David Moisan's Blog: Living With VIsta

Resolved: nVidia NIC problems with Realtek HD audio in Vista

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 16:49:16 GMT

I've written before about my nVidia NIC problems and I've tentatively fixed things: the nVidia NIC driver and the Realtek HD chipset driver apparently have a conflict, resolved by an update of both the NIC driver and the Realtek driver.

Here's the background: I have an MSI K9N Neo-F Athlon 64 motherboard. This board has an nVidia chipset, the 550 series. Like almost all nVidia boards, it has an onboard NIC, in this case a gigabit NIC. It also has a Realtek HD audio chipset, which is important to the story. nVidia doesn't bundle any particular audio chipset with its chips, so the problem is very dependent on what audio chip goes on the motherboard. MSI uses Realtek for this and many of its AMD-based boards.

In Vista Business, I was able to use the NIC with the Vista drivers "out of the box", the ones included in Vista itself. I wanted to get new Vista drivers. But ever since I've had Vista, I could never get the nVidia-provided NIC drivers to work. The network connection would be disabled, and the only way I could restore my network was to roll back to the original driver included in Vista.

The (then-new) driver would only work in safe mode with networking. This tipped me off that perhaps there was a conflict with another driver, probably audio since sound is not on in safe mode.

When the system was run normally, Device Manager reported that the NIC was working, meaning just that the driver loaded and started without error. But when I tried to change settings such as duplex, or when I tried to roll back to the previous driver, the system would hang. This also implied a conflict of some kind.

I ran many tests with various combinations of drivers. I had suspected the audio driver from the start, but I was never able to conclusively prove that. The NIC driver would sometimes work properly with the audio driver and sometimes not.

nVidia drivers have had frustrating, well-known, teething problems under Vista. Their RAID drivers did not work out of the box, and their other drivers were not well-performing. The nVidia disk drivers that came with Vista weren't optimized at all, and between crashes, were not especially fast.

(My video card is an nVidia product as well, but it's not been a factor at all in my driver troubles. nVidia did resolve their disk driver problems and eventually, they published a very good driver on Windows Update that fixed my disk problems, after I had to swap a cable.)

My NIC problems persisted, even after I swapped the network cable for a new one and replaced my 10/100 switch that makes up my network with a Zyxel gigabit switch.

I had had to update my audio drivers; I was running the driver that came with Vista and couldn't get it to recognize my line input. I regularly feed the audio from my various ham radios to do things like decode packet and RTTY through my sound card. I got the latest driver from Realtek, all went well.

Later on, I did my usual routine check through Windows Update to get updates that weren't on my WSUS server (my SBS box), and noted a new NIC driver.

I was expecting the worst. Windows Update drivers have had a bad reputation for installing themselves on servers, through inattentive sysadmins who leave automatic-update settings at their defaults, and then dying horribly. I was so not looking forward to a system down situation, but I knew my computer well and knew I could get it running again if I had to.

I installed the NIC driver and it worked. Power down, power up, still worked! Powered down and turned off the power supply, turned it on and powered up: still worked.

It's been three days and no problems noted. I conclude that my problem must have resolved itself. I'll never know for sure, but I believe there may have been a race condition between the NIC driver and the Realtek when the system was booted and both devices were initialized.

With all the anti-Vista memes running around out of control, I'm very happy to close the book on this problem on a positive note!

Vista USB Reliability Patches

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 15:57:40 GMT

Microsoft has published two Vista USB reliability patches. The first patch is public, KB941600, a general USB reliability patch like the ones we've seen before. The second patch is KB941858: You receive a Stop error message when you put a Windows Vista-based computer to sleep or into hibernation, or when you resume the computer from sleep or from hibernation: "0x0000009F DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE".

I've had the latter problem show up on my Vista machine; my HP iPaq 2495 frequently locks up when it's in its cradle for a long time. As far as I can tell, this happens from the remote end when the ActiveSync client on the device locks up. This usually just locks up the iPaq, but sometimes it has bluescreened or even locked up the USB port on the Vista machine.

I can't do a lot about the iPaq, since it is a previous-generation PDA, but I'd like it at least not to crash my Vista box. The patches are in already, and so far they're quiet, a good sign.

To get KB941858, you'll have to call Microsoft or request it on the web.

Request Microsoft Hotfixes via the web

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 15:27:15 GMT

Since Microsoft Vista's release, it has seen many hotfixes released, many of them fixing reliability problems. Most of these hotfixes were not publicly available; to get them, you had to call Microsoft PSS for a fix. That is a familiar ritual for me at SATV with all our Windows boxes. It was fun doing that the first time when the customer service person mislaid my email address for a critical hotfix so that I had to reopen the ticket when I didn't get my file. This was on a critical broadcast machine that needed the fix so it wouldn't bluescreen every few hours.

Microsoft has now made its hotfix request page available online. No doubt because Vista support would implode their call center. Works for me!

Vista Reliability Monitor no longer adding new data

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 15:53:54 GMT

A new feature in Vista is the Reliability Monitor. It compiles data from the event log, Windows errors, blue screens, and various Windows performance logs to compute a reliability index from 1 to 10 (where 10 is most reliable). More importantly, it graphs the index over time and can give you a quick snapshot of any problems with the machine.

I had a problem with the Reliability Monitor not updating its data since early August. I found this solution on the microsoft.public.windows.vista.performance_maintenance newsgroup and am promoting it here. Hat tip to clayga.

Back up the files in the C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\RAC\PublishedData and
StateData directories. The best way to do this is to open the RAC folder, copy the two folders inside and paste them. You'll probably have to go through a UAC prompt to do this.
Empty both directories (i.e. delete all the files in them). Note after
doing this Reliability Monitor puts up a text message in place of the
Stability Chart that says something to the effect that the data is missing or
corrupt.
Open a Command Prompt with elevated (Administrator) privileges.
Execute RACAgent at the prompt. Note that the task will run for a while
(several minutes on my system).
Open Reliability Monitor. Note that some or all of the Stability Chart
is back.
Check the "Last Updated:" date. If it's earlier than yesterday's date,
repeat steps 4 and 5 after first closing Reliability Monitor.

Original Google Groups posting.

Reliability updates for Vista

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 03:08:57 GMT

The long-rumored reliability patches for Vista are out. KB938979 and KB938194 promise to make Vista a bit faster and a bit more stable. The chatter about these patches is generally good, although one person on the Yahoo SBS2K list had trouble with Outlook; I hope he's able to have more information on it.

I'm running the patches now. So far, so good. At the same time, nVidia released a SATA driver update through Windows Update, which works fine, but also a NIC update--which does not!

(For some reason, on my MSI K9N Neo-F, I can only use the nVidia NIC driver that comes with Vista. None of the later drivers work. Symptoms are a network icon with an X (meaning no connection/disabled) and if I attempt to change the NIC parameters in Device Manager, say, speed and duplex settings, Windows hangs. But the driver works in safe mode with networking. Good luck finding this one but you'll hear about it on this blog first if I do!)

Take care,

Dave

Vista finally stable for me, (no) thanks to a cable!

Thu, 02 Aug 2007 04:06:03 GMT

For the past six months, I'd been scraping by with Vista. Every few days, my machine would lock up. I tried many combinations of hardware; was it my cheap USB hub? Remove it. My Firewire? Removed. I wasn't happy with the performance but it was never really bad enough for me to consider going back to XP. (or going to Linux as some would think) I added 2 gigs of Crucial memory to the box when I renovated my server, but the lockups didn't go away.

Sometimes the machine would simply lock up, but other times, the symptoms were very interesting: I'd wake the machine up from sleep for the morning, and over a minute or so, the computer would slowly grind to a halt. Control-Alt-Delete would often yield an error message (a message about being unable to bring up the security dialog.)

I found an interesting event log entry:

Log Name:      System
Source:        EventLog
Date:          7/23/2007 1:56:46 PM
Event ID:      6008
Task Category: None
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      *********
Description:
The previous system shutdown at 1:50:50 PM on 7/23/2007 was unexpected.

The interesting part: Notice the time. The eventlog entry is made at nearly 1:57 PM. My machine has a reboot cycle of about 2 minutes. Remember that Windows writes a timestamp to the registry every 5 seconds (see "The Heartbeat of Windows"). Normally, the timestamp in the description of the event is a good indication of when a system bluescreens (within 5 seconds.) The last heartbeat is at nearly 1:51 PM, about 5 minutes before. Subtract 2 minutes for reboot, and it appears that Windows wasn't able to write a heartbeat for 3 minutes.

I've seen this behavior before: We have a Dell CERC 6-channel SATA RAID controller on our Dell 1800 server (OEM'ed by Adaptec). I once had it misconfigured so that it would scan a RAID 5 array for consistency with every disk access. (Dell does not recommend this.)

The array would work but it would slow down dramatically during heavy use and even hang. I chased network problems for a long time since we use SMB to transfer big video files between that server and our Macs. I found the same pattern in the event logs in that machine, but more extreme. Once, the heartbeat timestamp occurred some six hours before I eventually had to come in to reboot the system. In hindsight, my mistaken setting turned our SATA RAID array into a giant floppy disk!

A conclusion: My Vista machine, for whatever reason, wasn't able to access the hard drive and this was happening at a very low level, in other words, it wasn't due to Vista itself. I always thought Windows would bluescreen if you removed the hard disk, but apparently if there are enough resources available when this happens, it simply slows to a halt. Just what our server did and what my workstation was doing.

I tried new nVidia chipset drivers and they worked but the real breakthrough is when I thought of swapping the SATA cable; I had extra cables after my work on the server and put them in.

It's been five days with no blips or hangs. All my USB ports are hooked up. I can only conclude that the SATA cable was bad. The contacts were probably intermittent and failed through temperature cycles. (I put my machine to sleep nightly.) As a bonus, my home SBS box doesn't drop its RAID 1 mirror anymore since I swapped cables in that machine, too.

I should have seen this when I built my machine last year since it was running XP. I had had the system grind to a halt occasionally a few times that year, but I had assumed nVidia had simply shipped a bad driver. Hardware problems are usually the most underestimated problems in Windows troubleshooting, and I proved it personally!

I found one other Vista patch that helped: Cumulative update rollup for Windows Vista is a USB-related patch. (You have to call for that one, or fill out their Hotfix Request form online.)

There are more to come: New Vista fix packs provide updates promised for SP1. They're coming on Patch Tuesday, August 14th, or so goes the rumor.

Update: The patches are out.

I don't like getting upset over computer problems, or joining the online echo chambers where rage happens over the slightest thing with Vista/OS X/Linux since I've had too many more important things to worry about. But I am very happy with Vista today and very happy to find the root cause of my troubles.

Update: Ed Bott has some kind words. As does Serdar.

Vista Slow? Maybe. My 10 weeks on Vista|

Mon, 09 Apr 2007 17:55:13 GMT

The blogosphere has had a lot of chatter since Vista was released, mostly about Vista being a "failure", whatever that is. Ed Bott has a counterpost (Vista slow? Says who?) in which he quotes Carl Campos' 10 week experience with Vista. Here is my experience:

I'm dissatisfied with Vista's performance, but not enough to go back to XP. I bought my motherboard (an MSI K9N-NeoF) to replace a dying motherboard, but also for Vista in the (then-near) future. I have an Athlon64 3000 single-core processor with 1 gig 667 MHz DDR2 RAM and a nVidia GeForce 7600GS. On paper, it's a very good configuration, except that the processor's a little underpowered; my budget was too small for dual-core. Vista should have worked great on it.

Actually it does. Mostly.

I'm using the nVidia chipset drivers that came with Vista, and they are obviously not optimized at all. I get lots of pauses and brief hangs which I attribute to heavy disk activity. Occasionally, the machine will lock up with disk activity (frozen mouse pointer) for up to several minutes at a time.

I have tracked performance down to several causes. One cause is Microsoft's very aggressive tuning of the Desktop Search engine built into Vista. It runs virtually at all times.

I also run Office 2007--including Outlook 2007. THIS program's performance issues deserve blog posts of their own, and they do! Just google "slow Outlook 2007".

Lastly, the nVidia nForce chipset drivers are dog slow and unreliable. I'm already in an uncomfortable spot since the most recent drivers (the February 2nd, 2007 release as I write this.) made my system more unstable, the SATA driver in particular. So I'm waiting for the next release and in the meantime putting up with a little slowness.

I haven't said anything about Aero or UAC. I have a very good video card so Aero worked for me with good performance throughout. I like Aero. I don't use Flip3D much but I do appreciate the live thumbnails when I want to watch video to see if the commercial's over while checking email.

UAC? I don't completely understand the fuss over it. Mac OSX has a similar control and Linux of course has sudo. (Linux people say that UAC is inferior to sudo but I can't understand their explaination so far, and I'm an experienced Linux user.)

UAC could be tuned somewhat so that I could open management consoles (hello Perfmon and Event Log) without invoking UAC, but for the most part I don't often see a prompt. (And I get around it by using PowerShell and starting it with admin credentials anyway.)

Do I like Vista, still? Yes.

Surprise! It's Candid Bluescreen!

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 02:47:30 GMT

It's time to talk about my favorite Windows screen, from Wired Magazine, it's BSOD Through the Ages! I was disappointed not to see this screen at the Vista launch, washing over the orange Dawn of a New Day in a wave of blue. One presenter did make Vista bluescreen on purpose to demonstrate its system recovery capabilities, but sadly, it didn't make it to the projection display (he had to turn around his laptop for us to see it.)

Of course, I really want Microsoft to adopt my "enhanced" Plaid Screen of Death!

Take care,

Dave

Technorati tags: Microsoft Windows BSOD "Blue Screen of Death"

Creeping Towards Vista

Sat, 27 Jan 2007 00:37:16 GMT

This past Wednesday, I was at the Vista launch event in Boston. It was a nice show. It's the first launch event I've been to in quite some time. Five years ago, when XP launched, Microsoft held many more in-person events than they do know. Microsoft would hold, quarterly, TechNet events for corporate IT and TS2 for consultancies, both of which events I attended.

I haven't been to a TechNet in nearly a year and I haven't been to a TS2 in even longer. The Web and blogs and webcasts and broadband have really changed the landscape and eliminated many of the trade shows I once attended. I was never at Comdex, but I can remember Networks Expo, Internet World, MacWorld Boston and lately, LinuxWorld Boston, all now defunct.

To its credit, the launch event was probably informative to most people who came since most of them don't obsessively spend time online the way bloggers do. At least I got some goodies, which I captured in a photo.

The bright blue blinkie was everybody's favorite; given out by HP, if you were seen with it you could have won a Zune, IIRC. (No I didn't.)

Palm was giving away Treos. No I didn't either. I own a Tungsten E and asked about Vista compatibility; the rep at the booth told me Microsoft had told them it would work. Ookaay, whatever. (Since Palm Hotsync stores the contents of the Palm back to \Program Files\Palm\<someuser> or \Program Files\palmone\<someuser> and Vista doesn't allow users to copy files back to Program Files by policy, we have a problem.)

I've written before about my ambivalence with Vista, but I will be going with it. My copy is already on order and my system is more than good enough for it. If Microsoft LIcensing would only stop changing the rules out from under people, and if Ultimate, say, were more reasonably priced, the company would not be hated so.

(I know, why not Linux or Mac. I use Macs at SATV but I hate them for anything other than video production, and I have used Linux distros off and on for eight years and am still not impressed, even with Ubuntu. My favorite part of Linux is my stuffed Tux!)

So, I'm creeping towards Vista.

Take care,

Dave

P.S. Here's a Vista innovation I wish I saw at the launch:

Technorati tags: Vista ambivalence launch "plaid screen of death"