TRIM update hosed my Windows 7 install

[idata]

Just did the firmware update and it hosed my Windows 7 installation. The updater showed a successful firware update. Initially the computer booted just fine, but once I was within Windows it installed some drivers and asked for a reboot. That's when the trouble started. Now the drive won't boot Windows 7 anymore. I don't know if it's a Dell problem or Intel problem. The Dell BIOS claims a SMART error. I have a Dell XPS 8000.

[idata]

As I've gone through this thread, I noticed that Win 7 x64 was used somehow often when the upgrade failed. Possibly the (x64) drivers installed after the firmware upgrade are crashing the drive. As I just wanted to upgrade my drive (Intel 160GB 34nm) I'm really glad I haven't done it yet (I'm also using Win7 x64).

Did anyone with Win7 x86 experience this problem, too ? Or are there any Win7 x64 users without problems ?

[idata]

littledolphin - I forgot to mention that I'm running an early build of W7 64-Bit (Build 7100) and it worked on my system? I just wanted to let you know that its possible on this OS (but I fully understand why your hesitant to update the firmware)!

[idata]

I am using the retail Windows 7 64-bit version.

About checking if TRIM is enabled, you can use AS SSD to benchmark your scores and will see Seq at around 100 MB/s or more for Write--this is for 160Gb SSD. You can also check if TRIM is enabled in Windows by using the command fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify If it comes back 0, it is enabled.

Doesn't make sense to me that the drive is causing the problem, but compatibility with MB or BIOS may be an issue, assuming the instructions were carried out as stated.

Message was edited by: ambizytl

[idata]

Thanks very much ambizytl for the quick reply, that information was very helpful!

[idata]

Worked fine for me on Win7x64, Dell D620 laptop. Win7 did re-install the drive at first boot after firmware update. The disk drive drivers are unchanged (disk.sys and partmgr.sys, versions as originally installed with Win7 RC). The 82801 GBM/GHM (ICH-7 family) southbridge SATA controller drivers also appear to be the versions associated with the Win7 RC build. Ditto the ATA channel drivers, ataport.sys and atapi.sys. Ditto the PCI Express rootport driver, pci.sys. However, I notice that the SSD was assigned a new hardware ID at the firmware update. So, I conclude that SSD re-install at first boot following the update simply re-installed the original drivers (i.e., no driver change).

I am not suggesting that this was the case for other platforms, just reporting what I see in device manager following the update in my particular case. Based upon this, however, I would suggest that those with failing drives might check the associated device drivers to make sure that the original drivers were used for the re-install of the SSD at the re-boot following the update. Those drivers should indicate the Windows 7 build (e.g., "7100" and "RC" in my case) in the driver name, for Microsoft-supplied drivers.

Other than that, I have no clue about the failures.

Best,

Bruce