Issue

The following issues may occur on Windows Vista* with a supported Intel® RAID Controller hub:

• Inability to install Windows Vista (i.e. system halts during installation)
• Performance degradation
• Timeout errors reported by iastor or iastor(v) in Microsoft Event Viewer*

Cause

A change was made by Microsoft* in the Windows Vista setup process. The result of this change is that the Intel® Matrix Storage Manager Link Power Management (LPM) registry settings that were intended for mobile installations are added for desktop installations as well. These LPM registry settings are added for both the Intel® Matrix Storage Manager RAID driver on the Windows Vista installation disk, as well as for any drivers added during the installation process.

Various desktop Serial ATA devices such as hard drives and CD/DVD drives have been reported that do not comply with the Serial ATA LPM device specification and display erratic behavior when LPM is enabled.

Because the setup change means that LPM is enabled by default for all Windows Vista platforms, using a device that does not completely follow the specification may result in one of the listed issues.

A list of these devices is not available at this time.

Solution

Install Intel Matrix Storage Manager version 7.5 or later. These versions work around this issue by disabling LPM.

If you are experiencing installation issues, you can also use one of the following additional work-arounds:

• If available, install updated firmware for the device.
• Attach the device(s) to ports 3-5 on the Intel® 82801HR/HH/HO I/O controller hub (ICH8R) or port 3 on the Intel® 82801GR/GH I/O controller hub (ICH7R)
• Switch to IDE mode in the system BIOS. Note: See your BIOS manufacturer for instructions on how to do this.

Note: The F6 installation method (used to load the RAID driver during operating system installation) is not used on Microsoft Windows Vista. Use the following instructions to install the driver during OS installation:

1. Use the instructions in the readme file to extract the necessary files from the installation package. These files are: iaStor.sys, iaStor.cat, iaStor.inf, and TXTSETUP.oem.
2. Place the files on a floppy disk, USB device, or CD/DVD media.
3. During the Microsoft Windows Vista installation process, select the Load Driver option when you see a screen titled Where do you want to install Windows?
4. Insert the media that contains the driver files.

Operating System:

Windows Vista* 64, Windows Vista* 32

This applies to:

Intel® Matrix Storage Manager