Monday, 6 January 2014

Thinkpad W500 hard drive upgrade problems.

I upgraded to a 480GB Crucial M500 SSD.    Window 7.  Lenovo Thinkpad W500.

(Used Windows Backup and Restore to create a System Image, then replaced the hard disk, then restored.  Tried various other copy-tools but they wouldn't work via the SATA interface plugged into my USB socket.   Note that Windows *did not* get the hard-drive alignment correct when it did the restore.  I checked the alignment using a tool called AS SSD Benchmark, then fixed it using the MiniTool Partition Wizard.)

All seemed to be running well enough, but Windows Update wouldn't work and the underlying problem was the "The Cryptographic Services service failed to initialize the Catalog Database. The ESENT error was: -583." error in the event logs.

Checking the System32\Catroot2 directory there was a dberr.txt file containing lots of JET and other errors. The database files seemed to be missing under the {F...some-guid} folder.

The problem is something to do with Windows not understanding the "Advanced Format" of the new disc - something to do with 4096 rather than 512 byte sectors.

Using the Microsoft fsutil tool confirms this.  [Try googling "Microsoft Advanced Format Support" or something similar - there's a patch that you need to get installed that includes this tool and allegedly Windows support.  Since Windows Update isn't working, it errors when you try to install it.  You need to use 7-zip to grab the CAB file from the archive and then install that manually (somehow - google!).]
Try "fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo c:" in an elevated command prompt and you'll see:
The Bytes Per Physical Sector will be "not supported".

Now you need to get a suitable driver.   There doesn't seem to be a correct one labelled for the W500, but one that works is in a package which lists the W510 as supported.  
Look for:
Intel Rapid Storage Technology Driver
g1io15ww.exe
581.62 KB
Windows 7 64bit,
Windows Vista 64bit,
Windows XP
11.2.0.100628 Mar 2013

on the Lenovo site.
Run and extract that, and then go to Device manager and update the driver for the 
IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers -> Intel(R) ICH9M-E/M SATA AHCI Controller device - browsing to the directory that you just extracted all those files to.  (It'll pick up the file automatically.)

Before you reboot, you might as well stop the Cryptographic Service and rename the System32\Catroot2 directory.
After you reboot, you should see that this directory gets rebuilt and log files appear and disappear as that's happening.  [Other posts mention this taking an hour, but that's probably on a standard HD.  On the SSD, it took about 5 minutes.]
The fsutil command should now give you 4096 instead of "not supported".

Try Windows Update again!

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for this advice. I have a W500 and recently upgraded to a Crucial M500. Same problem, same solution. Saved me hours. Thanks again.

aaaargh said...

I feel kinda guilty about accepting your thanks because two-months-older-me has close to no recollection of writing that stuff.
Still, I'll get over it.
Enjoy your bigger/faster disk.

Anonymous said...

You set me on the right track. Thank you! But the W510 driver slowed performance a lot, especially at boot. (This is with a Crucial MX100 512GB SSD on the W500.) I found that installing the RST driver downloaded directly from Intel results in much faster performance, including at boot. Maybe this is because the driver is a better match for the W500 chipset?

Use driver version 9.6.0.1014 (dated 3/10/2010 in Device Manager). If you try to install it over the W510 driver, Windows will tell you that you already have the latest driver. therefore, you must uninstall the W510 driver and let Windows install its own driver. After the required reboots, you can then manually install the Intel driver.

A huge difference in performance, at least on the MX100.

Anonymous said...

Adding to my post from minutes ago... I may have downloaded that Intel driver from Lenovo:

http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/downloads/ds012911

That's the one I used.

aaaargh said...

Thanks for the feedback, Anonymous(2).
I'm pretty sure I ran some drive performance tester before and after my changes and the M500 was poor before, and giving sort of expected figures after.
I also seem to recall my boot-time being reasonable - much faster than my normal hard-disc, anyway. (Of course I've installed something since then that's slowed it down again...)

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Anonymous said...


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aaaargh said...

I've moved on from the MX100 and the W500 - I'm on a P50 with a Samsung 970 Evo Plus (via a 950 Pro) now.
I've had the *big* Windows 10 version updates failing for, dunno, a year or more.
I think the final answer turned out to be that Macrium Reflect had changed a registry key at some point so that the ImagePath was set to a value that the Windows Updates didn't like.
See https://www.windows10forums.com/threads/cannot-upgrade-to-1903-nor-1909.20640/#post-104112

(I might previously also have created some key to do with a Windows or system language that someone suggested was needed but that wasn't on my system - can't quite recall.)
That's all I've got!