RAID drive disables ability to do Windows Updates

[Dave McElderry]

I know this is a tech question far removed from video editing, but there are several highly-skilled tech people here at Muvipix who enjoy a good puzzle, so I'll post it and see what might come of it. I'll also be posting in other appropriate forums.

About 6 weeks ago I replaced a failed RAID 1 hard drive in a client's computer. The drive was rebuilt and the RAID software reported that all was well. No data lost; life is good. During some maintenance on this computer about 3 weeks ago I discovered that Windows Updates were no longer working on that computer. I did some research, tried the things that had worked for others, but got nowhere. I won't bore you with the whole troubleshooting process, but yesterday I discovered something very interesting: If the RAID drive that I replaced is disconected, Windows Updates works! I tried this connect, disconnect several times and the evidence is undisputable. Each time it's disconnected updates work, each time it's reconnected they do not. Of course this disconnection required a rebuild of the new RAID drive. I did find something which mentioned that sometimes Windows Updates taking place during a RAID drive rebuild can do some strange things, so this time I turned Windows Updates off, even disconnected the computer from the network, formatted the drive as a precaution, and allowed it to rebuild the RAID drive. This morning after it was finished I connected things back up and tried it. No joy, Windows Updates still don't work.

Knowing that it has something to do with the RAID drive, I feel like I'm hot on the trail of this issue, but not sure how to proceed. I'd appreciate any ideas anyone might have.

[Bob]

Have you tried running the Microsoft automated fixit for windows update?

Is the raid drive a system drive or have system components installed on it?

Have you check the event log to see if there is an error message?

[Dave McElderry]

Have you tried running the Microsoft automated fixit for windows update?

Early in the troubleshooting process I came across steps which described how to manually perform the steps in the fixit (but not the fixit itself), which I did. It didn't work. Later I found the fixit and tried running it. Same results.

Is the raid drive a system drive or have system components installed on it?

Yes, it's a system drive. The system has been in use for one year and there are 4 more identical systems on the network. This is the first time for this problem, and of course now I know that it can be traced back to the drive failure and its replacement.

Have you check the event log to see if there is an error message?

No, I haven't checked the event log, although there is an error message that sometimes (not always) pops up. It says "Windows Update cannot currently check for updates, because the service is not running. You may need to restart your computer." I've found lots of information on solving this (including the fixit), but I've tried everything that I've found and nothing works. I've checked the necessary services (there are 3 that seem to be critical to Windows Update) and they are running. And of course restarting the computer does nothing to help. All of the things that seem to have solved this for others have not worked, but no one else has had this problem specific to a RAID array that I can find. This was all tried before I discovered yesterday that the RAID drive was involved. I admit up front that I know little about RAID arrays, but my understanding was that what was written to the primary drive was mirrored to the second. I'm surprised and puzzled that just the presence of the second drive would cause this to happen. I don't know if it's significant or not, but system restore points before the drive replacement would not work, and restoring to a point after the replacement did not help. After finding this out I returned the system to the most recent state.

[Dave McElderry]

Just an update, for future reference. My searches have found no references to a problem of this nature, which is a surprise to me because I don't recall the last time that I experienced a computer issue that someone else had never written about. Plenty of material about Windows updates not working, but nothing related to being caused by something in a RAID configuration. In the end this may come down to a wipe and reload, but that's awfully drastic. My thanks to Bob for the effort.

[Bob]

I wish I could have helped more. I've never seen or heard of this specific problem anywhere else. The fixit should have been able to repair it. This is very odd.

[Dave McElderry]

Very odd indeed.

[Dave McElderry]

I haven't given up on this. I was back over there tonight and decided to run the Fixit again, just to make sure that nothing had changed. It ran, found a couple of issues which it said that it fixed, and gave everything the green light. I immediately went back in and checked and updates still were not working. I also then tried again after a reboot, but no joy.

[Dave McElderry]

A follow-up to this thread. I finally solved this issue by updating the RAID driver to the latest version from the Intel website. The latest version available from Dell was a couple of years old, and since the other 4 identical machines on this network were still using the old driver and working fine, I could not believe that it was the driver. However, when the Intel update was installed Windows Update started working immediately.