My workstation works very stable over many days with quite a heavy load. There is one problem though which seems to be inherent to how Windows assigns mass storage
First the facts
- Windows is installed on a PCIx mass storage device (RevoDrive); C: resides here as well as the Boot sector and recovery volume (eg a standard installation). The disk number
- A 10Gbyte pagefile was created on a striped volume E:
- The partition table is such:
DISKPART> list volume Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info ---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- -------- Volume 0 E Striped NTFS Stripe 223 GB Healthy Pagefile Volume 1 D 0519202 UDF DVD-ROM 7740 MB Healthy Volume 2 X junk NTFS Partition 179 GB Healthy Volume 3 V VirtualCDs NTFS Partition 100 GB Healthy Volume 4 System Rese NTFS Partition 350 MB Healthy System Volume 5 C System NTFS Partition 111 GB Healthy Boot Volume 6 Removable 0 B No Media Volume 7 SM128MB FAT Removable 124 MB Healthy C:\media\sm\ Volume 8 MS64M exFAT Removable 61 MB Healthy C:\media\ms\ Volume 9 A SD32MB FAT Removable 29 MB Healthy
DISKPART> list disk
Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
Disk 0 Online 279 GB 1024 KB *
Disk 1 Online 119 GB 7631 MB *
Disk 2 Online 111 GB 0 B *
Disk 3 Online 223 GB 111 GB
Disk 4 No Media 0 B 0 B
Disk 5 Online 125 MB 0 B
Disk 6 Online 61 MB 0 B
Disk 7 Online 29 MB 0 B
To create the BAD_CONFIG_INFO situation all I have to do is this
- Start PC and boot into Windows
- Attach a USB mass storage device
- Shutdown windows, and wait until it stops the PC
- Remove the USB mass storage device
- Start PC: At first the new bluescreen appears (BAD_CONFIG_INFO), boots again attempts a repair, and than goes into Diagnose PC, after which it establishes that it cannot boot and suggests a Restart (which doesn't work).
After I remove the two disks that participate in the striped set, reboot twice, Windows starts again, with a temp pagefile. I than can connect the two disks and reboot.
All disks are working fine, cabling is pristine and no other hardware problems are reported. Like I said the computer runs fine for weeks with various loads. Only removing a USB mass storage device causes BAD_SYSTEM_CONFIG_INFO.
I assume that Windows is confused when one of the lower Disk numbers is not there or assigns a different disk number to the bootable or OS volume, where it than cannot find either.
Is it true that bootable volume or OS volume should be at exactly the same location (disk # or volume #) for boot?
If so how can I force the disk # or volume # so that a removal of an extern storage device is survived?
- Edited by theking2 Saturday, June 21, 2014 12:01 PM