The Hauppauge PVR150 does not work with Vista x64 on a computer with the ASUS P5B Deluxe WiFi-AP motherboard, 4GB of memory, and "Memory Remap" enabled in BIOS.

I installed the Hauppauge WinTV2000 application to see if it would work with the PVR150. The WinTV2000 application failed in each of 3 attempts with a "Stopped responding" condition as noted by Vista's Reliability Monitor.

Nighthawk's Reliability Index fell to 8.3 because of these failures.

Nighthawk's Reliability Index continued to fall in the following days as I grappled with troublesome drivers for my NVIDIA 8800GTS video card and my onboard SoundMAX audio device.

Although these problems were very annoying, the next problem confronting me starting on February 8, 2007 was more serious: my RAID0 array consisting of 2 Maxtor SATA II 500GB drives connected to the onboard Intel ICH8R Controller started failing with an iaStor error ("The device, \Device\Ide\iaStor0, did not respond within the timeout period.")

What changes did I make to Nighthawk just before this serious iaStor timeout problem started happening?

Well, I enabled the onboard Realtek RTL8187 Wireless 802.11g device and installed the ASUS WiFi-AP Version 6.1262.1212.2006 driver on February 6, 2007 as previously noted in this Blog.

Windows Update subsequently downloaded and installed an even newer version: Version 6.1272.106.2007 dated 1/6/2007 without asking me!

Vista's Reliability Monitor showed even more interesting (incriminating?) information.

On that same date, the driver for the Intel ICH8 Family USB and USB2 Universal Host Controllers 2834, 2835 and 283A were updated to Version 8.0.0.1008. Note that I had installed Intel's Chipset Driver Version 8.1.1.1010 on Nighthawk immediately after installing Vista Ultimate x64.

Yesterday, I started suspecting that the onboard Realtek RTL8187 Wireless device and its driver was the cause of the iaStor timeout problem. I disabled it in BIOS and started Nighthawk. However, Vista Ultimate x64 started experiencing iaStor timeout errors (26 errors) approximately 3 hours later.

I shutdown Nighthawk, disabled all USB devices, and restarted Nighthawk. Approximately 20 hours later, Vista Ultimate x64 was running stable without any iaStor timeout problems.

Coincidence?

No Vista x64 support for APC PowerChute Personal Edition 2.1

I use APC (American Power Conversion Corporation) UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) products for all of my home computers. I consider a UPS device an essential component for a home computer. So I was happy to note that APC finally released PowerChute Personal Edition Version 2.1 for "Windows Vista."

I quickly downloaded it (23.6 MB) and immediately attempted to install it on my Vista Ultimate x64 (RTM Build 6000) system (Blackbird).

The installation went through the normal process of the "InstallShield Wizard (R) extracting the files needed to install APC PowerChute Personal Edition on my computer."

The installation then went through the normal process of "preparing the InstallShield (R) Wizard to guide me through the rest of the setup process."

I was feeling good at this point. I was looking forward to finally having my Vista Ultimate x64 computer fully protected by my APC Back-UPS XS 1500 in case of power failure and/or brown-outs.

My optimism was premature.

I was greeted with the following message: "You are attempting to install software that is intended for Microsoft (R) Windows (R) Vista."

I immediately fired off an email to ACP Support to report the problem. I was actually surprised to receive a response during the weekend. I wasn't expecting one until the middle of the work week at best. Kudos to APC for good customer service.

However, I was not entirely surprised by their response: "Please note the version PowerChute Personal Edition version 2.1 can be used only with Windows Vista operating system. It cannot be used with Windows Vista Ultimate x64. As of now we do not have a software for Vista Ultimate x64. We are working on a solution, but do not have an expected release date at this time. I am sorry for any inconvenience."

I guess that's that.

Restore using Windows Home Server

How many of you have a backup & recovery plan for your home computer?

And how many of you that do have tested your backup & recovery plan before you actually have to use it for real?

Backup and restore with Windows Home Server is very easy. In previous posts, I have shared how easy it is to backup your home computer(s) using Windows Home Server.

In this post, I will actually attempt to perform a partial and full restore.

To perform a partial restore (e.g., to restore files and/or folders), login to your server using the Windows Home Server Console. In the "Computers & Backup" page, select the home computer and click on the "View Backups" button.

A list of backups for the selected computer will be displayed. Select the backup from which you wish to restore and click the "Open..." button.

Depending on how many folders and files are included in your backup, it might take awhile for the Windows Home Server to create a list of the folders and files in your selected backup.

It took a long time for me, and the "Opening Backup" dialog box stayed at 95% complete for over 30 minutes.

Eventually, an Explorer window with my drives, folders and files in the selected backup was be displayed. When it did, I noticed that Windows XP detected a new device and installed a driver for the new device. I was not quick enough to get a screen capture of this. I was also informed that the driver was successfully installed and prompted to restart which I declined.

The next and final step was to select the file(s) and/or folder(s) to restore and drag to a specified location in my home computer.

That's how easy it was to restore files and folders from the Windows Home Server!

To test a full restore, I removed a 15GB hard drive from my old laptop and installed a spare 12GB hard drive. I powered up the laptop, inserted, and booted off the "Windows Home Server Restore" CD.

The boot process was very similar to the Vista installation and it successfully loaded the drivers for all the devices including the Netgear Gigabit PC Card (GA511), unarguably the most important device at this point since it is required to connect to the Windows Home Server.

Eventually, the "Restore Computer Wizard" started and I was prompted to "Log On to your Windows Home Server."

I logged on and I was prompted to "Choose a Computer to Restore." I was pleasantly surprised that my "Bluebird" computer was automatically selected! I suspect that Windows Home Server correctly identified which home computer to restore based on the MAC address of its network device.

I was then prompted to "Choose a Backup to Restore."

Unfortunately, I was unable to proceed beyond this stage because the size of the backup was 14.06GB and the available space on my blank hard drive was only 11.24GB.

However, I believe that I would have been able to successfully restore my computer if I had a hard drive with the same or greater capacity as the original drive.

I'll try again in the near future since this will be an easy way to upgrade the hard drive in a laptop to one of greater capacity!

Remote access using Windows Home Server

Windows Home Server provides secure remote access to your server and home computers (with remote access enabled).

It provides this service using Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) combined with Remote Web Workplace (RWW), a popular feature of Windows Small Business Server.

According to most accounts I have read, this combination is more secure than using Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) on its own. I am still investigating the security implications of RDP over RWW, so all my testing have been performed inside my own network behind my firewall.

Access your Windows Home Server by entering its address in your Web browser and click on the "Log on" button in the Windows Home Server Website page to begin.

Enter your Windows Home Server username and password and click on the "Log on" button to continue.

Upon a successful log on, you will be presented with the Windows Home Server Website Remote Access page.

Note that you now have access to your home computers which have remote access enabled, and to the Shared Folders on your Windows Home Server.

Click on the tab labeled "Computers" to access your home computers.

The first time you attempt to remotely access one of your home computers, you will be prompted to install an ActiveX control for Windows Home Server remote access. You must install this ActiveX control.

You will then be presented with the options to connect to your Home Server or to remotely access any of your home computers which have remote access enabled.

Select the home computer you wish to remotely access using Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) over Remote Web Workplace (RWW).

This will initiate a Remote Desktop Connection to the selected home computer assuming that it is available for remote connection, i.e., it has remote access enabled.

A message reminding you that you are about to connect to your home computer in full screen connection with instructions on how to close the connection just in case you have never used Remote Desktop Connection before. Clicking on the OK button connects you to your selected home computer in full screen mode.

If you had selected the option to connect to your Home Server instead, you will be prompted for the Windows Home Server administrator password.

Note that this is not a Remote Desktop Connection to your Home Server. It simply provides you access to your Windows Home Server Console.

Regardless, it is important you have a "strong" password for your Windows Home Server administrator username, specially if you enable remote access from the Internet.

Upon successful log on to your Windows Home Server, you will then be prompted to "Press SPACEBAR or ENTER to activate and use this control" (the ActiveX control you installed at the beginning of the remote access session.)

The Windows Home Server Console is then displayed.

You can now remotely administer your Windows Home Server.

This is the reason why you must have a "strong" password for your Windows Home Server administrator username.

If you wish to access your Shared Folders instead of remotely accessing your Windows Home Server or one of your home computers, select the "Folders" tab from the Windows Home Server Website Remote Access page.

As previously stated, I am still undecided on whether to enable remote access from the Internet until I have fully assessed its security implications. These features of Windows Home Server remote access sure make it very tempting to use!

A week with Windows Home Server

It has been just over a week since I moved my Windows Home Server into a closet. My server has been running non-stop since then, and I have not had any reason to physically access it.

I have noticed that disk activity on the server has also been non-stop since then. Windows Home Server definitely keeps itself busy.

A lot of files have been copied to the server in the past week.

The 1.11 terabyte of disk space in my Windows Home Server have almost been used up. There are only 135.8 GB of storage space left on the server and I have not moved everything I want to store on the server!

Just recently in the past couple of days, I have noticed that the "Shared Folders" view in the Windows Home Server Console now sports a graphical "Used Space History." The chart has a slider control to select the history period: 1 week, 1 month, 1 year and "max."

I don't know whether this is a recent update to Windows Home Server Console or not, but I had not seen it previously.

Another feature of Windows Home Server is "Media Library Sharing" which is used "to stream music, photos, and videos from shared folders on your Windows Home Server to other devices in your home."

My music on the Windows Home Server appear and play in my Windows Media Player under Vista Ultimate x64. However, I don't see my entire music collection. I wonder if Windows Home Server has not completed cataloging my extensive music collection yet.

My evaluation copy of Windows Home Server Beta 2 expires on March 2, 2008. I already know that I can't live without it.

The "Version Information" under "Resources" in the Windows Home Server Console provides an insight into what comprises Windows Home Server: Admin Console, Backup & Restore, Drive Extender, Remote Access, and Storage Manager.

I will be experimenting with remote access next.