Is there any issue or risk of driver incompatibility with other players or...

[mville]

Re: Is there any issue or risk of driver incompatibility with other players or...

I now have a new motherboard and all is well. I re-ripped a bunch of my CDs in secure mode without any problem. No evidence of any hangs anywhere in other apps.

Note for other readers - this is not unique to ASUS (my board manufacturer) but all manufacturers using the relevant chipset as it was caused by an Intel flaw in their SATA controllers at the time.

I got great support from my supplier (who spoke with ASUS about it) and my machine has a new comparable model motherboard, all free of charge.

Glad to hear all is well. Happy ripping :smile2:

[Paranoid]

Re: Is there any issue or risk of driver incompatibility with other players or...

I now have a new motherboard and all is well. I re-ripped a bunch of my CDs in secure mode without any problem. No evidence of any hangs anywhere in other apps.

Note for other readers - this is not unique to ASUS (my board manufacturer) but all manufacturers using the relevant chipset as it was caused by an Intel flaw in their SATA controllers at the time.

I got great support from my supplier (who spoke with ASUS about it) and my machine has a new comparable model motherboard, all free of charge.

[Paranoid]

Re: Is there any issue or risk of driver incompatibility with other players or...

There's a tool here that tells you which SATA ports are affected by the problem and which ports are OK. Maybe put the DVD drive on an unaffected SATA port:

http://event.asus.com/2011/mb/identi...ted_sata_port/

I ran the tool and it confirmed the issue. I would need to unhook one of my SSDs (the non-boot one) from its SATA III (6 GB/s) port to plug the DVD drive in. I could do that to prove there is no issue with the drive and dbpa should work. It wouldn't be a permanent solution however as that still leaves me with a 500GB SSD on the shelf and 3TB of HDD storage on two SATA II ports. My concern is that the two HDDs will become intermittently inaccessible at some point if the SATA controller chip continues to degrade.

I am taking up the issue with the company that supplied the machine...

I guess there is a lesson here - if you see iastore() timeout problems on your machine (or ATAPI errors if using microsoft instead of intel SATA controller drivers, or possibly even deterioration in performance or hangs), and your machine is around 2-4 years old, the problem could be due to the SATA controller on your motherboard if it is an intel series 6 chipset. Use CPU-Z to see if yours is B2 stepping. If so you may have problem due to an Intel flaw in the chipset.

[mville]

Re: Is there any issue or risk of driver incompatibility with other players or...

The design problem affects 3Gb/s Serial-ATA II (SATA II) ports provided by the 6-series chipsets only, potentially causing the SATA II ports to degrade over time and essentially leading to SATA devices to being unavailable as far as the computer is concerned

There's a tool here that tells you which SATA ports are affected by the problem and which ports are OK. Maybe put the DVD drive on an unaffected SATA port:

http://event.asus.com/2011/mb/identify_unaffected_sata_port/

[Paranoid]

Re: Is there any issue or risk of driver incompatibility with other players or...

Got it....
My P8H67 EVO is a series 6 board B2 stepping (checked with CPU-Z). I was sold it as a B3 in a new custom build machine as the issue was known 4 months before I bought the machine. B2 were recalled due to a SATA controller chipset that may degrade over time (eg 2-3 years). Quoting:

' The design problem affects 3Gb/s Serial-ATA II (SATA II) ports provided by the 6-series chipsets only, potentially causing the SATA II ports to degrade over time and essentially leading to SATA devices to being unavailable as far as the computer is concerned.&*8217;

Getting a magnifying glass out it is even printed on the motherboard!

Thanks for the advice tho on disabling marvel raid tho I guess that may not impact the immediate problem.

Guess what - I have had the machine 3 years living in blissful ignorance of impending doom.

Still so far it is only the DVD drive that is affected... and it supports my diagnosis...

[mville]

Re: Is there any issue or risk of driver incompatibility with other players or...

I am not using RAID so I guess that clears any issue there. During boot, I do see a temporary screen come up before I can use DEL to access the BIOS and that refers to Marvel RAID with no disk detected. My machine has always done that.

Are you using the Marvel RAID controller? If not, disable it in the BIOS.

[Paranoid]

Re: Is there any issue or risk of driver incompatibility with other players or...

Hi mville
The response on this forum is really fast - much appreciated.
I am not using RAID so I guess that clears any issue there. During boot, I do see a temporary screen come up before I can use DEL to access the BIOS and that refers to Marvel RAID with no disk detected. My machine has always done that.

[mville]

Re: Is there any issue or risk of driver incompatibility with other players or...

The motherboard is an ASUS P8H67-M EVO (about 3+ years old). The Intel SATA controller is 10.5.0.1026 (which like I said is a bit off the pace but this was the latest one from IRST installer from the ASUS website for the board. Unsure how to find the matrix manager option ROM version - through the BIOS?

You probably only see the Intel Matrix Storage Manager Option ROM screen after the POST screen if you have configured SATA as RAID in the BIOS, which I believe you have set to AHCI.

FYI, I have an Asus motherboard (5+ years old) running SATA as RAID, option ROM v.9.6.0.1014 and running the Intel Rapid Storage Technology Software/Driver v.10.6.0.1022 with no problems at all.

I would try leaving SATA as AHCI, but re-install using a Windows 7 64-bit with Service Pack 1 CD (or USB pen drive) and let windows install the correct SATA driver. Then run diagnostics on the SSDs and the optical drive to see if there is a problem with the optical and/or motherboard, BEFORE installing any other software.

Also, you could ask ASUS which is the correct version of SATA driver, Microsoft or Intel, that they recommend for your setup, i.e. SATA configured as AHCI, your SSDs etc.

[Paranoid]

Re: Is there any issue or risk of driver incompatibility with other players or...

The motherboard is an ASUS P8H67-M EVO (about 3+ years old). The Intel SATA controller is 10.5.0.1026 (which like I said is a bit off the pace but this was the latest one from IRST installer from the ASUS website for the board. Unsure how to find the matrix manager option ROM version - through the BIOS?

[mville]

Re: Is there any issue or risk of driver incompatibility with other players or...

just to clarify I meant the Microsoft AHCI drivers were installed during my windows reinstall - (I refer to that as MSAHCI). Windows detects the AHCI BIOS settings and installs its own driver. MSAHCI is not present on the machine if you forget to switch at least one drive to AHCI before you install Windows. It is important for SSDs. The intel IRST drivers were installed from my motherboard CD and upgraded after the windows install.

Which Asus motherboard do you have and which Intel SATA controller (and Option ROM version)?

[Paranoid]

Re: Is there any issue or risk of driver incompatibility with other players or...

just to clarify I meant the Microsoft AHCI drivers were installed during my windows reinstall - (I refer to that as MSAHCI). Windows detects the AHCI BIOS settings and installs its own driver. MSAHCI is not present on the machine if you forget to switch at least one drive to AHCI before you install Windows. It is important for SSDs. The intel IRST drivers were installed from my motherboard CD and upgraded after the windows install. All I did was use Device manager to update the controller driver from Intel to MSAHCI by telling it to look on my machine for drivers and it presented me with the option to use MSAHCI. No Iastor().sys!

[Paranoid]

Re: Is there any issue or risk of driver incompatibility with other players or...

Thanks Spoon - confirmed my thoughts looking at iastore() timeout info on the web.
I upgraded Intel rapid storage technology to the latest version for my motherboard on the ASUS site (still a little old but a lot of the newer versions add chipset support). It improved things marginally (MM and dbpa now id discs OK and show content more reliably). But I still got iastor() timeouts and hangs. I thought about just installing the latest on the Intel site but decided to change the playing field completely. As I had switched to AHCI SATA mode for my SSDs in the BIOS before reinstalling windows, these were installed. I reverted the AHCI controller to MSAHCI thro device manager. Nice and clear what is in which ports now!

That made quite a change at no expense to performance (I am not using RAID, and I tested my SSDs).

MM works fine. No glitches. No hangs/timeouts. I haven't ripped with it.

Dbpa appears to work in its default mode (and gives accurate rips), no hangs, but glitches in its secure mode. It is erratic. Sometimes it rips accurate. Sometimes the same track will do a 2 passes if I rerip. Sometimes the 2nd pass is accurate sometimes not and it rerips frames. In one case 469 frames!. It is random. The killer is I get ATAPI errors in the event viewer for \device\ide\ideport2 (my CD/DVD drive port).

What this seems to be telling me is that the different SATA controllers are erroring in different ways.

I have tried yet another SATA cable and rerouted power to the optical drive to no effect.

Motherboard voltages are all normal, CPU and motherboard temps OK (checked with ASUS monitor and probe). I have reflashed my BIOS.

I think it is the SATA controller hardware on the motherboard. Possibly it developed a fault after I installed 15.1 and the ripping I did (all secure/accurate) that got me thinking and making some association with 15.1 and drivers. Just coincidence?

Any last thoughts before I dig deeper into my wallet and replace the motherboard... I am about at the end of my patience with it. Through all of this messing around only the DVD drive seems to cause problems. In fact with MSAHCI it is close to being stable. I am guessing some wouldn't know there was a problem. Unsure how else I can test the drive and exercise it and the controller independently of dbpa.

[Spoon]

Re: Is there any issue or risk of driver incompatibility with other players or...

Try updating your chipset drivers, especially SATA controller.

[Paranoid]

Re: Is there any issue or risk of driver incompatibility with other players or...

I'm Back...
I re-installed the OS (with new SSDs) and pretty much got everything going in one evening including Office, then started on Sunday installing applications including dbpa (15.1) and MM (4.1.4.1709). Everything seemed OK til later on the Sunday the gremlins visited. The behavior is very similar.

Symptoms in dbpa:
- dbpa opens CD OK, calibrates OK, but will stall ripping - wait (eg 1 minute) - then it continues - will do those big pauses 4-5x per CD. Get accurate results.
Symptoms in MM:
- Minor drop outs in the audio (split second in nature) playing flac from library.
- Freezing accessing a CD (but will launch and play OK if in auto play). You get a big wait then it pops up the dialog suggesting what album it is, Ok that and it plays. Windows media player will play fine tho not tested that enough.

General system symptoms:
- I see iastore() timeout errors in event viewer.

Looks like an optical drive problem? So I tried an old drive (old Philips) - looked promising initially, then behaved the same. New drive (Samsung) - did the same.
I think the timeout problem affects the whole machine if you try to kill anything. So it seems explorer is hung. If you don't interrupt either dbpa or MM and just leave either to stew I can continue to use the desktop and eventually the apps continue. Remarkable dbpa survived 5 hangs and continued to produce a complete accuraterip of an album (it hit 0.8x speed in the pauses, and 35x in between!)

I have tried different SATA sockets on the motherboard for the optical drive. I have tried different SATA cable for the drive. No improvement that sticks.

Obviously I had re-installed Windows, Office, all sorts using the original drive no problem.

Everything else on the machine is fine - in fact with the SSDs it is blisteringly quick.

Unsure where to go with this now

[mville]

Re: Is there any issue or risk of driver incompatibility with other players or...

I recently had severe problems not long after installing 15.1. First I had omitted to uninstall 14.x. I just assumed it would upgrade.

The problem was glitches in the sound in MediaMonkey and dropping performance. I use 64 bit Windows 7 professional and installed the 64 bit v15.1. Source files are Flac and mp3.

This could equally be an MM bug as I was bashing it hard playing and deleting tracks (from its library and disk) in a big tidy up. The first symptom was brief drop outs in the audio. I had been doing this for several evenings with similar workflow without problem until I installed 15.1.

Installing dBpoweramp R15.1 or a bug in MediaMonkey would not cause system errors that require an OS rebuild and that seems a little drastic.

As you have said, there are no memory errors and no hard disk errors.

What exactly are the severe problems you have alluded to?