M6600 Owners Thread

Hi Tijo,

I'd PM'd him, I don't know if he is able to monitor today.
One thing he'd mentioned is that booting was not finding "iastore.sys". He'd reinstalled the RST driver and it locked up.


I've not been through this type repair successfully so only just asking.
So you're saying that deleting the OEM and Recovery the startup files are lost forever?

 

If you delete the partition containing the Windows startup files, you can still get them back. The bcdboot command (available from the command prompt when booted from Windows DVD) can be used to recreate them.

(The auto repair thing might fix it for you as well... I'm not very familiar with what all it does.)

 

iastore.sys is the intel rapid storage driver if I'm not mistaken, booting in safe mode should work if that is the only problem there is and from there, you can uninstall the driver in order to revert to the default MS AHCI driver and proceed to reinstall intel rapid storage at a later time. Do you know what version of IRST he's using, there was one version (11.5) I think that was known to be rather broken including memory leaks.

As for the boot files, it all depends where they are, if I recall correctly, on the stock Dell install, they are on the recovery partition, I don't have the original drive for my M6700 handy though, so I can't check. If the boot files are indeed there, then deleting that partition will wipe the boot files as well, but those can be recovered by using a repair disc (which you can make in Windows) or an install media for your version of windows, there's a repair option somewhere when you boot from it. If the boot files were lost and you want to put them back, using the repair disc will by default put the boot files on the system partition, so they will be somewhere on the partition where Windows is installed. If you wipe your windows install, you'll also loose those obviously.

EDIT: Aaron ninja'ed me with another solution for getting the boot files back.

I also try to answer on the forum as much as possible, that way people can still dig through the posts should they want to. Of course, that means that when stupidity takes over me, which does happen, it's there for all to see.

 

Thanks. I'd completely forgotten about using Safe Mode in these times. If one can get there it is a good place to troubleshoot.
Yes I think also that the FI recovery partition has the boot files in it, as well as the factory image (which isn't always included inside, this is known and makes for uncertainty)
Obviously yes wiping Windows partition all is lost.

 

I guess we're having different issues - I get the system running (for the most part) but the IASTOR.SYS driver timeouts are making the system unstable from what I see in the system logs.

First thing I did was update the firmware on the SSD, I too tried BIOS A12 & A13.

No reserved partition

The boot files are on the SSD, It actually boots just fine, getting into the windows GUI is where it crashes and burns - hell, it even runs fine in safe mode. I'm starting to think it's a driver issue.

 

If safemode works fine, then there is a good chance that it's a driver issue, safe mode only loads the basic Windows drivers and nothing else. You could try to disable the drivers loading at startup and re-enable them one by one and see which one is causing the crash.

 

So it's just one single partition with the OS.

Try running Startup repair from a boot disk.

If that doesn't work you could try creating a System Reserved partition and running startup repair again at least three times.

Edit:

This makes sense because the cloning proccess supposedly doesn't grab the OEM and recovery partitions.

 

sgrinavi,

I'm 99.9% sure that even refurbished machines have a factory image installed on them and that is going to be 99.9% of where the troubleshooting needs to be focused.

Sorry, hope you were able to get my edits to previous posts. I should not do that so often.

Startup repair and System Reserved will probably be your best options.

 

Depends on how you clone, Clonezilla will let you clone basically anything (the only caveat is that the destination drive has to be of equal or bigger size for clonezilla to work), hidden partition or not, I'm not sure about other tools as the only other I've used were for cloning from SSD to SSD, Apricorn EzGig and Acronis to be more precise.

 

The boot files are intact and working, I was thinking about the system restore partition that's on many OEM systems.

That is an awesome idea. Since iastor.sys is showing an error 9 every two minutes or so I think I have it narrowed down already.

I've cloned my m4400 and m4500 many times without issue, all files came through.