WD's Raptor And Nvidia G80 Don't Play Nice With Vista

12:22 - Monday 25 June 2007 by Bert Töpelt
Source: Tom's Hardware – Keywords: wd, raptor, nvidia, g80, dont, play, nice, with, vista

Nvidia and Western digital Present "Windows Vista: Paralysis Edition"

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The Western Digital Raptor WD1500ADFD is one of the fastest hard drives in the world, and Nvidia's G80 among the top graphics cards on the market. They are also among of the pieces of kit which we have discovered do not run well with Windows Vista at all.

If your computer runs Windows Vista and contains an Nvidia graphics card or one of Western Digital's speedy Raptor drives then you can suddenly find that certain options refuse to work, and even simple printing jobs can provoke cryptic and misleading error messages. So, we went on the hunt to find out what is wrong and hopefully solve - and prevent - these problems.

After a full week of testing, we finally located the culprits and worked out a solution. We can strike Vista from the list of suspects, since this problem didn't occur with any other hardware components in all our testing.

For our performance tests, i.e. whenever benchmarks are run, we always use the fastest system components available. Since Western Digital's Raptor WD1500ADFD is considered one of the fastest desktop hard drives available in the market today, it has been our drive of choice for the past year or so. Sadly, it is also one of the two offenders in the scenario we are looking at today.

Western Digital's WD1500ADFD spins at 10,000 rpm

Windows Vista in the Test Lab

Practically all of the editors at Tom's Hardware Guide's Munich labs have made the switch to Windows Vista, using it as their sole operating system - both at home and in the office. There is no reason not to use Microsoft's youngest OS, as it can run all of the applications we need as well our benchmark programs without a problem.

However, during our migration to Windows Vista, we encountered a problem. After installing the OS (Windows Vista Enterprise Edition 32 Bit, English), the chipset drivers and the graphics drivers, several errors suddenly appeared. For example, we could no longer open the control panel, the Computer properties or the Personalize Desktop menu. The printer went AWOL as well. This problem does not occur every time the system starts up. Nonetheless, it does appear sporadically after a period of uptime. Some of our readers will undoubtedly be familiar with this phenomenon, although localizing its cause can prove very difficult.


Talkback


interleaf2 13/07/2007 08:30
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interleaf2
Hi Bert

I really appreciate the trouble you went to over this problem.

I have 4 x Raptor 150GB and 2 x EVGA 8800GTS working fine under XP. But under Vista 32 I get the sysmptoms you describe. I wondered if you discovered any of the following

1. Is the problem only when Vista is installed on a Raptor 150GB drive, or will it occur when any Raptor 150GB drive is present in the system even if only used for data storage?

2. Does the problem still occur with NCQ disabled?

3. Does the problem still occur on Vista 64 bit?

4. Does the fix work in all cases? It doesn't seem to install on my system. I get no response message after I type the command to start the service.

Thanks, Mike
interleaf2 13/07/2007 06:39
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interleaf2
Hi Bert

I believe I have the debug system service installed, but it won't start automatically or manually.

When I try to start THGDEBEGSVC it get the error message "Unable to start - access denied"

Any idea how I can get round this?

Thanks,
Mike
Zorg 06/09/2007 08:21
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Zorg
We encountered the problem on both the ATI and the AMD platforms.

Don't you mean Intel and AMD platforms?
kentuckyranger 22/01/2008 02:04
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kentuckyranger
I have 3 Raptor 150's in my Rig with the nVidia 680i M/B, 2 8800 Ultra's, Vista 64bit and it's been interesting to say the least.

After exaustive troubleshooting and Headaches I found 2 issues to be the culprit and niether have to do with bad hardware nor issues with Vista.

The first has to do with BIOS settings. In nVidia's BIOS there's a selection under H/D's called memory Blocking. It's supposed to help up transfer rates but really causes problems with the Raptor H/D's.
I had to disable this feture to get the Raptors to work at all.
The second was so simple it was my last effort before RMA and it worked.
The SATA Cables that come with the M/B don't support the faster Data transfer rates and cause a Bottleneck within the Cable itself.
Replacing the Cable with the one that came with the Raptor solved the issues completely.
I know it sounds odd but after doing this my system has run flawlessly for the last 3 Months.
kentuckyranger 22/01/2008 02:12
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kentuckyranger
P.S. I noticed in your article Pics you're using the stock Cables as well. I know it sounds stupid but try swapping them out for higher quality Cables or the ugly Blue ones that come with the Raptor H/D's.

Like I said before it was the last thing I did before RMA and I've been through all the stuff you did as well as a few more tricks I tried and nothing would work.
I even did the SATA Plug swap and as you stated, it works for a little while but then the problem comes back within a few Days to Weeks.

It's not the manufacturers fault, they supply SATA Cables that if used with a regular 7200rpm H/D work great. The problem is that the Raptor H/D's run data rates way faster and the Cables that come with M/B's can't handle it.

Note You are going to post a comment as anonymous.



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