by: Miha MarkičPosted on:

iTunes is trying to destroy my RAID 10 running on Vista x86

It all started to happen when I tried to convert a large video to iPod format within iTunes. Since the conversion takes time I left the computer for a while. When I returned I got "Unable to boot screen" because Vista x86 bluescreened. The frightening fact was that it couldn't boot even though I am on RAID 10 (controlled by Intel ICH8R). Next I went to check into the RAID diagnostics utility and saw an even more frightening fact: 3 out of 4 drives were marked red saying "Failure". Fortunately the utility offered to recover RAID array and marked all but one drive as Normal. So there was still hope. I restarted and I could boot to Vista. As soon as I logged in Intel Matrix Storage Console warned me that my RAID array was degraded (since one of the volumes wasn't operational this info was correct). So I marked the fourth drive as normal as the RAID array was rebuilt in a couple of hours or so. Good for me, everything was working again and nothing was lost.

Now it was time to investigate the cause of this hard crash – I mean taking out 3 of 4 disks isn't just a normal blue screen and if there is a system problem I am in trouble. My first suspect was my Intel E6600 Dual Core CPU. Last thing I did to my computer before crash was to start a lengthy conversion that utilizes 100% of one CPU core (50% of entire CPU). The theory was that it could warm up too much during the conversion and when a CPU is overheating odd things happen. I crated a simple .net application that does an endless loop and run it twice so both cores would be pushed to the limit. Before that I've installed and run SpeedFan utility (one of the few sensor reading applications that work on Vista) that reads the temperature info from motherboard/CPU. I saw that when CPU is pushed to the limit the temperature of the cores raises to 53C/51C. The numbers don't look too high for me – before running Intel I was running an Athlon 2800+ that could reach 70C without problems – that was one hot CPU hard to cool. Back to my investigation. If my CPU crashed because of that relatively low temperatures it would mean that CPU is probably faulty and I would have to change it – I guess I would loose almost a week. Ouch. But this wasn't it. Vista was happily running without and problem for half an hour. Good for me. What was then? As a good programmer I tried to recreate the situation – I fired up iTunes and started conversion again – after some minutes it bluescreened again with similar RAID problems – disks were failing. That made iTunes the prime suspect that I would torture for a confession if I had to. I mean it can't be coincidence. I figured out that doing a conversion does something bad, very bad. Because I don't want to debug iTunes I decided to avoid the conversion feature and do conversions using other software available – Videora iPod Converter is an excellent choice, furthermore is free. Of course there were no problems converting video using Videora stuff. However, when I tried to update my iPod (again using iTunes) with converted video (that means just updating iPod data) Vista bluescreened again having a bunch of failed disks.

For now I decided to avoid using iTunes at all costs since I don't have time to rebuild my RAID array for couple of hours per crash through each day. I don't know what the exact problem is but it only manifests when iTunes is doing something (i.e. updating iPod). OK, I know that Apple doesn't recommend running iTunes on Vista for now, but this problem is just too much – that an application kills RAID disks isn't acceptable for Apple (destroying RAID), Intel (perhaps there is something wrong with RAID drivers?) and [MS] (letting iTunes destroy RAID).

The bottom line is beware of iTunes on Vista.

UPDATE: Although I managed to rebuild RAID volume, NTFS was damaged beyond repair. chkdsk just gives up on errors and all I can do is to login in safe mode. Thus I'll have to reinstall Vista today. Oh well.

UPDATE 2: A reader (in a comment bellow) reported that Apple Quicktime causes the same problem. Consider yourself warned.

UPDATE 3 (18.4.): I contacted Intel technical support and they say it certainly isn't their fault. The only explanation from them: it happens only with iTunes. I doubt that they bothered checking at all. But how can they say that it isn't their fault as their driver/controller (the last line between disk and other hw) should protect the integritiy of RAID array and shouldn't let any application destroying it. I will try to issue a PSS request to [MS] asap. I would ask Apple, too, but I don't have any contact e-mail…

UPDATE 4 (26.4.) One of the readers might have found the answer and solution to the problem. See for yourself here. Note that I didn't tested it nor I can confirm it or anything. However, it seems that he is on the right track.

UPDATE 5 (7.5.) A reader is reporting that it happens on opteron 170 in a DFI Lanparty nF4, too. This info sort of moves finger away from Intel to [MS] and Apple.

UPDATE 6 (11.5.) A breakthrough: Intel acknowledges the problem.

50 thoughts on “iTunes is trying to destroy my RAID 10 running on Vista x86”

  3. A similar thing happened to me last week. I had recently installed Vista Ultimate edition on a new PC with 6600 2.4 Duo, 2GB RAM, 3 * 400 GB Seagate Sata 2 drives configured as RAID 5 via the ICH8 chipset. GigaByte 965P-DS4 system board. This set-up had been running fine for a couple of weeks but then I downloaded and installed iTunes v7. When iTunes started looking for existing media the machine became unresponsive and eventually rebooted. On restart the RAID bios screen indicated that a disk had failed. After some panic I removed and reinserted the drive from the array and it started to rebuild. This rebuild is still running because the machine isn’t switched on all the time. The Intel RAID software is advising that this should take around 36 hours to complete. There are lots of examples of others suffering the same. Google ‘RAID 5 iTunes’ and look at the emerging pattern. Come on Apple. Test your software properly before you release it.

  4. Wow, and I thought it was me. I had upgraded to Vista on my old system which was a single core P4 3.4Ghz, 2G RAM, Boot and Data RAID mirrors on ICH7 controller from Intel.

    Same problem, Installed the 4.1 version of iTunes which was supposed to be almost Vista compatible and my disks went solid access during a folder import, then both disks in my data volume were marked for death. I was able to recover one disk with the Matrix manager, then rebuild to the other with no loss.

    That system was being donated to my kids anyway, so I built a new one. Dual Core E6600, ICH8 RAID on an ASUS P5B Vista Ready MB. Everything was fine until I tried again with iTunes. I mean, I defragemented both mirrored volumes, backed this thing up several times, installed numerous applications, so I hit it with heavy I/O for days without issue.

    Then I did a simple folder import on iTunes and it destroyed my data RAID mirror which is rebuilding right now as I type this. Its 500G and takes a while.

    Apple / iTunes are the devil. Even when in worked under XP it always brought my system to a crawl when running.

    If anyone knows what its doing to cause this I would love to know.

    lewski

  5. I have the same issue with Vista and Itunes. Starnge thing though is I can use Itunes but when I try to import a video(NOTE:Music works fine)blue screen after a few minutes. Then When I reboot my RAID shows error occured. What I do is mark the drives to non-raid. Then create an array. Then Using Acronis Disk Director 10 I restore the partition. I then Reboot with the Vista Disk and select the repair feature which usually fails 1 or twice but 3rd time is a charm because on the 3rd repair attempt Vista reboots and Voila it is working with no data loss. However still can’t use itunes with out this whole thing happening again. Have they figured out what is the actual cause

  6. BLAM same thing for me… actually iTunes was working fine for just recharging my iPoD and updating a few podcasts, then an update for iTunes hit.

    “Upgrading your iTunes database” went to take a shower and came back and 3 outa 4 raid disks were failed.. I had no time to deal with it as I had to get to work.. what a stressful day.

    The new update 7.2.1 has the same result… except I moved my swap file off my music volume and now it’s just taking out the music mirror.

    Very ugly Apple Very Ugly!

  7. Same here. Running a Bad Axe2 mobo and RAID5 on ICH7M controller. Same exact symptoms as described here. Everything was fine, copied many GB of files to my array over a period of a week. As soon as I installed iTunes and it searched/imported files on my hard drive it blue screened and RAID was in a failed state (2 drives were marked as bad). This really sucks and Apple needs to fix it.

  8. I thought I was alone in this. I run a hyperthreaded 3.0GHz P4 on an ASUS P5GD2 Deluxe motherboard with the Intel ICH6 RAID controller, 2GB of RAM and Vista Business Edition. My original RAID0 ran a pair of Seagate 80GB which worked extremely well with Windows XP. After upgrading to Vista I was performing a drag-and-drop operation on iTunes to update the artwork on one my albums when all of a sudden… BOOM! BSOD! During reboot the POST told me that the 2nd drive in my array had failed. Luckily I was still able to boot Vista and perform a backup on my 120GB backup drive (it pays to have a backup when running RAID0 🙂 ). To make a long story short I bought a new 120GB and paired it with my old drive, reinstalled Vista. I simply thought that my old 80GB drive, being a little over 2 years old, had simply headed south. More than that I really needed to upgrade anyway since 160GB of disk space just doesn’t go that far nowadays. Just a few momments ago I tried to perform the same operation that caused my original RAID0 array to fail and SPLAT! Guess what!? Another RAID0 failure! And once again, on the 2nd drive of my array. Now I said to myself “Hold on, that’s the brand-spanking new drive I just bought!” There was nothing wrong with my old 80GB drive to begin with! So now I created a new 160GB RAID0 array using my old 80GB drives and am creating a complete PC backup of my Vista installation. Needless to say this whole thing is a pain in the you-know-where. I love iTunes. I love the way it helps me organize my music. But with Windows Media Player having advanced to pretty much the same power and flexibility, I’ve decided to stay away from iTunes. After I rebuild my computer I’m not installing it again. And by the way, if you have a portable media player or, as in my case, a Sony Ericsson P990i, the sync tool of Windows Media Player works great.

  9. Thank you for posting this, and thanks to the rest of you for leaving comments about this problem. I just bought a Dell Dimension E520 w/ Intel Core 2 Duo (E6400) and 250 GB Seagate SATA (ST3250820AS) drive. I believe the motherboard has an intel ICH8R chipset. I purchased an additional 250 GB SATA drive so I could run RAID 1 (mirroring) and everything was running fine until I tried to download an HBO video podcast from iTunes Music Store. After the download finished iTunes tanked and my RAID fell into a “degraded” state. I spent about 4 hours trying to figure out what happened, and finally rebuilt the array. The next day I attempted the same download and got the same result. Clearly iTunes has an issue with Vista/RAID and I hope it gets fixed. I’m afraid to use iTunes now.

  10. See associates post in the apple support discussion forum at http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=884173.

    The problem with this issue, is that it’s not obvious whether it’s caused by iTunes, the raid controller/driver or Vista, so it’s potentially going to be a pain to tie Apple, Intel or Microsoft down and get it resolved.

    I do think however, that Apple should issue a warning about this incompatibility, even if it is not directly their “fault”, as running iTunes is resulting in peoples data getting corrupted/lost.

  11. Same problem hear on a new Dell dual core machine with a Raid 1 array. I upgraded to Vista Home Premium, upgraded iTunes to 7.1.1 and as it tried to re-build my music catalog it hung, re-booted and the 2nd hard drive wasn’t working. I actually had a Dell Tech come out and replace the drive, because I thought it was faulty. Then it happened again with the new drive. This time I ran diagnostics and both disks passed, so I deleted the one reporting the error from the array, added it back and it’s rebuilding fine now. Hope they fix this.

  14. Abit AL8, 4 x 320gb drives in RAID 5, Win Vista Ultimate. Apple quicktime caused the same problem. My investigations are pointing to a codec problem.

  15. I did a clean install of Windows Vista Business 64-bit on a single partition which previously contained a fresh install of Windows XP Professional x64. I have an Asus P5B-E motherboard and two relatively new (5 months) Western Digital 250GB hard drives in a RAID 0 array. Everything seems to work well, but after an hour or two, I get a blue screen and when BIOS loads on the restart, one of the hard drives can’t be detected. I turn the power off, walk away, come back in 15 minutes or so, and BAM it’s a healthy, bootable, RAID array again. It happens to me with or without iTunes running. It especially *seems* to happen when I move GBs of information from my single external 500GB USB hard drive to the RAID array on the desktop. So, I doubt it’s iTunes.

  17. Nope not hardware.

    Vista Ultimate and 2 Intel raid mirrors here..

    I just get upgrading database and POP, after about 2 minutes, the raid volumes(s) fail and I have to reset them and verify them.

    It really sucks too because I love my iPoD and love buying movies for my commute, but can’t now..

    Whatever the reason, iTunes you are losing my money because I can’t use my iPoD now!

  19. UPDATE… Apple should really get their act together on this because they are causing so much misery. I made the mistake of trusting that it was only iTunes that caused my RAID0 array to fail. It turns out that nothing from Apple seems to work fine on Vista. The culprit this time? Quicktime! That’s right folks – Quicktime! I took a couple of videos with my P990i and downloaded them onto my PC. Wanna take a wild guess at what happened when I tried to play them? Right again folks! 1 RAID0 array down the tube! Luckily, as before, the array hung on to dear life long enough for me to perform a complete PC backup on my 2nd RAID0 array. After rebuilding the array and restoring from the backup I thought I’d try copying the video files to my backup array and play them just to confirm that Apple’s got their heads up their you-know-where on this issue. And sure enough folks, the moment I double-clicked on one the video files… KABOOM! Down goes my backup array. Dumped array. Rebuilt. Reformated. Generated another backup. Uninstalled Quicktime. Now come on Apple! I’ve seen software do crazy things. But destroy drive arrays!? Rob is pointing to a CODEC problem. Perhaps it is. Perhaps he’s right. But if that’s indeed the case the application should only go as far as not playing the file or at the most, crash. But to take entire drive arrays along with it when it goes down is something that’s just waaaaaaay beyond being wrong. That does it for me. I’m staying away from anything Apple from now on.

  20. mumble, yes, I agree entirely. However, it is not good behaviour from Intel, either. How can a hardware RAID controller let this happen? This situation has to be cleared sooner or letter. I guess MS will have to do something when I issue a PSS request.

  21. Same thing happened to my computer trying to use both Quicktime and Itunes. Intel raid went POOPY.

    Has anyone heard anything back yet?

    I really would like my computer to play with itunes again.

    Quicktime Alternative does not cause this problem btw, so you can still at least use their codec.

  23. Hi slipperysid,

    This is certainly very interesting indeed. But still, why does it happen only with Apple software? Why is Intel technical support clueless about this?
    For now, I won’t try this registry hack because I am really not in a mood of reinstalling everything, but I am certainly interested in other’s experience.

  24. Hi Miha,

    I can’t answer as to why Apple software causes the issue more than other software. Maybe it’s the way it accesses the hard drive (heavy load/multiple threads??)

    I also can’t answer your question about why Intel technical support didn’t have an answer, especially as the solution is described on their own support pages. I can only assume that they didn’t make the link with the issue as described, and consequently, their internal database search didn’t come up with the correct solution.

    I fully appreciate your reticence to try the fix out – I was the same as I didn’t want to end up having to rebuild my entire system again, but in the end, curiosity got the better of me and I decided to go for it. I can only say that the fix looks to have worked for me.

    There is another article at http://www.flyingnerd.com/intel-raid-problem-under-windows-vista/ if that makes you feel any better about giving it a try.

    Good luck.

  25. As far as I know the following are the facts:

    1) Intel’s RAID controllers have been configured by the RTM Vista build to use power saving modes that are typically not supported by Desktop drives.
    2) Optical Drives often need a firmware update to avoid frequent freezes and timeout messages from Iastor.sys in the windows system log files, because they are being expected to support power saving modes that they were never tested with.
    3) Sometimes moving a misbehaving optical drive to another SATA port helps decouple its misbehavior from the system hard drive.
    4) Even if RAID is not used, Dell and other hardware OEMs are sending machines out with a single hard drive running from the RAID controller and customers are seeing problems unless they do a firmware update and/or move the optical drive to a different SATA port, or use the Intel registry hack.
    5) Even if you do all of the above and IaStor.sys timeout messages no longer appear in your Windows error logs, you still get intolerable disk access times when iTunes does its scan of all the files in its library prior to synchronization. See screen shot linked here: http://home.comcast.net/~charlesrazzell/slow-iPod-sync-file-IO2.jpg

    Notice that the access times on these files are greater than 8 seconds each for normal priority IO requests coming from iTunes!
    6) Same laggy behavior when just using QuickTime as a video file player for stored video podcasts.
    7) Problem can be ‘solved’ for a non-RAID scenario by switching the BIOS to use IDE mode. Under IDE mode (and obviously not using the Iastor drivers) but with identical hardware, OS and iTunes software, the behavior of synchronization and QuickTime video playback is back to normal. This is how I am using my machines right now.
    8) Slow access ==> slow sync problem can also be worked around by inserting a USB thumb drive and enabling Readyboost on the drive. Presumably this redirects sufficient IO requests away from RAID/AHCI driver to avoid breaking it.
    9) I am not convinced that the Intel registry hack is fully solving the problem due to the fact that unbelievably long access times are still found for iTunes/Quicktime video files when the hack is in effect.
    10) Intel is apparently saying that since only Apple’s software manifests this bug so the fault can’t be with their driver. I have not been able to show otherwise. If someone can show irrationally long access times for file I/O even after applying the registry hack to eliminate LPM mode, and especially if it can be done with a non-Apple software application, it would help Intel believe they have a problem to solve. The Vista Resource Monitor can help show this happening, and a screen shot may help convince someone it really is.

    Hopefully, someone can build enough evidence to force a truly open minded investigation and eventually a solution will result.

    –Charles.

  26. Hi Charles,

    Thanks for the very verbose comment. In the meantime I’ve re-contacted Intel tech support and they stated that the registry fix (and the entire support bulletin) doesn’t have anything to do with iTunes and it won’t solve the problem either. And that I should contact Apple to solve the problem.
    This is beyond ridicolous. There is a problem with their controller (not saying it is their fault) and they don’t want to investigate or to tell us the truth whatever it is. They would spend a day or so to nail down the problem (guessing, but it can’t be that difficult) and point the finger. I’ll bug Microsoft asap, while the Apple is superior company – unreachable to mere mortals.

  27. OK, maybe I spoke too soon.

    I got another RAID error (with no apparent resulting corruption) whilst importing some old podcasts in to iTunes, so although things do appear to be more stable having applied the the registry fix – the problem hasn’t gone away altogether.

  28. iTunes got me too! … it happend to me two times now… first time i thought it just must be a problem with my raid, as i just upgraded my itunes to the new version… it gets 80% through the importing library and bamm!,,,machine frozen and on restart it says array failed… i have mirrored drives so i was lucky, just unplugged one drive and restarted, then once it finds one drive missing , shut down… reconnect the other drive and then it restarts into rebuild mode… I wont be using iTunes till this is confimed as a serious bug and fixed!

  29. Same here.
    btw slipperysid, it IS the Apple software doing this – probably Quicktime.

    My system was working well for days after two clean Vista installs. Installed iTunes and what happens? you guessed it. I couldn’t even boot the next time. Vista was damaged beyond repair.

    Very likely, Intel and Microsoft are also to blame.
    But don’t you think that it’s too much of a coincidence that a system works perfectly, starts/shuts down properly dozens of times with all sorts of software installed and as soon as you install iTunes the computer dies?

    cheers

  30. What southbridge do you all guys have?
    I run a GA-965p-ds4 (intel ich8/r) with a raid 1 for system and a raid 0 for scratch disks. I had to reinstall winxp when they mysteriously stopped working (couldn’t log in no matter what) after giving me many wierd errors on different days.
    Bottom line is the errors appeared whenever I copied many small files from a single drive I had to the raid 1 array, (jpg’s typically around 100 files and up).
    I sometimes got a problem with the registry message on logon and windows said that it used a backed up copy, then sometimes the raid 1 was self checking on startup, and finally one fine day, I couldn’t log into windows (not even in safe mode) with a message that said that windows cannot determine if it is a valid copy. I checked memory (4 sticks, one by one, all the combinations) hard disks (connected as single drives not on an array…) NO problems… So I started to suspect the controller. I reformated, flashed the latest bios for the motherboard, installed winxp again, installed latest istor drivers and everything was working good…
    When today, I got the same nervewrecking message on logon. The registry had problems, windows is restoring it using a backup…or something like that.
    Guess what. Yesterday, I did copy/erase/paste many small files on that raid 1 array.

    I am thinking about contacting intel and/or microsoft, but I am preety sure that noone will answer…

  31. Hi Stambouloglou,

    It sounds to me like a *hardware* issue somewhere on your motherboard. In your place I would suspect mobo and replace it. Guessing here..

  33. This issue seems to be a major problem for Dell 9200 ownwers, and it is not just running iTunes / Quicktime. Try Picassa2. It seems to be related to the amount of read/write activity going on. I think it is ultimately a problem with intel’s driver, but hey, who am I to say!

  34. Personally I don’t think that it is amount related – I have plenty of intensive disk operations going on but none causes the failure.
    And yes, who are we to say 🙂 Compare our size to Intel or Apple or Microsoft.

  35. ZeManel, My system also has a raid (1) with 2x250GB disks (wd2500ys). The other raid (0) which works as my scratch disk is consisted by 2xwd740 raptors.
    Miha, I have thought about mobo being problematic, but I really dread that! My first suspicions where ram, hard disks. I have checked and rechecked…they tested fine.

    Problem is how do you check a mobo? And if you send it back, how can you convince the shop that they need to replace it?!

    Anyhow, I do find it more than curious that mobo’s based on ICH8 using the raid drivers tend to present wierd problems. If you ask me I am suspecting drivers…

    PS haven’t installed any apple software yet, not even quicktime. Last time I did install QuickTime. I can’t remember if that was the day before it all went south…

  36. @Efstratios: Yeah, pointing the finger to mobo and have it replaced in such weird case is very hard, indeed. Not to mention the time you have to wait for the replacement mobo. True nightmare. Perhaps the only chance is to get another same mobo model and run your stuff on it and wait to see what happens.

  37. Efstrations, my two disks in Raid are also WD2500 but RE (i.e. Raid Edition). I have seen other reports of people having the same problem with Picasa. So it seems that there is an underlying problem with the drivers and/or the OS, but definitely also with these programs, since after so many reports the Apple people should have checked why the problem is exacerbated by Quicktime/iTunes. The bottom line is that if any of these companies -Intel, Microsoft, Apple, Dell, or any of the ICH8/7 motherbaord manuf.- wanted to solve the problem, they would. All they would need would be to contact the other parties involved and agree to a way to sort it out. Apparently they just can’t be bothered to do that.

  38. ZeManel,
    My raid 1 disks are raid edition, the newer version (RE2). You’re absolutelly right about that though. If they wanted, they would have solved it by now.
    Funny thing is that a friends computer has started to produce the BSOD problem…he is running Itunes, and it’s a GB M/B. Not sure about the chipset yet. Either ICH7 or ICH8.
    Anyhow, I have contacted GB and I am waiting on an answer from them. If they do answer I will keep you guys posted.

  39. I am running an opteron 170 in a DFI Lanparty nF4 board and I thought I had a failing drive but having read this article I am experiencing much of the same. iTunes seems to bluescreen my machine when trying to convert photos to send to the iPod, resulting in a corrupt RAID array. I thought my RAID 0 array with 2x WD3200SD RE drives was the culprit but the array only throws a total wobbler when iTunes tries to do the photos. Music seems ok. Sort it out Apple – this is unacceptable. On a plus note I might purchase some third party software like i did for my creative zen xtra (redchairsoftware anapod 🙂 )

  40. The same happened to me. I have ASUS P5B-E motherboard with ICH8R controller, 3 HDs in combined raid5/raid0 configuration. I was running Vista ultimate x64 several months now. No problems even run some games. Everything went smooth until I tried to run iTunes. I know it’s not supported and not recommended etc. But it’s not gonna destroy your hardware, right? Anyway, as soon as I tried to import my old playlist, and some videos system started to behave unresponsive but no BSOD so I just patiently waited for iTunes to finish. Next day, raid5 is degraded and raid0 failed. Very nice.

  41. This is starting to look like it may be a QuickTime problem as opposed to an iTunes one – my only recent problem (see above) was related to the importing of a video Podcast, and since I deleted it, everything has been stable again.

    Can anyone confirm whether they’ve had iTunes/Vista/RAID issues with NO video files loaded in to iTunes?

    Also, QuickTime updated to version 7.1.6 last week.

    This version contains “numerous bug fixes”. Has anyone found whether Vista RAID compatibility is one of them?

  42. A solution at last (hope I’m not talking too soon). Here’s how:

    1- Intel has admitted that there’s a problem with Apple programs and issued a patch in the latest Raid driver 7.5.something. You can read this in the release notes – they specifically mention this and that the problem has been addressed in this release. These drivers are NOT available through Intel directly, since they usually run them in beta status for a few months beofre public release. However, you can find them in some Motherboard manuf. websites, like Gigabyte’s (where I got mine by going to the download page for 965P-DQ6, DS4, etc).

    2-Also, on top of the latest drivers I made sure that the registry fix (mentioned in other posts) was still in place.

    3- After this I installed Quicktime and iTunes and so far it has been smooth sailing for about 1 week. The only “extraordinary” thing I did in my setup was to disable the annoying iTunes and Quicktime features, like the Apple services running in the background and stuff that they try to load into memory upon system start-up.

    I don’t think that that had any impact on system stability though. I disabled all of that, not because of system instability but simply because I hate bloatware.

  43. So has anyone heard anything back about this? I’m on the verge of hacking my Ipod to sync with windows media.

    I still had a bunch of stuff nice and organized in Itunes that for some strange reason didn’t copy over to WMP.

  44. Anyone else tried the above fix? For now I just have Itunes on an xp computer and purchased Anapod for my vista pc.

    Would really like to get my itunes back and running again though.

    There is to my knowledge no upgrade.. Seems to be the same version that I have been using for a while. I am on an intel mobo though.

  46. So Intel’s finally admitted to having a problem? Excellent! At the very least we’re getting somewhere eh fellas? Has any one tried the patch from Intel yet? And oh! I agree Miha, the controller (or driver) shouldn’t let top-level software dig too deep into the hardware. I guess the frustration of having to move back to XP and reinstalling two entire development platforms got the better of me. Oh well… 🙂 At any rate, kudos to you for starting the thread!

  47. I made sure I had the newest intel drivers. I deleted the IASTORV or whatever registry. AND GUESS WHAT?

    Itunes has been fine on my RAID 0 array now for about a week. Everything seems to be fine. I even uninstalled Quicktime and installed Quicktime alternative yesterday.. cause I hate quicktime itself.

  48. About 2-3 days ago I got a new incident. Power went off on the grid, so on the next boot, the controller started checking the raid 1 array. It reported fixing many errors, but then proceded and array was reported healthy. However none of the programs was working properly! (Autodesk, Office etc). Weirdly enough after a couple of restarts, everything started working flawlessly!!
    I think I need excorsism…but tomorrow I will be ordering a ups for my pc.
    What really troubles me though, I have 2 more workstations with raid 1, and none has the this behaviour when the power goes out. They are an ASUS PC-DL and a P4P800 board.

    Good to hear about the new drivers, funny thing is that you can only get them for DQ965GF intel board on the english intel site, but you can get them as beta from intel japanese site, and some other sites around the world…bad thing is that I never really had a chance to try the new drivers…because:

    Today It got really frustrating, It wouldn’t boot, and kept rebooting. It seemed to start ok, then right before displaying the blue screen it rebooted. After the first reboot, the controler started to check the raid 1 array, and after a couple of tries the controller reported the array degraded…|!
    I did a repair to windows, to no avail. Right now the mobo is out and rma’ed..waiting for about 5 days for the new one…we’ll see.

    Right now working on my old trusty athlon xp 3000 with one of the drives of the array attached to save my data!

  49. Forgot to mention that Gigabyte did reply to my guestion, I’m quoting:
    “We will recommend you trying to check air circulation of PC system to make sure the system temp is not too high to affect system stability.”…sure, if the chipset is overheating then it’s their cooling system to blame. I have run hardware monitor and chipset temps never go over 40degrees…which chip is that though? there’s two of them!! :x)

    BTW thanks alot for letting me share this…it’s really frustrating! Have lost days and days of work trying to fix this machine…

  50. I had the RAID problem till today. This is what I did, I really hope it helps, cause this issue has been a real pain in the ass:

    1. Installed Quicktime Alternative Lite last week (without the player). http://www.free-codecs.com/download/QuickTime_Alternative.htm

    2. Updated BIOS and all drivers, including the last Intel Matrix Storage Console (v7.5.0.1017; comes with drivers).

    3. Installed the new iTunes 7.2. It didn’t installed Quicktime; I guess it detected that I had the last codecs installed (QT alternative).

    4. Rebooted before opening iTunes for the first time.

    5. Opened iTunes.

    I have tested it with songs and movies, and everything is working (1 hour).

    Hopefully it stays this way; I don’t plan replacing QT alternative with the real one, at least not for now.

    My PC specs:
    MoBo = D975XBX2 | CPU = Core 2 Duo 2,13GHz | 2GB RAM | Video Asus EN8800 GTX | 2 disks Seagate Barracuda 250GB in RAID 0

    Good luck.

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