iaStorA.sys BSOD, Desktop and Browsers malfunctioning

[R-109]

Alright, I'm really sorry for this but this has been a mistake on my part. When you asked me for my PC Specifications I copied and pasted from a previous post I made on the forums in "Check My Spec". This wasn't what I eventually chose for my build, and that's why I'm having problems here. I'm really sorry for the waste of time this has caused. Below is an updated list of my PC Spec, and for comparison, my previously shared and wrong PC Spec:

Updated, Correct PC Specs

Processor (CPU)
Intel® CoreTMi7 Quad Core Processor i7-4790k (4.0GHz) 8MB Cache
Motherboard
ASUS® Z97-A: ATX, USB3.0, SATA 6GB/S, SLi, XFIRE [Note: Incidentally, both on my account and my invoice, the MB is listed as Z97-A, but my manual and the MB itself have Z97-AR on them.]
Memory (RAM)
16GB KINGSTON HYPER-X BEAST DUAL-DDR3 2133MHz X.M.P (2 x
Graphics Card
3GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 780 Ti - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready
1st Hard Disk
250GB Samsung 840 EVO SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540MB/sR
2nd Hard Disk
2TB Toshiba DT01ACA200 HDD, SATA (from previous PC)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply
CORSAIR 650W RM SERIESTM MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA
Processor Cooling
Corsair H100i Hydro Series High Performance CPU Cooler
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking
ASUS PCE-AC68 AC1900 802.11ac Dual-band Wireless PCI-E Adapter
USB Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 4 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit w/SP1 - inc DVD & Licence

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Previous, Incorrect PC Specs

Processor
Intel Core i7 Six Core Processor Extreme i7-4960X (3.6GHz) 15MB Cache
Motherboard
ASUS P9X79 LE: Intel Socket LG2011
Memory (RAM)
32GB Kingston Hyper-X Beast Dual-DDR3 2133MHz X.M.P (4x8GB KIT)
Graphics Card
3GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti
1st Hard Disk
250GB Samsung 840 EVO SSD, SATA 6GB/s (up to 520MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
2nd Hard Disk
2TB Toshiba DT01ACA200 HDD, SATA (from previous PC)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x Dual Layer DVD Writer R/RW/RAM
Power Supply
Corsair 650W RM Series Modular 80 Plus Gold, Ultra Quiet
Processor Cooling
Corsair H100i Hydro Series High Performance CPU Cooler
Sound Card
Onboard 8 Channel (7.1) High Def. Audio (As Standard)
Wireless/Wired Networking
ASUS PCE-AC68 AC1900 802.11ac Dual-band Wireless PCI-E Adapter
USB Options
Min. 2x USB 3.0 & 6x USB 2.0 Ports @ Back Panel + Min. 2 Front Ports
Operating System
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

=====

So the difference between the two Specs is: Processor, Motherboard and Memory. Again, I'm really sorry for such a simple error and the cause of so much time wasted on my part. At least this explains why the driver won't install, though.

 

[SpyderTracks]

Aha, actually, that's a blessing cos otherwise it would have been something serious

In that case, the download page is HERE

First option in Chipset

Second option in SATA

First option in USB

Third option in LAN

First option in Audio

Then download your graphics driver in that order. should be sweeeeet! Nice build by the way, the other one was waaay overkill.

 

[R-109]

Yeah, that's why I asked for advice before picking with it and went with something less overkill : P I just need to clarify, though. I don't know if you saw the note I edited in, but my MB manual and the MB itself say Z97-AR and not Z97-A like my invoice says. I'd just found the link for the Z97-AR page myself and was about to start downloading drivers from there. Should I get from the Z97-A page instead? Or won't it matter?

 

[SpyderTracks]

Yeah, that's why I asked for advice before picking with it and went with something less overkill : P I just need to clarify, though. I don't know if you saw the note I edited in, but my MB manual and the MB itself say Z97-AR and not Z97-A like my invoice says. I'd just found the link for the Z97-AR page myself and was about to start downloading drivers from there. Should I get from the Z97-A page instead? Or won't it matter?

I'd download for the ar then just to be safe although from the looks of the boards they are the same.

 

[R-109]

Yeah I thought that'd be the case, so I went ahead and did it. I checked if there was a difference in the name of each driver anyway (between the A and AR) and they were all the same, so for now it didn't matter.

The situation at the moment is that installing all the drivers you've suggested so far has been a success, with no errors or noticeable issues so far. However, I then decided to start doing some light testing to see if everything's okay. I downloaded and installed programs the following: 7zip, Avast! Anti-virus, Malwarebytes, Chrome, Corsair Utility Engine (for my keyboard) and Corsair Link (this is a program that monitors temperatures and fan speeds. I can use it to set my PC's fans on three different modes depending on the load/temperature of the parts in my PC, especially my CPU and GPU).

After which I started having some similar problems. Opening three tabs (different web pages; social media) Chrome slowed and then became unresponsive. It started showing "waiting for cache" again and said that the shockwave plugin had become unresponsive, although it became responsive again almost immediately after that message appeared and the page loaded (although things still seemed a bit slow in Chrome). I noticed on a restart, too, that (excluding the fact that it's still prompting to boot from CD for now) the restart was a bit slow, like when I was having problems before I re-installed Windows. Since, I have removed three programs: Corsair Utility Engine, Corsair Link, and another Corsair Link which said something in its title about USB removal, and it *wasn't* removed with the standard Corsair Link. Things started to look up after that but I haven't had much chance to test since (it's my next to do).

I'm wondering what you think of this, but I'm also aware that the other main error, the BSOD, occurred when downloading a game from Steam in an attempt to install and play it. Should that be part of my test at this point or would it be jumping the gun? Either way, for now I'm going to see if I can identify what is causing Chrome to throw a fit, and whether it's only affecting Chrome now that I have re-installed Windows.

 

[SpyderTracks]

I guess the other thing to test would be the memory via the link below:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows7/diagnosing-memory-problems-on-your-computer

But I would say it's one of the programs you're installing causing the issue. Possibly Avast as I see they've had a lot of problems causing BSOD's recently.

 

[R-109]

I'll give it another try if I can't figure out the cause. I have already tried the Windows Memory Diagnostic Tool on my PC, though it was before I re-installed Windows. I did 1 solo and 6 consecutive passes (all extended, default cache) and they all passed without detecting a problem. Knowing this, do you still think it'd be worth trying again if I can't identify the program causing the problem?

 

[SpyderTracks]

I'll give it another try if I can't figure out the cause. I have already tried the Windows Memory Diagnostic Tool on my PC, though it was before I re-installed Windows. I did 1 solo and 6 consecutive passes (all extended, default cache) and they all passed without detecting a problem. Knowing this, do you still think it'd be worth trying again if I can't identify the program causing the problem?

Ah, no, if you've run it before then the memory isn't the cause. i would put it down to one of the programs you've installed, my hunch would be avast or corsair link

 

[R-109]

Small update:

After running some tests (opening multiple chrome tabs, running music on windows media player, interacting with the taskbar) I can't repeat the slow/hanging/freezing problem that was occurring yesterday and before the re-installation of Windows, so it seems that uninstalling Corsair Link and the Corsair Utility Engine did the trick. I have re-installed Corsair Link and repeated the tests, with complete success, or rather failure to repeat the... let's just call it the freezing problem. So, I've just uninstalled Corsair Link (the first part, there's also a Corsair Link USB program that is installed with Corsair Link but needs to be uninstalled separately) with the intention of installing the Corsair Utility Engine and testing that. Should that not incur the freezing problem, I'll try them both at the same time. I feel that if I can't repeat the freezing problem after that I'll just uninstall them both and leave them out to see if the problem eventually returns (in which case I'd inspect avast).

However, I have now a new issue. After uninstalling Corsair Link, it prompted a restart which I accepted. Upon logging in, I have an error message saying that "InstAll has stopped working". "Problem Event Name: APPCRASH" "Application Name: AsusSetup.exe". Not sure what this is about, it didn't happen yesterday when I uninstalled Corsair Link. I wasn't even just using an AsusSetup.exe file. And my PC seems to be working fine still despite this error. Random crash? Or something worse?

And apart from this, I was wondering if you could advise me should everything turn out fine and I can consider my PC "fixed"? What I mean by this is, are there other drivers I should install if/when I'm sure the problem is gone? At what point should I run Windows Updates? Is/would there be any other course of action you might suggest?

 

[SpyderTracks]

Small update:

After running some tests (opening multiple chrome tabs, running music on windows media player, interacting with the taskbar) I can't repeat the slow/hanging/freezing problem that was occurring yesterday and before the re-installation of Windows, so it seems that uninstalling Corsair Link and the Corsair Utility Engine did the trick. I have re-installed Corsair Link and repeated the tests, with complete success, or rather failure to repeat the... let's just call it the freezing problem. So, I've just uninstalled Corsair Link (the first part, there's also a Corsair Link USB program that is installed with Corsair Link but needs to be uninstalled separately) with the intention of installing the Corsair Utility Engine and testing that. Should that not incur the freezing problem, I'll try them both at the same time. I feel that if I can't repeat the freezing problem after that I'll just uninstall them both and leave them out to see if the problem eventually returns (in which case I'd inspect avast).

However, I have now a new issue. After uninstalling Corsair Link, it prompted a restart which I accepted. Upon logging in, I have an error message saying that "InstAll has stopped working". "Problem Event Name: APPCRASH" "Application Name: AsusSetup.exe". Not sure what this is about, it didn't happen yesterday when I uninstalled Corsair Link. I wasn't even just using an AsusSetup.exe file. And my PC seems to be working fine still despite this error. Random crash? Or something worse?

And apart from this, I was wondering if you could advise me should everything turn out fine and I can consider my PC "fixed"? What I mean by this is, are there other drivers I should install if/when I'm sure the problem is gone? At what point should I run Windows Updates? Is/would there be any other course of action you might suggest?

Ah, well, running windows updates is part of the windows installation. I wouldn't consider it a complete installation until all updates were installed, that would be the first steps, then installing drivers. But hopefully it won't matter. Run the windows updates now, get them all installed and then redo your tests, you may need to reinstall the drivers once complete if there is any instability.

The only other driver that may be necessary that I can see is Intel IME. Other than that, you're good to go (external peripherals would need to be installed obviously such as mice drivers, external sound cards etc).

I'm unsure on the AsusSetup.exe crash, I would suggest that's some bug with the Asus setup file, not your system.

 

[R-109]

Well, after barely two days of seeming to work fine, the problem returns. Admittedly there have been no error messages and no BSODs but the main problem has resurfaced:

Sometimes the PC will boot up slowly, seeming to hang on the PCSpecialist screen and at another point where there is simply a flashing horizontal line. The Browsers become unresponsive during general use, becoming responsive again shortly after; if I'm trying to play music through Windows Media Player at the same time then WMP will become unresponsive, with the music stopping and starting every so often; if I'm trying to download a game via Steam, the download stops/starts (download says "Busy Writing to Disk") and the Steam client will also become unresponsive in the same way that the browsers and WMP are doing. If I manage to perform a speedtest on Speedtest.net then, whilst displaying normal download speeds, the speeds will drop like the internet connection has been lost (seemingly temportarily). Playing installed games still seems to work fine, without any faults. If I don't touch the browsers or Steam then the PC will work fine with no evidence of any problem whatsoever.

It's all pretty much the same as before, just without the errors (for now).

So I did what was suggested. I re-installed the drivers when these problems returned. It didn't seem to work. I uninstalled the latest program I had installed (VLC), and a few others I thought might be at fault, including avast (though it was difficult as avast wouldn't uninstall normally). After uninstalling avast, the monitor now flickers slightly upon logging in (power light remains constant, so it doesn't seem to be the monitor). I've just now also uninstalled the Corsair Utility Manager which was one of the two programs I removed originally since the re-installation of Windows, and which seemed to fix the problem which has resurfaced once already since.

I'm at a bit of a loss. Sure, I can re-install Windows again but I'm not sure what good that would do. I know you said before that I should've installed the Windows Updates before the drivers, but I'm not sure how I would've done that because I need to install the drivers to connect to the internet to download and install the updates. I find myself trying to guess whether one of my hard drives are at fault (though chkdsk found no errors) or whether maybe my Wireless Adapter is faulty. Or something worse? I really don't know what to do at this point. PCS *did* say to reply to them should the problem remain after re-installing Windows, but I'd rather not have my PC sent back if I can help it. I'd rather learn how to fix this myself, though I've spent most of this new year trying to do so but it's *still* a problem.