Wow, strange problem related to Intel Storage Matrix – 300 days old

[Grogan]

I've been had, once again by ridiculous software. Although I now know what caused it, I still blame Windows for this because of its unnecessary gyrations, in checking digital signatures and just failing with misleading or nonexistent error messages when that fails for whatever reason.

Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit.

The story starts with a very fussy (but very nice) older lady. When I say fussy, I mean an icon in the wrong place would drive her "koo koo" (as she likes to say lol). Her hard drive has a few bad sectors, that have been mapped out by chkdsk. While it was running fine, she wanted it fixed because of what I told her, that more bad areas could be encountered and corruption or even complete loss of everything could occur..

I normally would never waste my time trying to clone or image from a hard disk with bad sectors, but for her... attempting to image the hard disk is worthwhile. I did a chkdsk /r before I started, and no more bad sectors were found. Should be a safe bet and will save me assloads of aggravation.

I decided to try Macrium Reflect, as I hear it's good. Indeed, I like... it creates a nice Windows PE environment with a Windows 7 kernel to boot from and you can use this disk both for imaging and restore (as well as accessing data to copy to removable media etc.)

Everything went well, I created an image file on a USB 3.0 external hard drive. I installed the new hard disk (a nice Western Digital Scorpio Black, 7200 rpm hard disk) and restored the image to it. When it was done I watched with glee, as Windows booted right up, with her desktop intact with every niggling detail.

Windows gave the mysterious "you need to reboot to complete the hardware installation" as it does when a disk signature needs to be written. It wasn't a surprising thing after an image to a new disk. (bold because this proves to be significant)

I let it reboot and all seemed well. I started to poke around and the first symptom of a problem were strange prompts from UAC that shouldn't have happened on Windows 7. For example going to Computer Management or Device Manager etc. causes the orange dialog prompting to run an unknown program, publisher unknown, mmc.exe. Windows Update doesn't work (silently fails, and manually clicking the "check for updates" button does nothing). Microsoft Security Essentials can't get its updates. Trying to install a driver fails, because Windows thinks its unsigned.

This problem obviously has to do with digital signatures. Windows can't read them anymore.

I thought this had to do with the disk imaging reading corrupted data from the original disk, but it was only this minor niggle that I should be able to fix, right? WRONG. I spent a lot of time troubleshooting that and manually followed every step that the Microsoft "Fix It" for Windows Update was to do. (It actually wouldn't run... you guessed it, because of the problem I was trying to fix lol). I registered dlls, deleted catalogs etc.

Then I thought, well, how about an in-place upgrade of Windows 7 to reinstall it? That ought to fix whatever broken signature verification shit was happening, right? Again, wrong. The install went perfectly, and everything was just fine afterwards, but same problem. It preserves all your setup, including third party drivers.

I came home last night to work on this. I wasted the whole rest of the night on it... stayed up until 7 am. I wasted time again today on it, I tried to image the old hard disk again with the same results. I tried some more to fix the Windows problem without success.

Finally, I decide to clean install. I gather up all the drivers from Gateway (Acer now) and I proceed. Blah blah boring... install drivers now. Chipset, SATA AHCI driver (Intel Matrix Storage Manager in disguise)... fine, reboot again and...

The mysterious prompt to reboot after a hardware change again. OK, Windows does that after detecting disk controllers. But the same problem is occurring now with digital signatures. On a clean install. Damnit! The Intel Storage Matrix drivers caused it. I uninstalled them from Programs and Features and rebooted and everything was fine. No more problem accessing digital signatures.

This is absolutely bizarre, there's no way I could have thought of that without seeing it happen like it did. What would that have to do with Microsoft's asshole signature verification process? Evidently something... I'll bet the driver somehow changes what windows gets when it queries the signature in the disk's MBR. Here I was blaming my hard disk imaging.

This must only happen on some disks (wasn't happening before I changed the disk and restored the image) but that wouldn't surprise me. Probably disks with different firmware or something. Maybe bogus characters are in the string and it doesn't work anymore.

Anyway, I am restoring the image I made and I will uninstall the Intel Storage Matrix SATA driver. I don't even need that, because I have no need of the RAID. Installing the "Chipset" (.inf files from Intel) identifies and programs the SATA controller correctly for Windows. The Intel Storage Matrix driver is usually a better one (better performance) but this will do.

[Grogan]

Yep... as expected, after restoring my image again and uninstalling Intel Storage Matrix, everything is fine. Microsoft's silly signature mechanism works again.

Now there's just one teeny tiny little niggle. Because I cloned the filesystem, Windows still thinks there are "12 kb in bad sectors". (list of bad sectors in MFT) That is inconsequential, but if anyone ever sees that (runs chkdsk and reads the summary), they may be alarmed and think the hard disk is going to fail. So I'll have to run chkdsk /b (which implies /f and /r... going to take hours, but I can go to sleep) to remove them and retest.

[Dark Angel]

I'm not accustomed to seeing Intel stuff do the stupid. That's certainly different and would have left me with less hair than nUnkle after I'd yanked it out.

[MSUredux]

Wow that is strange and a tough one to figure out. I use Intel Matrix (otherwise known as Intel Rapid Storage Technology) on two systems here and would've never thought of that.

[Grogan]

I have never had this happen before, and I always install Intel storage drivers where applicable, because it really does improve performance over the more generic ones. The difference between Microsoft's "Standard AHCI Controller" and the Intel driver can be very significant. (On my current rig, when it was first built I noticed it. I knew the hard disk I installed and what it was capable of and something was wrong. Intel Storage Matrix AHCI driver fixed it. They call it Rapid Storage Technology now, but the AHCI driver is still the same)

Anyway, this laptop now has the AHCI driver from the Intel INF Chipset installer, which is good. I notice no performance loss and the brokenness is fixed.

The problem must be certain drives, on certain chipsets because I have installed those drivers (supplied by laptop manufacturers) on many laptops after setting up Windows on these same WD Scorpio Black drives (It's all I buy)

Now that I have EVERYTHING perfect, including previous bad cluster list removed, I'm making a new Macrium image. I refuse to even go out to work today until that's done. I kept waking up, thinking about it.

[BitBender]

I kept waking up, thinking about it.

That is very kinky, you know...

[Grogan]

No, it isn't sexual

It's not like dreaming about some Linux project or something. This shit is misery to me.

[BitBender]

This shit is misery to me.

So can be with Sex with the wrong partner...

[Grogan]

Indeed, and I have experienced that too. It's just not worth it.

However, this was. Despite all the bullshit I went through before I discovered the problem (quite by accident, I had already given up) it's STILL better than having to do a clean install for this lady. I was dreading it, because no matter what it would be traumatic for her, and that would translate into a lot of unbillable time for me. Just making a list of all the programs I would have to install was discouraging. This was just a waste of some weekend nights. It didn't cost me any actual money (didn't pre-empt any other work)

These people are worth the extra effort though. I don't even mind going to visit for coffee when they ask me to (They even buy me goodies... for example these orange custard tarts from an Italian bakery in the city when they go)

They actually returned a brand new laptop to FutureShop, because they didn't set it up exactly how she wanted it. (It would be pretty difficult). She kind of got pressured into buying it by a salesman there when she went to see if they would honour the warranty even though it was a few months out. It wasn't any better than her current one, hardware hasn't changed much in that 14 months or so. So she took it back, because "Mike will fix it and put things exactly how I want them" (For $200 total instead of $600 for a pointless upgrade). That's pretty hard to live up to, she was expecting a lot of me. Hence, I'm glad I was able to image and restore every detail.