DVD Caused BSOD in XP x64?

Computer Hardware
#1

I wouldn’t have believed it. I’m writing this in case someone else has this problem, even with another type of drive.

The DVD Burner I’ve used for years was causing a BSOD in XP x64!

I’ve been using XP 32 bit for over a year now, dragged kicking and screaming from upgrading my trusty old Windows 2000 machine. I made a cheap upgrade from an old dual AMD MP (MSI K7D) I had used since about 2002, to an AMD X2 overclocked to 3Ghz. The motherboard has only 1 IDE port (but 4 sata ports), so the old BenQ 1620 plugged in there.

I have two sata drives as ‘main’ boot and storage, but my trusty old WD 320G drive (a pata) is a good ‘auxiliary’ storage when speed isn’t critical.

The BenQ never liked being a slave when it shared the cable. The IDE didn’t even recognize the drive existed unless the BenQ played master, so the WD took the slave position. This was fine under XP 32 bits.

A recent graphic project on a 148 inch wide ‘poster’ (backdrop for a display booth for some show a client was attending) caused me to rethink 32 bits. So, I swapped the sata drives, installed XP x64 on the ‘new’ drive 0, and started installing anti-virus, firewall, etc.

Then, random ‘STOP 0x00000050’ in disk.sys (BSOD) - PAGE_FAULT_IN_NON_PAGED_AREA. Sometimes it would happen upon bootup, sometimes after 30 minutes. The machine ran all night with a VM downloading stuff, but after launching a couple of applications in the morning, BSOD.

This makes debugging the problem really tough. Failure is deterministic, but an hour or two of flawless runtime means nothing. I swapped RAM chips (RMA’d two sticks even), removed RAM chips, network cards, re-installed the OS, updated drivers - all the obvious things to try.

Never once in 3 days did I consider the DVD drive.

Searching the 'net found very little to help (which is why I’m writing this - CDFreaks sometimes comes up in various search engines when trying to find these kinds of problems - maybe this will help someone else).

Once I removed the BenQ - the problem has not recurred in over a week.

The strange thing is, I could really stress the machine without a problem. With the BenQ in that odd position, I could run 5 VM’s with various operating systems, browse the Internet, update Linux, play music - no problem for about an hour.

Randomly, the BSOD would haunt me. I nearly gave up.

The BenQ was the problem. Once I pulled it off the IDE cable, the OS has been stable ever since.

I had a SiliconImage 0680 IDE card in a drawer, which I installed, to give me two IDE ports. My nForce430 board won’t let the built in IDE operate when the Sil 0680 is installed, but that’s minor. With the BenQ on a channel by itself, and the old WD 320G on the other, the machine is as stable as a rock.

I can’t boot from a DVD this way, though. The Sil 0680 driver isn’t on the stock XP x64 disk, so it refuses to boot. I may have to create a slipstream copy in order to get that on there, otherwise I’d have to pull the Sil 0680, plug the BenQ into the onboard IDE (without the WD 320) - which is how I installed XP x64 for the last time.

I should either retire the WD pata drive, so I can put the BenQ on the onboard IDE, or consider a sata DVD drive, but all that can wait.

At least I’ve got the OS stable again.

I have some cause to think Vista x64 might not have crashed the same way, but I wouldn’t put that on my machine if it were free.

#2

Well this is interesting !!

I’ve not long ago sorted out a similar problem with an nforce board. I upgraded to a gigabyte ga-m56s-s3 nforce board with a athlon X2 4400 which has the same 1 X ide port and 4 sata that yours has .

I have 1 sata 250 gig HD on one sata controler and an Asus sata writer on another. On the Ide one I have a WD 320 gig HD and had a LG 4163B writer attached. All were working in IDE mode with no raid.

The problem was with both writers doing one of many things Like: Slow to identify a disc, very slow reading, not reading at all, start reading and then stop, start to burn a disc (dvd) and stop, and burn 16X media at 1X and if lucky 8X. I have the newest firmware for everything and use verbatim discs. Oh, and of course just locking up instead of reading a disc.

I tried disconnecting the ide port and using only the sata which made no difference. I left only the sata hard drive connected and re-installed xp, vista 32 then vista 64. Same problem. Tried that with just the ide hard drive attached with the same effect.

Then I decided to try re-installing Vista with AHCI set in the board. When windows loaded, the only motherboard driver I loaded (which Windows didn’t) was the SMbus driver.

Without loading any other software I loaded a disc into the sata burner and bingo, all was well. So I continued to load software, each time checking as by this time I was getting paranoid, but all went well.

Then I found modded nforce drivers by Fernando:
http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/2-vt70908.html?postdays=0&postorder=asc&&start=10
and set about loading those which went ok also. BUT, all the time checking read write function with the asus. BUT, When I went to the LG 4163B I found I still had the same problem. SO, then I pulled out the LG and placed a Liteon DVD reader only on the Ide with the IDe hard drive and both work like a gem.

So there was incompatibilities with both drivers and hardware here where I strongly suspect the nforce board. But not being much of an expert I really don’t know for sure, only that this system that I now duel boot both vista 32 and 64 Via AHCI works a treat.

#3

I’ll have to study and think about your points, because I still have a few problems that lead to big ones (BSOD is such a pain).

I’d say about 90% of the functions I need the BenQ to do work fine.

If I use Wavelab 4 to import CD tracks - boom!

I even loaded a VM that used the BenQ as its DVD - same crash.

When I copied the audio CD to an image with Nero, then loaded the image into a virtual drive - I can work from there.

It’s unnerving to think I have to be careful about operations that never caused trouble before. So far, only the Wavelab CD import has caused a problem.

I’ll look into AHCI - maybe that will help.

Many thanks!

#4

I hope you cure your problems there, but make sure you have service pack 1 installed with Vista also as I wouldn’t use it without.

#5

Another option to consider is to get a PCI IDE adapter card and plug the WD drive into it leaving the Benq alone connected to the mobo IDE channel. Actually the Benq may work plugged into the IDE adapter card if you choose 1IDE adapter with silicon image chipset.

#6

[quote=bevills1;2059821]Another option to consider is to get a PCI IDE adapter card and plug the WD drive into it leaving the Benq alone connected to the mobo IDE channel. Actually the Benq may work plugged into the IDE adapter card if you choose 1IDE adapter with silicon image chipset.[/quote]From the initial post:

I had a SiliconImage 0680 IDE card in a drawer, which I installed, to give me two IDE ports. My nForce430 board won’t let the built in IDE operate when the Sil 0680 is installed, but that’s minor. With the BenQ on a channel by itself, and the old WD 320G on the other, the machine is as stable as a rock.
:wink:

#7

All good points, some I’ve already tried.

I need to stay in XP x64 - Vista isn’t an option for me. I’m a developer, and the performance and reliability implications of Vista are just not suitable. I run Vista in a VM for testing of final product work, and I have an IDE in that Vista-VM so I can debug within it, but the host must remain in XP.

I’ve had a few additional glitches with the BenQ, even on the stand alone card (like audio extraction), which prompted me to switch the BenQ for a Pioneer (111D), which XP seems to ‘like’ better. I lost the ability to scan doing that, but I’ll have to look for a Samsung Sata to replace that ability.

I know this subject is a cross between XP (software) and hardware, but I think it’s XP to be faulted here. The specifications for PATA interfacing is a mess, as specifications go, so there’s little wonder as to why one drive behaves differently than another. It seems to me that disk device drivers are one of the Achilles heals of XP (all flavors, especially for the x64 as I’m now witnessing). XP just can’t stand it when disks do something it doesn’t expect.

While I think this problem is put to rest, I hope this thread helps someone else debugging a similar problem.

#8

If the machine is as stable as a rock with the BenQ on a channel by itself and the old WD 320G on the other, why not just operate the system with drives connected that way.

#9

Well, stable as a rock did require subsequent qualifications (though I did point out that the nature of the problem is such that significant successful runtime isn’t deterministic).

…and that’s why I wanted this thread out here. I didn’t see any reference to this problem in searches far and wide. While I assume the BenQ is unique in this respect, it could be that someone else encounters the problem.

It’s stable for everything I’ve tried accept for two applications that perform a CD rip. One might argue, reasonably, just to avoid that application. My own return is, well - what next? I’ve run through the typical operations and so far that’s the only thing that crashes the machine, but crashing isn’t the only problem.

Crashes lead, occasionally, to disk corruption. I’ve lost the OS more than once, over the years - especially if write cache is enabled (which I turn off for safety anyway).

I know that as time goes on, I’ll simply assume the challenge is over, then install some update or new application and - boom, BSOD.

Replacing the BenQ 1620 with a Pioneer 111D lets me drop the separate controller (taking a valuable slot on a small motherboard), and even the CD-rip that crashed the OS before works flawlessly.

I’ve moved the BenQ to my wife’s machine, so I can occasionally scan from there, but it surprises me that XP 32 bit never had a problem with this drive, but XP x64 just can’t handle it.

#10

Has BIOS been updated? I had similar crashes with loss of OS running Win2k SP4 at least once every 2 weeks and sometimes 2 or 3 times in a single week on 2 different systems. BIOS update fixed my problem with no crashes in over 8 months, and it states on my mobo manufacturer’s site that BIOS update often fixes stability issues. It might be worth a try if not tried already.

#11

You’re correct, it was worth a try, but it didn’t change the results.

I didn’t detail it early on (I left it in the ‘tried most everything’ category), but among my attempts to correct the problem, I upgrade and downgraded the motherboard bios and the drive’s firmware.

It’s quite logical to think either could be at fault, and for all that can be determined, might remain the underlying problem. The motherboard is relatively recent, though a low end ASRock nForce 430 board. A BIOS was released only a month or so ago, designed to address the TLB bug in the B2 quad core chips. Neither it, the previous (which my board was shipped with) or any of the older examples changed the behavior.

Anyone finding this with strange x64 behavior might have followed to this point, tried everything, and may also have to conclude the drive simply won’t fit…

#12

Man, you’re a star!

I was suspecting the same problem and you just confirmed it!

Asus M3N78-CM + Optiarc DVD + Windows XP x64 = BSODs.

I had many BSODs in ntkernl or in non-paged space with different error codes!

Fortunely i had a DVD detached for a while and system became stable.

Now, i just “disable” the DVD in “System->Device manager” and get my peace back.

#13

I’m so glad this thread has done exactly what I wanted it to do, provide a little info for those of us using x64.

The only other devices I’ve had minor problems with are wireless net cards - many RaLink devices (particularly USB) don’t work in x64, even with hand modifications of the INF files. That doesn’t cause nearly the problem the DVD caused. In the time since this thread was created I’ve added a SATA DVD, kept the Pioneer PATA DVD, and the machine has been rock stable the entire time.

That BenQ is still around, in another 32 bit machine, but it can’t run in x64 reliably no matter what I do. Bios/Firmware/Alternate interface cards have no effect. I fought for a while with it, but in this case a $25 DVD drive replacement was less expensive than the time spent trying.

Best of luck!