Windows 7 BSOD With RAID Controller

Question

Hello.

I have an older Del XPS 730x with 8GB, Intel i7 cpu. The system was originally Windows Vista. It has been upgraded to Windows 7 64 bit. Added 3 - 2TB hard drives and want to set up RAID zero array on these drives. This does not include the system drive.

2 Scenarios:

1. Went into BIOS Setup and turned on RAID. Entered the Intel RST Controller and set up the RAID0 Array. Windows will not boot from this configuration. It gets a BSOD. Went into the BIOS Setup and turned off RAID. Windows boots OK.
2. Installed Vantec UGT-ST644R RAID Controller. It is a PCIe x2 board with drivers. Connected the 3 HDDs to the Vantec board and booted the system. I did not turn on RAID in the BIOS System setup. I entered the Vantec setup and configured the RAID0 Array. Windows boots up OK. I entered Disk Manager and added the 6TB unallocated space as a simple volume, Disk D:, Name:Video Capture. Performed a disk speed test using a program from Black Magic Design. The array shows a write speed of 420MBS. Captured a 2hr HD uncompressed AVI video file, (900GB). I compressed the video file to a MPG file on the system disk diskC:. Everything worked as designed. Problem: now the Windows 7 systems crashes with a BSOD every 20 min. The only way to stop the crashes is to remove the RAID Controller Board.

I love this board and would like to keep it or get the onboard RAID controller working.

Any Ideas?

Answer 1

Hi Chuck,

This happens if you assembled a computer with different hardware parts with different brand and specifications. Some motherboards do not work with other devices and recognize it as unknown. Hence, making your whole computer setup became complicated or not to work at all.

Regardless if you perform any software troubleshooting or reinstall an operating system, blue screen errors will still persist due to hardware incompatibility on your computer setup. Having a clean install is a fresh start and should have no errors anymore unless the operating system files became corrupted again.

You will need to determine what your motherboard wants before looking on the software side. To avoid a complicated setup, we suggest that you contact your computer manufacturer and confirm what are the hardware parts that are compatible with each other (CPU or processors, hard disk, RAM, power supply, network adapter, sound card, video cards, etc.).

Once they provided the information, have a clean install of Windows again and tell us what happens. Usually, they will suggest to use hardware parts that were approved by them for standard computer setup.

Let us know if you need more help.