Problem with windows 8.1 Fast Startup (error 0xC00000D4) RAID0 related

[NoelC]

I just did a bit of math.

 

Let's say Windows takes a full minute to boot up without hybrid boot (I have systems that boot up in 20 seconds, but I have good hardware, so I'm being conservative).

 

Now let's say that if everything is working properly you save 30 seconds off that time by having hybrid/fast bootup enabled.  Further, let's say that you boot up Windows twice a day on average.

 

The net gain is that you would save a minute a day waiting on Windows to start.  Good stuff, right?  Time is precious.

 

But let's consider:  If you use power saving states...

 

On a typical system, something WILL fail more often if Windows is not freshly booted, especially on portable systems more likely to be using power saving states.  This is based on observed reality. 

 

Let's say you get one more failure every two weeks, and it costs you 15 minutes to recover, redo your work lost during the crash or whatever.  You've just chewed up your time advantage. 

 

We can even postulate that every few months you'll have a major failure and lose hours of work.  Even a perfectly good backup takes time to restore.

 

At some point, because drivers - where many of the problems following power state transitions lie - work at a low level, Windows may corrupt itself, and you'll have to spend time doing a fresh install.  I shudder to think of the time to redo the setup of everything again.  I have written a soup-to-nuts book that I follow when I need to set up a new system, and it still takes me the better part of a day to create a fully functional system.  Unless you've been careful to save all your license info, and write everything down about what you've configured, I'll wager there will be things you've done that you will not remember how to do again.

 

So tell me again...  Why do you want to use a half-baked feature that Marketing dreamed up so that Microsoft could say SOMETHING about Windows 8 was better than its predecessors?

 

 

 

-Noel

[osRe]

Why half baked? Hybrid boot is the default in Windows 8, so there should be millions of people using it every day. And plain hibernation is even more common.

[jaclaz]

@NoelC

It depends on personal habits.

 

I now usually keep my "main" PC on 24/7, but when I worked in an office, I was used to switch the PC on in the morning, as soon as I arrived there, it would took something like 90-120 seconds or so, but I don't actually know, as - as soon as I pressed the button - I would go and make some coffee.

 

I thus claim that how much time it takes to switch on is of no relevance whatsoever as I had more important things to do (coffee) than looking at the bootscreen waiting impatiently for the desktop to appear, and since this alternative activity took me as much as 5 minutes, even if booting was much slower it would not have affected my wellness (whilst the lack of coffee would have had terrible consequences ).

 

@shae

But the point is what is the actual time needed for:

1. "full" (cold) boot
2. "resume" from hibernation
3. "resume" from hybrid hibernation

and, more specifically, what is the difference between them?

And is it really worth it?

 

Just for the record, there is also a "lateral thinking" way :

http://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=21535.0

http://skwire.dcmembers.com/wb/pages/software/boot-snooze.php

 

If you think a bit about it, when the PC goes into sleep/hibernation it doesn't really matter how much it takes to get into that state, it should happen rarely, maybe once in a lifetime that you need to get it very quickly up again.

 

jaclaz

[NoelC]

Doesn't matter how many people use it.  It's half-baked because it simply doesn't work very well.  It's not a robust feature, because Microsoft makes the assumption that drivers outside their control will work perfectly in modes they're not likely to be as well-tested in.  I'm not making up the fact that a lot of systems have problems during power state transitions.

 

Did you happen to notice that Windows 8 has adoption problems?  Ask yourself why.  Hint:  It isn't just the missing start menu.  Users aren't that utterly shallow, even though that's all Microsoft thinks of them.

 

It's not hard to imagine people en masse noticing things like Windows being a little flakier when they try to use it in its default configuration.  The real shame is that the kernel in this version is probably the most solid of any Windows version, when used in ways that make sense.

 

-Noel

[NoelC]

Just an extra thought...

 

Imagine that the manufacturer of a PC hardware component has a quality/testing organization that puts their hardware (and by implication drivers) through the paces quite thoroughly before they release.  The organization is probably somewhat underfunded, but they DO test...

 

Which of these scenarios do you think is more likely:

 

1.  They do hands-on testing during the day, rarely if ever allowing the systems to go into power-saving states; and when they go home at night they leave their test systems on, doing automated tests.

 

2.  They spend a lot of time allowing the PC under test to go to sleep then wake it up by wiggling the mouse or pressing a key or something (presumably with a robot arm or something if they're not there).

 

Based on my experience, I'd guess testing of power state management is probably little more than an afterthought.  But that's okay, testing is redundant anyway because no programmer ever creates software with bugs, right? 

 

-Noel

Edited September 22, 2014 by NoelC

[evilevil]

I have this problem too on all my Windows 8.1 systems. Unless Windows 8.0, on Windows 8.1 the hybrid boot doesn't work if an USB drive (or some other usb devices) is plugged in. If it is connected, the system doesn't shutdown or take 10 min to shutdown and the fast boot doesn't work. I think you could try to shutdown the laptop without any usb connected.

 

I have tried doing that. I just removed all the usb devices from the laptop and the problem still existed. So overall I thinkk that this problem is either:

 

1- Bios related

 

2- Windows 8.1 related (But if that's the case why some people who have windows 8.1 don't have this problem existing)

 

3- And finally may be it's happening due to the RAID configuration I had on my 2 HDD that I have them as storage

 

And that's because I tried everything else and nothing worked, like testing the RAMS, formating and reinstalling the windows and trying it without installing any programs, removing all the usb devices, checking the disk for errors and after all that the problem wasn't solved.

 

So I know that the difference in booting time just differs by only 1 or 2 minutes but that's not actually the case for me I just wanted to know what's causing it in the first place as I been trying to solve it for a while now but with no luck.

 

Anyway if anyone have some knowledge in bios and thinks that it may be causing this problem due to a bios option or so just give us a feedback on what options in bios may be causing this problem and how can it be fixed,

 

Also is there any further tests or programs which i can use to do some analysis and which can show me exaclty the roots of the problem and what exacly is causing it.

Edited September 22, 2014 by evilevil

[evilevil]

- I just figured it out right now, I went to the bios and disabled all the hdd drives that I have which are:

 

1- 2 x 2tb in RAID0

2- 1 x 750gb sshd

 

- And after that I was just left with my msata ssd which had windows 8.1 installed in it and then I did about 10 shutdows and startups and yes the problem is gone and it's starting up and shuting down even faster than before.

 

- Right now I can assure that this problem is caused by the other HDD's which are installed in the laptop.

 

- Also I think that according to the error I mentioned before which says (The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power    unexpectedly) it means that when the system shuts down it dosen't close and shut down everything properly including programs and HDD and which in the long run could affect HDD.

 

 So any suggestions on how I can overcome this problem with offcourse enabling back my HDD.

Edited September 22, 2014 by evilevil

[MTDirector]

Ok, first, try with the 750 gB hard disk. If it work, try with the raid 0 alone. If it work with 750 gB hdd or raid 0, try with both.

[osRe]

jaclaz: Whether the time saved matters depends on your usage and taste. With cellphones and the likes having "instant on", I think people do notice this sort of delays more. It also encourages/discourages certain usage patterns. Even if it's not that crucial, there's something satisfying about instant on, or at least quick loading, and I do hope other software would pay attention to it as well.

 

With all the improvements in computing hardware, I always find it disappointing that I have to wait for software to load, even in simple things like text editors. In many cases hardware+software from 15 years ago was overall quicker. Yes, SSDs are one way to counter it, but the main problem is the software design. Instead of using the advancements in hardware to get things to happen quicker, we're just standing still in the same place because software gets less and less optimized.

 

Noel: I'm rather sure the big majority of users who made an informed decision not to use Win8 didn't do it because of hybrid boot. And sleep/hibernation aren't new to Win8. Regarding testing, I would assume Microsoft's WHQL testing likely includes sleep behavior as well. I don't think there's anything inherently different in this sort of testing compared with the rest of their test suites.

By the way, speaking of driver problems related to sleep modes, both of my WiFi NIC cards (Atheros and Intel) sometimes don't work correctly after wakeup (sleep or hibernation). Happened much more in 8.0 than 8.1, but the "fix procedure" in 8.0 worked pretty much every time, and in 8.1 it's a random flailing about until it works. But I also sometimes encounter this after a restart (which should be "full", unlike shutdown/boot which can be hybrid), so maybe there's more to it.

Edited September 22, 2014 by shae

[jaclaz]

By the way, speaking of driver problems related to sleep modes, both of my WiFi NIC cards (Atheros and Intel) sometimes don't work correctly after wakeup (sleep or hibernation). Happened much more in 8.0 than 8.1, but the "fix procedure" in 8.0 worked pretty much every time, and in 8.1 it's a random flailing about until it works. But I also sometimes encounter this after a restart (which should be "full", unlike shutdown/boot which can be hybrid), so maybe there's more to it.

Sure, that is the typical result of Microsoft's WHQL testing, you cannot expect that no-name brand like Atheros or Intel cards were tested extensively .

 

The fact that this "feature" sometimes works, sometimes it doesn't seems to me like a good definition for "half-baked".

 

jaclaz

[evilevil]

Ok, first, try with the 750 gB hard disk. If it work, try with the raid 0 alone. If it work with 750 gB hdd or raid 0, try with both.

 

Infact I have tried enabling the 750gb first and leaving the RAID hdd's disabled and then tried shutting down and restarting the laptop for several times and it worked perfectly without any issues then after I enabled the RAID0 hdd's with the 750gb enabled the problem came back, I also tried enabling only the RAID hdd's without enabling the 750gb hdd but the problem was still their, which means that this problem is caused by the RAID0 configuration.

 

What worries me right now is that as windows is not properly shutting down the RAID drives this eventually could harm the drive and cause some errors in the future.

 

So is there any windows program which will help assuring that the all drives are closed properly before shutting down windows or is there a bios option which can be changed for solving this problem?

Edited September 23, 2014 by evilevil

[osRe]

jaclaz, I can't be sure what's the cause of these WLAN problems, but it is strange. I would expect that both Microsoft and Intel/Qualcomm tested the scenarios that trigger it. Maybe the cause is some installed software, who knows. Anyway hybrid boot isn't the trigger, it's hibernation and sleep (and sometimes plain boot).