Windows on Pieter Viljoen's Blog

LSI turns their back on Green

Wed, 21 Nov 2012 23:02:00 +0000

I previously blogged here and here on my research into finding power saving RAID controllers.

I have been using LSI MegaRAID SAS 9280-4i4e controllers in my Windows 7 workstations and LSI MegaRAID SAS 9280-8e controllers in my Windows Server 2008 R2 servers. These controllers work great, my workstations go to sleep and wake up, and in workstations and servers drives spin down when not in use.

I am testing a new set of workstation and server systems running Windows 8 and Server 2012, and using the “2nd generation” PCIe 3.0 based LSI RAID controllers. I’m using LSI MegaRAID SAS 9271-8i with CacheVault and LSI MegaRAID SAS 9286CV-8eCC controllers.

Storage Spaces Leaves Me Empty

Sat, 22 Sep 2012 22:54:46 +0000

I was very intrigued when I found out about Storage Spaces and ReFS being introduced in Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8. But now that I’ve spent some time with it, I’m left disappointed, and I will not be trusting my precious data with either of these features, just yet.

Microsoft publicly announced Storage Spaces and ReFS in early Windows 8 blog posts. Storage Spaces was of special interest to the Windows Home Server community in light of Microsoft first dropping support for Drive Extender in Windows Home Server 2011, and then completely dropping Windows Home Server, and replacing it with Windows Server 2012 Essentials. My personal interest was more geared towards expanding my home storage capacity in a cost effective and energy efficient way, without tying myself to proprietary hardware solutions.

Dyslexic Intel RSTe Driver

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 16:45:04 +0000

I encounter one problem after another running Windows 8 and Server 2012 on the dual Xeon E5 Intel C600 chipset based SuperMicro 7047A-T and 7047A-73 SuperWorkstation machines. I will say that this is really not representative of my Windows 8 experience in general, as all other machines I installed on worked fine with the in-box drivers.

The C602 includes the Intel Storage Controller Unit (SCU) SATA / SAS controller. Windows 8 and Server 2012 do not include in-box drivers for the SCU. The SCU drivers are part of the Intel Rapid Storage Technology Enterprise (RSTe) driver set. Note that the RSTe and RST drivers are different and not compatible with one another. When you install the full RSTe package, it includes SCU drivers for the SCU RAID controller, AHCI drivers for the SATA controller, and the Windows RST management application.

Windows 8 VIDEO_TDR_FAILURE Madness

Thu, 23 Aug 2012 22:09:49 +0000

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.

Windows 8 Install Crash With NVidia Quadro 5000

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 08:45:13 +0000

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.

Windows 8 Install Hangs Booting From LSI 2308 SAS Controller

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 04:29:48 +0000

I’ve previously posted about problems installing Windows 8 on SuperMicro machines, and that SuperMicro released a Beta BIOS that solved the install problems. I’ve since run into two more problems; the install hanging when booting off the LSI 2308 SAS controller, and a BSOD when using a Quadro 5000 video card (more on that in a later post).

I have two SuperWorkstation machines, a 7047A-T using an X9DAi motherboard, and a 7047A-73 using an X9DA7 motherboard.

SuperMicro Beta BIOS supports Windows 8 and Server 2012

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 20:15:32 +0000

In a previous post I reported that my SuperMicro SuperWorkstation 7047A-T failed to install Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012 due to an ACPI_BIOS_ERROR. I contacted SuperMicro support, and I was informed that new BIOS releases are on their way that will support Windows 8 and Server 2012.

This morning I received an email from SuperMicro, with a new Beta BIOS for the X9DAi motherboard used in the 7047A-T. The new BIOS allowed me to install Windows 8 and Server 2012.

Debugging Windows 8 Install BSOD

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 22:04:27 +0000

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.

Windows 8 and Server 2012 on SuperMicro results in ACPI_BIOS_ERROR BSOD

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 00:59:01 +0000

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.

Rotation confuses face recognition

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 00:44:00 +0000

I have around fifty thousand digital photos in my library, and it has become impractical to browse through them looking for some event, or some place, or some person. So other than archiving, there really is no value in collecting photos if you can’t go back and find the ones you are looking for.

A few years ago I switched to using Image Ingester Pro and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom to import and catalog my photos. Now one of the first things I do after importing photos, is to add keywords describing the event, the place, and the people. But, I still have tens of thousands of photos that have no keywords, and there is no easy or automated way to add keywords to these photos. One thing that can be automated is adding people keywords to photos based on automated face recognition.

NCP VPN not quite Windows 7 compatible

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 23:24:00 +0000

I got so frustrated with the NCP VPN client software, specifically a recent update, that I decided to let my frustration out by writing about it.

For a long time I used the, IT approved, Cisco VPN client to access our corporate network. And as the OS technology moved along, so did my systems, meaning Vista, Windows 7, and 64-bit. While, for the most part, our IT approved systems remained to be only 32-bit XP. Cisco, for some reason, maybe they are representative of IT organizations as a whole, was late to support Vista, was late to support Windows 7, and for the longest time never supported x64.

Amazon Unbox on x64 Vista

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 03:41:00 +0000

While shopping on Amazon I noticed that they were offering the Pilot of the Showtime series Nurse Jackie in HD for free, so I decided to give it a try.

The install (version 2.0.1.95) went smoothly, and the 1.3GB download also completed pretty quickly, and I watched the show.

Ok, now I wanted to stop the Unbox player service from running and terminate the tray icon application, I have no need to have it running all the time.

How to install SQL Server 2008 on Windows Server 2008 R2 RC

Thu, 14 May 2009 20:44:00 +0000

I was trying to install SQL Server 2008 on Windows Server 2008 R2 RC.

But, when I launch SETUP.EXE, Windows warns me that SQL Server is not compatible with Windows Server.
If I ignore the warning, the install proceeds but then fails to install .NET 3.5.

After a little searching and experimentation I found a way to install without any problems:
1. Create a slipstreamed SQL Server 2008 SP1 install, follow the instructions here.
I set my PCUSOURCE=".\PCU" and that worked fine.
2. Add .NET 3.5 by going to server manager and adding the .NET 3.5.1 feature.
3. Install by running SETUP.EXE.

Google Email Uploader on Vista x64

Sat, 10 Jan 2009 04:17:00 +0000

I am currently importing a few thousand email messages from Outlook 2007 to my email account hosted on Google Apps. Google provides an Email Uploader utility, and it is easy to use, but getting it to work with Outlook 2007 on Vista x64 was less than trivial.

The utility installed fine on my Vista x64 system, but it found no mailboxes to import. A little research showed that several other people using Vista x64 and Outlook 2007 have exactly the same problem.

Getting Vista to go to sleep

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 20:03:00 +0000

I noted my troubles with the Intel GMA drivers, the Intel DG33TL motherboard, and Vista SP1 blue screen crashing in my earlier post.

Since I was running the 15.8 version of the Intel GMA drivers, and Microsoft KB948343 indicates that, based on the driver version numbers, these newer drivers should not be affected by SP1, yet the crash details were clearly the same, and no new driver was forthcoming to correct the blue screen crash, I decided to take the GMA drivers out of the picture.

Installing Vista SP1 with an OEM key

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 01:45:00 +0000

I received my new Lenovo ThinkPad T61 notebook, pre-installed with Vista Ultimate, but also with 3rd party software I did not care for.

I wanted a clean Vista install, and that is exactly why I made sure to order the recovery media with the notebook, thinking that this would include an OS install DVD. It turns out that the recovery media is six CDs, I don’t know why not a DVD, regardless, the recovery media does not include a Vista install DVD.