T61p Vista BSOD with STOP: 0x0000007B (0x80399BB0, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)

[slowdog]

I have encountered a particularly odd problem yesterday that I have been unable to resolve on the T61p.  The system fails to boot with Vista giving a BSOD with the message STOP: 0x0000007B (0x80399BB0, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000).  When I try to boot the recovery partition via the ThinkVantage selector, the system goes through the boot process until the scrolling windows bar and then ends with a blank black screen.  Using a Vista Recovery CD results in the system displaying simply a cursor and wall paper image with nothing else.  I get the same result when booting from a new Vista Ultimate DVD - the system simply stops at the screen with wall paper and cursor.  Please advise on how I should proceed next.  The system does have the Turbo-memory onboard, but I am unsure whether this is related since the error messages from that thread seem to indicate a different BSOD error message. 

Thanks in advance.

Wei

[jasondarla]

I had an issue when I first rcvd my t61p where I could not get windows running. It turned out that my friend, who knows thinkpads better than the service personnel do, suggested i go into the BIOs and change the setting on the SATA to compatability mode. It allowed me to get windows loaded.

Turned out the Turbo memory is causing issues with the sys. ??? not sure why. I then checked the devices to see if the turbo mem. was working properly, it wasn't. The only way I could get it to work was to update to the Intel driver from their site, not the Lenovo supplied driver. Then I went into the BIOS and changed the SATA setting back. The system blue screened when I rebooted. I haven't checked any further, perhaps a BIOS update will fix this issue.

[slowdog · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the input.  I'd switched the BIOS to compatibility mode with no luck on it..  After an hour on the phone with Lenovo tech support in which they weren't of any help except to send out a hard drive (not the problem since it passed both the diag and verification), I was finally able to boot from a Vista Recovery CD by connecting a USB floppy to the system with the SATA drivers onboard the floppy.  That allowed Vista to finally get past the blank wall paper / cursor screen.  After that point, I was able to initiate the system repair which allowed the system to boot properly.  I'm still not sure what about the USB Floppy being connected allowed the system to progress from where it was stuck.  If it were a lack of SATA drivers, the system would in theory tell you like in XP.  Go figure...  Ultimately, it does not inspire much faith in Vista. 

Best,

Wei

[jasondarla]

If you have intel turbo memory, did you get it funtioning properly with the default setting for the sata in the BIOS?

Jay

[slowdog]

Hi Jay,

The first time after booting, I had the BIOS in compatibility mode for the SATA.  I booted into Vista and allowed the system to install the ATA drivers for the chipset.  I then rebooted, entered into the bios and switched it back to AHCI.  When Vista rebooted this time, it detected the AHCI and installed the proper drivers.  Rebooting again helped to finalize the changes.  The system does have the the intel turbo memory included.  I suspect that it might have caused the corruption problem in the first place, but don't have any evidence for that..

Best,

Wei

[jasondarla]

Hi Wei,

I seem to have your configuration but can't get the system to function with SATA in AHCI mode. My BIOS version is 2.21 dated 01 Jul 08. It is newer than the latest version listed on Lenovo's site. I was going to change the version but realized my version was more recent. Perhaps a bug. My sys. works fine in compatability mode though, maybe not worth persueing.

Thanks

Jay

[aka]

Slowdog and Jasondarla,

I know this is months after your BSODs, but a lot of people have this issue, so I want to post information where the search engine will find it.

The probable reason for your BSODs is that you didn't know (why would you?) that Vista requires a registry edit before you can switch BIOS to AHCI mode, or it will crash -- in my experience right at boot. You might be able to get out of the loop if you switch back to Compatibility Mode, but I don't know for sure. What the registry edit does is to install "Msahci" drivers (which Vista disables, ostensibly to save on boot load time when BIOS is in Compatibility Mode). The instructions of what setting to modify are in KB922976.

So, that tells you why you were able to get the system to boot when you booted with the SATA drivers on a USB floppy drive -- the USB floppies take highest boot priority, and so can load the SATA drivers before further disruption occurs in boot. What they were probably doing wasn't so much loading SATA drivers, as the AHCI drivers, because SATA itself will work fine in PATA (Compatibility) mode, as your everyday user experiences might suggest to you.

If your R&R recovery DVD was made when you were in Compatibility Mode, that might account for it not getting anywhere -- it may have had the AHCI drivers disabled, so when it got to the driver loading stage, it had to halt.

As for the Vista installation DVD not working, I'm still trying to figure that one out, but in my experience, the Vista repair DVD was unable to fix a similar problem. It could be that it doesn't figure out that it needs to enable the AHCI drivers when it tries to do a repair, I'm speculating, because BIOS or the ICH8M-E controller dumb down to Compatibility Mode for purposes of the DVD interface and the Windows repair process doesn't fathom that your Windows HDD might need to boot in AHCI mode. (After all, how many swappable devices toggling between AHCI/SATA and PATA/SATA does it encounter?)

I think all of those hunches are congruent with the problem you described.

Turbo Memory incompatibility derives from the PATA/SATA confusion too, but my theory about what's going on there will be getting too much into the weeds. Note, though: If you at any time swap your HDD from HDD 0 to the Ultrabay, you may get into this same trap. I'm beginning to think that both Lenovo and Intel are concealing what they know about the defective nature of the Ultrabay HDD caddy I/O translation. Neither Lenovo nor Intel has announced a BIOS fix that works for the problems that caddy creates, and they've known about these problems since MS engineers told them about it in 2007.

Message Edited by aka on 01-26-2009 08:03 PM

[mutagen]

Thank you aka, your reply is the correct solution as far as I am concerned. It may be too late for others, but you post was timely for me. I just got a used T61P and got the BSOD when I changed the BIOS from COMPATABILITY to AHCI. The registry edit did the trick.

[techcafe]

the latest Intel Matrix Storage (AHCI) driver is version 8.7 and can be downloaded from HERE.

there are two versions, English and Multi-language; most people will want the English version (the multilingual version has all other supported languages, including english)

to update the driver, choose your operating system + system architecture from the download site.

the driver package (iata87enu.exe) can be run without parameters to install the driver + matrix storage console, tray applet, event monitor (but these useless components are not needed, only the driver is required for AHCI to work correctly). so, to install the driver without the console, etc... run the executable with the -NOGUI parameter.

OR, as i usually prefer (install & update drivers via the windows device manager console):

-a (extract the archive, but don't install anything)

for example,
iata87enu.exe -a
will extract the driver archive, but not install anything

the readme file incorrectly states that a secondary commandline parameter, -P, can be included to specify the destination for the extracted files.  i tested this, but the -P parameter is ignored (doesn't work); -A does work however, and the archived drivers get extracted to the default location C:\Program Files\Intel\Intel Matrix Storage Manager\...\

so after extracting the archive, simply open the device manager (control panel, system, device manager), expand the IDE/ATAPI controllers tree, right-click on the device entry for Intel ICHxM SATA AHCI Controller, select Update Driver, then Browse my computer for the IMSM path.  make sure that the Include subfolders box is checked before browsing, so that you can simply specify the root path C:\Program Files\Intel\ and then windows will automatically recurse the subdirectories, searching for the correct/updated driver.  after the driver has been updated, restart the system for the change to take effect.

the new driver should be version 8.7.0.1007, dated 04/12/08
oh, and make sure that AHCI is enabled in the BIOS (not set for compatibility mode)

btw, the windows update site also has a WHQL tested AHCI driver available, which works perfectly fine, but isn't the most recent version available from intel.

[jasondarla]

techcafe

are you running the .exe from a dos prompt??