Asrock H61M/U3S3 7B Bsod after 1 month on ASMedia ASM1061 Controller w Samsung 830 SSD

[COLSEARLE]

Hello,

I think signing up to these forums is harder than fixing PC's !!

I thought I would ask a question about a machine I built around a month back for a customer. I'm going to visit him in the morning.

He called saying he is suffering the 0x0000007B Bluescreen "Inaccessible_Boot_Device" Just after the starting windows screen on Win 7 X64. The maching is running a Samsung 830 SSD on the ASMedia ASM1061 SATA3 controller. It's been running fine for a month and now this.

When I go in the morning the plan is to check bios version is latest and the asmedia drivers if I can get into the OS although The board is new and I believe it's all up to date. I may have to plug the SSD into the standard SATA2 ports to get it working. Theres no chance this user has been in the bios and changed the IDE/AHCI settings so its anybody's guess and I'm open to any suggestions.

Asrock H61M/U3S3
Samsung 830 128gb SSD

Any suggestions ??? I will check this post in the morning before I go...... Thanks for any help

[parsec]

That is unusual for a 830, which are normally blue screen proof. Seems it is the OS drive, and has a BSOD during the OS boot.

Check data and power cables to the SSD. Install and run the Samsung SSD Magician software to check the SSDs SMART data, and run its Performance Optimizer. Also run the OS Optimization option, but if HDDs are in that PC, you may not want to apply all the options.

Automatic Windows updates being done? Check the ASMedia's driver in case it was changed. You could use the Windows msahci driver with the ASMedia chipset, which may be more stable.

As is usual with the add on SATA III chipsets like the ASMedia and Marvell, their performance is poor relative to Intel or AMD SATA III chipsets. Frankly, for a customers PC that knows no difference, put the 830 on the Intel SATA II ports, with either the msahci driver, or the Intel IRST driver in AHCI mode. The ASMedia will have better sequential read speed, of ~400MB/s, but all the other performance factors will be better on the Intel SATA II ports. The Intel SATA controller and driver is also much more stable and reliable. Will the customer notice the difference? I doubt it, except it may be better. Using an OS on the add on SATA III chipset is asking for trouble, IMO.

[COLSEARLE]

Parsec - Thankyou so much for your reply.

It Turned out the customer had added a Microsoft wireless mouse which was occasionally jumping into the bios on startup and going wild, Flicking around the setup screen etc.

I first flashed the bios to latest but the mouse was still wild in the bios. I then replaced the mouse and the bios screens were steady. The SATA2 & 3 were set to IDE so I changed back to AHCI and all is well. So it was a bad rodent.

I had intended to check the driver version of the ASM1061 controller as I downloaded 1.3.8.000 last night which is far newer than the revision listed at the ASrock website..... But in the joy of the repair I forgot. It may well be using the Win7 driver I cant remember as it's been a month.

That very interesting what you wrote about the sequential read speeds of the ASmedia chip, Infact I think your reply was superb.

If I have any issues with the Asmedia chip I will go onto the SATA2 port. I won't be doing anymore builds with addon controller chip motherboards. I have only used two of these type, One ASrock and one Gigabyte whilst trying to acheive good speeds for customers. When I was looking for native SATA3 earlier in the year I am sure I could only find it on expensive boards but I must have been mistaken as it's been there since the H67 chipset. I dont know how I missed it.

Thankyou again.

[parsec]

You are welcome, although I did not solve the problem. Now we know why laptop manufactures lock the BIOS down so much, to keep accidental vandals out.

Yes, the H67 can provide two SATA 6Gb/s ports, I was not sure about that myself. Use those instead of the ASMedia ports, they are faster and more reliable, even with the standard Windows 7 msahci driver. Or use a version 10 IRST driver in AHCI mode.

If the customer has problems with the wireless mouse when using a USB flash drive, it is likely a USB 3.0 drive in a 3.0 port. I have seen varying degrees of interference (I assume) with the wireless mouse signal in that situation.