Intel® Optane™ Memory
Support for Issues Related to Intel® Optane™ Memory
Announcements
Want to learn how Intel® Optane™ Memory can help your business? Talk to our Expert!

Looking for our RealSense Community? Click HERE

The Intel® SSD Toolbox and Intel® Data Center Tool are now End-Of-Life, see for more information and replacements tools here
1343 Discussions

Optane Drivers Cause System Glitches

CCox4
Novice
2,673 Views

I've been chasing a problem with my new computer for the past couple of days that has been driving me nuts. I finally narrowed it down to installing the Optane drivers. As soon as the drivers install and the system reboots it starts glitching. It's like some hard interrupt is causing the system to suspend for about 1 second intermittently. Any kind of animation, video, game or audio is unwatchable. If you move the mouse across the screen you will see it stop and start moving several times. Any audio that's playing will have a garbled tone while the glitches occur. This happens playing audio/video on three different video cards I've tried, as well as audio/video from the integrated graphics & sound hardware. CPU utilization playing an mp3 file is around 15% and I don't see any spikes. All cores are running at 30-40C. All hardware on the system is running at factory rated specs. There have been no system crashes or blue screens. It runs fine other than the glitching.

To be clear, the Optane drivers install and the cache drive can be enabled without issue, but the system jitters so much it's unusable. The glitches occur with or without the Optane module enabled. As soon as the system reboots from the Optane driver install the glitches begin. Once installed, uninstalling the drivers does not make the issue go away. I have re-installed Windows twice to make it go away, but as soon as the Optane drivers install it begins again.

Once I narrowed the issue down, I tried reinstalling Windows, ensured all Windows updates were installed, updated all device and inf drivers to the latest versions available, flashed the motherboard BIOS and the hard drive firmware to the latest version available before installing the Optane drivers. The system glitches started immediately after a reboot from the Optane drivers. After that I tried re-installing Windows, ensured all Windows updates were installed, and then installed the Optane drivers before any other installs. Once again the glitches started immediately after a reboot.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. I'm out of ideas at this point. I don't really see any settings that I can change that would still allow the Optane module to work in the system.

System Details:

Windows 10 Creators Edition 64bit

Intel 7700k Processor

Asus Rog Strix Z270E Gaming Motherboard

Samsung 850 EVO SSD

0 Kudos
7 Replies
idata
Employee
981 Views

Hello Chadtn,

 

 

We understand your system behaves glitchy when the Intel® Optane™ Memory Module is installed and you have tried to reload the operating system several times.

 

 

It is also really strange, as it seems you are setting up everything correctly. We do have some things you can try as well:

 

 

-Update the firmware on the Intel® Optane™ Memory, you can use https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/26837/Intel-Solid-State-Drive-Toolbox?v=t Intel® Solid-State Drive Toolbox.

 

-You may want to format the module after you disabled it from the software.

 

-After the update, could you try the other M.2 port and verify if it works on that one?

 

 

Please let us know how it goes, we'll be waiting for your response.

 

 

Regards,

 

Nestor C

 

0 Kudos
CCox4
Novice
981 Views

Simply installing the Optane drivers causes the issue I'm seeing. It doesn't matter if the Optane cache module is installed in the system disabled, enabled, or removed from the computer all together. Uninstalling the Optane drivers does not make the glitches go away. This last time I tried uninstalling the Optane drivers and installing the non-Optane RST drivers to see if that would help any. The glitches continued. I haven't tried installing the non-Optane RST drivers first to see if that causes the same issue, but I'm getting tired of re-installing Windows at this point. heh..

I'm happy to update the firmware if you think it might help, but the glitches happen with the module completely removed from the system and never having been enabled. The issue begins immediately after the system reboots from the driver install.

Thanks!

Chad

0 Kudos
idata
Employee
981 Views

Hi Chadtn,

 

 

Thanks for the response.

 

 

We believe at this point the firmware update on the module is not required as the issue comes up with the software installation and not the module.

 

 

What we can recommend, as this is really strange, is to install the previous version of the software, here is the https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/26730/Intel-Rapid-Storage-Technology-Intel-RST- link to download

 

Also, one thing to try is to go to C:\Users\yourusername\Intel\Logs and delete all logs after you uninstall the software. Then, please install the version above and check if it happens again, if it does, please go back to the path and please attach the logs here. (Please use the advanced editor button).

 

 

Regards,

 

Nestor C
0 Kudos
CCox4
Novice
981 Views

Subjectively, the problem seems worse with the older drivers installed. I tried playing a movie file saved on the hard drive and it was almost constantly glitching. Something I've noticed is that once the Optane drivers are installed over a clean copy of Windows, nothing I do seems to help with the problem. The glitches remain if I try to use anything in the Windows 10 Recovery options to "reset" the PC. I have to manually delete all drive partitions and perform a full re-install off a flash drive to make the problem go away. I re-installed Windows four times this morning just testing. heh..

The log files you asked for are attached.

Thanks!

Chad

0 Kudos
CCox4
Novice
981 Views

I played around with it half of Sunday trying anything I could think of and finally figured it out. All six SATA ports were being used by a mix of optical drives, HDDs and SSDs. I started wondering if it could be an issue with the controller or a particular channel. I stripped out every connection except for the system drive and the problem went away completely! I then tried each port individually with only the system drive and the issue never reoccurred. At this point I suspected one of the drives or a bad SATA cable was the root cause. I individually added different secondary drives to the system and tested each SATA cable, but never saw any glitches with any combination of two drives or cables in the system. As soon as I added a third drive to the mix, the glitches started to occasionally start up again. In the end I just started hot plugging drives in different configurations and it became obvious that the amount of glitches I saw was directly correlated to how many drives were plugged up to the controller. It didn't matter which cables I used, which drives I used, or which ports they were plugged into. Anything over two drives caused the glitches to present, but only with the Optane drivers installed. The more drives that were added, the worse the glitches got. The only idea I could come up with at this point was that the shielding on the cables could have been inadequate and interference from the close proximity was the culprit. I was using the old red SATA cables that came with my x79 Gigabyte motherboard. Swapping to the black cables that came with my Z270 Asus board cleared everything up and allowed all of my drives to work simultaneously.

That was a strange one. Thanks guys!

Chad

AlHill
Super User
981 Views

This is good information. Few people take the time and effort to diagnose a problem.

Doc

0 Kudos
idata
Employee
981 Views

Hello Chadtn,

 

 

This is really a great research and troubleshooting from your side. We are positive that this solution you described will help some others facing a similar situation.

 

 

Thanks for taking the time to explain your findings and to share with the community.

 

 

We hope you can have a nice week and in case something else comes up, please let us know.

 

 

Regards,

 

Nestor C
0 Kudos
Reply