ICH9R (P35) issues with Vista and Raid

[BillParrish]

If you are thinking of a Intel board with an ICHxR chip and installing Vista on a raid array you would be well advised to read this carefully. There are sharks in the water.

It is interesting too that there are a couple of revisions of the ICH9R chip out there apparently.

http://www.station-drivers.com/telechargement/intel/msm7.5.html


Here is the scary bit, but read the whole thing please.

Possible Issues with Intel® RAID and Window Vista when using devices not compliant with Serial ATA LPM device specification: A change was made by Microsoft in the Microsoft Windows Vista setup process. The result of this change is that the Intel® Matrix Storage Manager Link Power Management (LPM) registry settings that were intended for mobile installations are added for desktop installations as well. These LPM registry settings are added for both the Intel® Matrix Storage Manager RAID driver on the Microsoft Windows Vista installation disk, as well as for any drivers added during the installation process.

Various desktop Serial ATA devices such as hard drives and CD/DVD drives have been reported that do not comply with the Serial ATA LPM device specification and display erratic behavior when LPM is enabled.

Because the setup change means that LPM is enabled by default for all Microsoft Windows Vista platforms, using a device that does not completely follow the specification may result in one of the listed issues.

Inability to install Microsoft Windows Vista (i.e. system halts during installation)
Performance degradation
Timeout errors reported by iastor or iastor(v) in Microsoft* Event Viewer*
Workarounds:

If you are experiencing installation issues, the following workarounds may help resolve the issue:

If available, install updated firmware for the device.
Attach the devices to ports 3-5 on the Intel® 82801HR/HH/HO I/O controller hub (ICH8R) or port 3 on the Intel® 82801GR/GH I/O controller hub (ICH7R)
If you are experiencing performance degradation or timeout errors, the following workarounds may help resolve the issue:

If available, install updated firmware for the device.
Delete the iastor(v) Parameters registry key by using the following steps:

1. Go to Start -> Search.
2. Type in RegEdit and hit the Enter key.
3. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\iaStor(v).
4. Right-click on the Parameters key under iaStor(v) and select the Delete option.

 

[opfreak]

there appear to be problems with all the ichX chips, not just the 9/bearlake veirson. I think your title needs to less focused.

 

[BillParrish]

there appear to be problems with all the ichX chips, not just the 9/bearlake veirson. I think your title needs to less focused.

Doh you are correct, I was searching for ICH9R tech info when I tripped over this and had it on the brain. I will see if I can edit it.

 

[SonOfMore]

I have rev 1.1 of Gigabyte's GA-P35-DS3P board with the ICH9R. The plan is to install it with Win Vista 64 bit, I'll let you folks know how it goes.