Crash

I finally figured out why I kept on getting VIDEO_TDR_FAILURE BSOD’s when installing Windows 8 on my SuperMicro workstations. It turns out that the problem goes away when I use a PCIe slot associated with CPU #1, instead of a slot associated with CPU #2. Some history on my adventures with Windows 8 and SuperMicro SuperWorkstations: I got ACPI_BIOS_ERROR BSOD’s while installing Windows 8, SuperMicro provided a Beta BIOS that resolved the problem. The Windows 8 install hangs if installing to an SSD drive on an LSI 2308 SAS controller, that issue is still unresolved, but can be worked around by connecting the SSD to the Intel SATA controller. I got VIDEO_TDR_FAILURE BSOD’s while installing Windows 8 with an NVidia Quadro 5000 graphics card, same with an ATI FirePro V7900 or an NVidia GeForce GTX 680 or an ATI HD 7970. And this post is about resolving that problem. ...

I got Windows 8 RTM installed on my two SuperMicro SuperWorkstation machines, with a bit of trouble along the way, but nothing I could not work around. But, I ran into a problem with NVidia Quadro 5000 cards causing a VIDEO_TDR_FAILURE BSOD during the Windows 8 install process. I was running my two workstations with ATI FirePro V7900 graphics cards, but I decided I wanted a bit more rendering horsepower. I wanted a card that had a good balance between modern architecture, great 2D performance, good 3D performance, OpenCL or CUDA support, and reasonable power consumption. I found the Tom’s Hardware Workstation Graphics 2012 benchmark site to be very informative, and I decided that the NVidia Quadro 5000 was a very good choice. ...

In my last post I described how to prevent Windows from automatically restarting when encountering a BSOD during the OS install process. This allowed me to see the ACPI_BIOS_ERROR fault code while installing Windows 8 on my new SuperMicro workstation. The new Windows 8 BSOD page looks friendly, but no longer displays any error parameters other than the main fault code. In order to get additional details of the crash, I had to hook up a kernel debugger to the machine. Windows 8 adds USB3 and TCPIP kernel debug support, and I will describe how I used the TCPIP network option to capture details of the crash. ...

I ran out of disk space on my development workstation, all those VM images add up. The machine has four drive bays, and all four have 3TB drives. I can replace the 3TB drives with 4TB drives, but migrating the RAID5 array will be time consuming and risky. I can add an external SAS storage enclosure, but they do not power down when the machine goes to sleep. So I looked at buying a new machine with more drive bays. ...

I’ve been using CrashPlan as an online backup solution for quite some time, and it works really well. I like the fact that I can subscribe to the consumer plan, with almost 3.5TB of data backed up, and that the backup client installs on a server OS. Many of the other “unlimited” backup providers I tested have restrictions in place that make such a setup impossible. CrashPlan sends email notifications about backup status, and I noticed that something was wrong with the backup: ...

I wanted to write about Trend Micro SafeSync, but it reminded me of my Streamload experience, and I ended up writing this instead. This time I am really going to write about SafeSync. SafeSync is another online backup and sync and share application. Actually, they offer both online storage through a mapped drive, and syncing folders online, this makes it unique compared to many existing offerings. I have used almost all online backup and sync and share type applications out there, my favorite remains DropBox. SafeSync used to be Humyo, before being acquired by Trend. I used Humyo when they were in Beta, it was just ok, but between then and now their product seems to have come a long way. ...

In this post I describe my experience while upgrading the BIOS, in order to support 4GB of memory. This is the third post in a series of posts related to the Zotac ZBOX ZBOXHD-ID11. Summary: - 4GB is supported after upgrading the BIOS. - BIOS has to be updated using less than 4GB, else ID11 fails to post. [Update: 20 May 2010] After writing this post, the machine started bluescreen / BSOD crashing. Mostly MEMORY_MANAGEMENT / 0x0000001A errors, with occasional 0x000000BE and 0x0000003B crashes. When I initially installed the 4GB RAM, I ran memtest for one cycle, and the RAM tested fine. I just reran memtest, and it is reporting the memory as bad. I replaced the memory with a new stick, I ran memtest overnight, and everything seems back to normal. I hope it was just a bad stick, and not the ID11 that killed the memory. ...