Solutions Log » Windows

The device, \Device\Ide\iaStor0, did not respond within the timeout period

Dan — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 16:38:21 +0000

Issue:
After an updated release of Intel's Matrix Storage Manager [v.8.9.0.1023] and chipset drivers for Windows, you experience unexpected system timeouts, lockups, pausing, or freezing. The following event is recorded in the System event log:

Log Name: System
Source: iaStor
EventID: 9
Level: Error
The device, \Device\Ide\iaStor0, did not respond within the timeout period.

Cause:
The issue is the result of Aggressive Link State Power Management (ALPM) on the PCI-Express bus negotiating a lower power state for the link between the controller and disk when there is no activity. When ALPM works, disk requests are queued, the serial link revived, and the queued requests are sent to the relevant disk; this requires a disk that supports ALPM.

Resolution:
Modify the advanced settings of your active power management scheme in Windows to turn PCI Express Link State Power Management off.

Commentary:
Searching for a solution yielded a number of possibilities.

Setting the value of:

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\iaSTOR\Parameters\PortN\LPMDSTATE 0

as discussed by Derek Seaman did not resolve my issue.

Renaming:

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\iaSTOR\Parameters

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\iaSTOR\Parameters.dist

as suggested by Paul's Computer Service was also ineffective. At the time I was running the latest set of drivers for my platform. Caveat emptor: the solution I outlined in this article worked for me.

References:
Intel CS-025783 - Possible issues with Windows Vista* and Intel® RAID
Windows 7 Intel SATA/AHCI Lockups
Intel® Matrix Storage Manager Bug

Acronis True Image Home 2010 Freezes During Backup on Windows 7

Dan — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 17:02:15 +0000

Issue:
When running backup jobs in Acronis True Image Home 2010 under Windows Vista or Windows 7, the backup job appears to stall and the operating system becomes unresponsive. The system will encounter a bugcheck condition and recover with an unclean shutdown.

Cause:
From Acronis:

Because of the latest major changes in Windows Vista and Windows 7 native snapshot driver (VolSnap), there were some modifications introduced in Acronis True Image Home 2010 (starting from Build 6029). The Acronis native snapshot driver (snapman) was moved from UpperFilters to LowerFilters to avoid conflicts with VolSnap (which could have lead to backups failure or data corruption in backups). This change may sometimes manifest itself in a freezing Windows Vista or Windows 7 operating system on machines with rare software and hardware configurations.

Resolution:
Download an updated SnapAPI build from Acronis. Unpack it and install with the Disable Logging option set. See Acronis KB6529 for the appropriate link.

Commentary: My hardware configuration is not esoteric; my software configuration is equally banal: an Intel Core i7 X58 system with 6GB of RAM, RAID1 on an ICH10R, and Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit.

Reference: http://kb.acronis.com/content/6529

Reset The Windows Update Catalog

Dan — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 20:43:37 +0000

Insert the Windows Vista installation disc in the disc drive, and then restart the computer.
When you are prompted to restart from the disc, press any key.
When you are prompted, configure the Language to install, Time and currency format , and Keyboard or input method options that you want, and then click Next .
On the Install Windows page, click Repair your computer .
On the System Recovery Options page, click the version of the Windows Vista operating system that you want to repair, and then click Next
On the System Recovery Options page, click Command Prompt .
Type cd C:\windows\winsxs , and then press ENTER.
Type ren pending.xml pending.old , and then press ENTER.
In Registry Editor, locate and then delete the following registry subkey:

HLKM\Offline Components\AdvancedInstallersNeedResolving
HKLM\Offline Components\PendingXmlIdentifier
HKLM\Offline Components\NextQueueEntryIndex

At the command prompt, type exit to exit Registry Editor. Press ENTER.
Click Restart

Reference: http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vistawu/thread/13dec2a0-2694-4b11-9b0c-9b8fbe6162ee

Replace Pipes with Tabs in a Delimited File

Dan — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 20:44:37 +0000

Issue:
It is often necessary to replace delimiters in a file with a form the receiving party expects. sed is my favorite method of meeting the need.

Solution:
Replace double pipes with tabs

sed 's/||/ /g' file.in > file.out

Note: If you find the tab key simply does not work, try CTRL+V+I from your terminal.
Reference: http://forums.devshed.com/unix-help-35/replacing-tabs-with-spaces-372623.html

Caveats:
Special consideration (and a regex) will be required for data where delimiters are present in the data itself. Consider your use case and apply appropriately.

Strip empty (null) lines from a file

Dan — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 18:12:06 +0000

sed meets the need; the recipe follows:

sed '/^$/d' filename

Device Manager does not display devices that are not connected to the Windows XP-based computer

Dan — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 17:36:05 +0000

Issue:
Device Manager displays only non-Plug and Play devices, drivers, and printers when you click Show hidden devices on the View menu. Devices that you install that are not connected to the computer (such as a Universal Serial Bus [USB] device or "ghosted" devices) are not displayed in Device Manager, even when you click Show hidden devices.

Workaround:

Click Start, point to Run, and type cmd.
Click Ok
At the command prompt, type the following command and then press ENTER:
set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
Type the following command at the command prompt and then press ENTER:
start devmgmt.msc
Troubleshoot the devices and drivers in Device Manager. NOTE: Click Show hidden devices on the View menu in Device Managers before you can see devices that are not connected to the computer.

Note that when you close the command prompt window, Window clears the devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1 variable that you set in step 2 and prevents ghosted devices from being displayed when you click Show hidden devices.

If you are a developer or power user and you want to be able to view devices that are not connected to your computer, set this environment variable globally:

Right-click My Computer.
Click Properties.
Click the Advanced tab.
Click on the Environment Variables tab.
Set the variables in the System Variables box.

NOTE: Use this method only for troubleshooting or development purposes, or to prevent users from accidentally uninstalling a required device that is not connected to the computer (such as a USB device or docking station that is not connected to a laptop computer).

Reference: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315539

Mirror a Directory Structure Using the Command Line

Dan — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 18:30:51 +0000

Issue:
You need to mirror the directory structure (but not contents) for a tree.

Resolution:
Execute the following command from the root of your source directory. Adjust the destination variable to suit your tastes: %i will match the first token, %j the second, %k the third, and %l will match everything else.

for /F "tokens=1,2,3* delims=\" %i in ('dir /Ad /B /N /S') do mkdir t:\dest\%l

Reference: http://www.dostips.com/DtTipsStringManipulation.php

Shrink VirtualBox vdisks After Freeing Space (Windows guests)

Dan — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 19:35:47 +0000

Issue:
On dynamically allocated vdisks, freed space on a guest is never released back to the host once freed.

Cause:
This is by design.

Resolution:
The procedure for shrinking (compacting in VirtualBox parlance) is straightforward and consists of a series of steps.

Delete files on the guest to achieve the desired amount of free space
Zero free space out with an appropriate utility
Shut down guest
Compact disk

Zeroing guest free space is simple: Microsoft provides an excellent utility through its Sysinternals group called SDelete. Download the program, extract it from the archive, and execute it on the disk to be zeroed. Note: this procedure only zeroes free space.

sdelete -c

One the zeroing procedure is completed, you may power off the guest and compact the virtual disk from the command line.

VBoxManage modifyvdi /path/to/machine.vdi compact

Note: This was tested against VirtualBox 3.0.4 r50677

References:
SDelete

Remote Mirroring Using nc and dd

Dan — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 16:58:06 +0000

You can use the dd and nc commands for exact disk mirroring from one server to another. The following commands send data from Server1 to Server2:

1 2	Server2# nc -l 12345 \| dd of=/dev/sdb Server1# dd if=/dev/sda \| nc server2 12345

Make sure that you issue Server2's command first so that it's listening on port 12345 when Server1 starts sending its data.

Unless you're sure that the disk is not being modified, it's better to boot Server1 from a RescueCD or LiveCD to do the copy.

Reference: http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/tech-tip-remote-mirroring-using-nc-and-dd

Create thumbnails en-masse from a bash prompt

Dan — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 23:10:14 +0000

A simple one-liner and ffmpeg, basename, and cut gets this done.

1	for i in *.f4v; do ffmpeg -i `basename $i` -s 320x240 `basename $i \| cut -d'.' -f1`.jpg; done

Thumbnail output size is configurable with the -s switch.