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153221
November 16th, 2015 22:00
BSOD with iaStorA.sys System Thread Exception
I have an Inspirion 2350 with Win 8.1.I have been having issues with the above and was getting a System Thread Exception Not Handled. I ran the ePSA tests and everything passed.
I refreshed the machine back to Win 8 (not easy with a machine that crashes all the time!) But the crashes persisted. Eventually I switched off acceleration using Intel RST and the crashes stopped.
I upgraded back to 8.1 (after jumping through hoops) and all seems good.
My question is, how does RST interact with Windows? if I switch acceleration back on and the crashes start again, should I be able to fix this by just switching it off, or might it break things again?
Also, any ideas how the SSD can pass the H/W tests but crash the system?
so (after a weekend of pain)
osprey4
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November 22nd, 2015 13:00
Hi Gordie08,
It sounds like you have an older or incompatible SATA or chipset driver that's causing the problem. You should be able to fix this by updating the appropriate drivers. I'd start with the chipset driver (check Dell downloads) and then update the Intel RST application (get this from Intel).
Gordie08
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November 28th, 2015 02:00
Hey, sorry it has taken me a while to reply. I had issues with my login and wasn't getting the password reset e-mails.
Anyway, I managed to fix the problem :-) Corrupt RST application (or driver). Maybe downloading the latest version sorted it although I think I had to download an older version first to sort things before I could upgrade to the newest.
The whole story is that the machine was having a few (rare) BSOD issues so I thought I would try the Win 10 upgrade. That made the instability worse so I rolled it back. Who knows if that contributed to the problem?.Anyway not long after that I had some major crash so I ended up reloading Win 8 then trying to upgrade to 8.1 with a crash prone machine. I managed to jump through the hoops and eventually got 8.1 done, but the BSOD was still happening, hence my post and the question about IRST and SSDisks.
I disabled acceleration for the SSD and the crashes stopped. I uninstalled and re-installed the Intel RST application, switched on acceleration again and all good. Performance was painful without the SSD!
It sounds simple but took a while to narrow down the problem.
The lessons I have learned from this are:-
how to do a pre boot hardware check
http://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/19/SLN115162/
Once you know your hardware is sound, that makes problem solving easier.
Thanks for your suggestions, IRST was the problem.
Gordon
osprey4
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November 28th, 2015 03:00
Good to hear!
GodenYao
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January 12th, 2016 12:00
I have encounter quite a few times of BSOD since I bought my Alienware 17 R3 on Dec 8, 2015 (just barely 1+ month!!)
I've seen iaStorA.sys on my blue screen.
The question is I'm already on the latest driver that DELL provides on its support website.
I do see an updated driver from Intel website and wonder if I should upgrade to that version.
the driver ver is 14.6.1.1030
Gordie08
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January 12th, 2016 14:00
So it is a couple of months since I fixed this but as I remember:-
I ran all the Dell diagnostics I could which didn't show up any hardware issues. Through various searches and forums I identified that the iaStorA.sys error was linked to this.
I ran the IRST utility and switched off acceleration
The system stability improved immediately, although I had to suffer the slow boot time for a while until I was sure that the problem was resolved.
I then uninstalled and re-installed the IRST. My recollections are a bit hazy now but I seem to remember that I couldn't install the latest driver so I ended up installing an older version.
Maybe you could try that.
I also did a bunch of other stuff on the way to solving the problem but I am pretty sure that was it.
I was getting BSOD with win 7 so I upgraded to Win 10 to try to fix this. BSOD became hugely worse so I rolled back to Win 7 then the whole thing went *** up and I had to reinstall win 8 then do all the service packs. Not easy when you are getting BSOD every 10 minutes.
I don't know why the reinstall didn't fix the problem, which is why I thought it was a HW problem. I know it doesn't sound right but I am sure that is how it went down.
GodenYao
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January 12th, 2016 17:00
Thanks for the prompt reply. I'll just try disabling acceleration then...I almost do not reboot my machine unless a security patch requires it :D
GodenYao
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January 12th, 2016 21:00
OK...didn't find a place to disable. in my GUI, under "Performance" tab, nothing to config only says "linke power management"
Gordie08
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January 12th, 2016 22:00
My GUI seems to have disappeared now!. As I said it has been a while since I fixed this so I don't want to give you bad advice.
I found this on a search
en.community.dell.com/.../19617150
The problem here seems to have elements of what you have and I what I saw.
Try searching for "disable hardware acceleration Intel rapid storage technology" in Google. That seems
to bring up a few links. The above link is encouraging I think. Need to go to work now but good luck and let me know how you get on.
Gordon