Intel RST driver renamed, now Windows 10 won't start

[boss281]

Like others, my wife's laptop, a newer dell with the support now expired, ran into problems with iaspora.sys, the Intel rapid storage technology driver. One solution suggested to rename the driver to *.old, which I did. Now the system won't boot. The Dell logo screen comes up and goes away, then comes up and goes away. Once, it beeped and the Dell Support Assist recovery program, I suppose embedded in the bios, came up and scanned for problems, found none, and then rebooted.

But now, the Dell logo comes up, fades, comes up, fades. We don't have W10 media as it came preinstalled on both our laptops. There MUST be some way to interrupt and get a command prompt so I can rename that file back. DO I need to buy the media at the store?

Help!

 

[Bighorn]

DO I need to buy the media at the store?

I wouldn't, I'd use the MCT/Media Creation Tool to download an .iso file for creating the bootable DVD or use it to create a bootable USB drive [8GB or 16GB]. Actually I keep both on hand as I never know what a client will need.

Download Windows 10

 

[boss281]

Done, and all is well. Thanks.

 

[Bighorn]

Good

 

[Saltgrass]

Done, and all is well. Thanks.

This situation is all over the Internet. Microsoft put in a check for that specific driver if it had certain dates. If the Upgrade found the driver, it gave you that message.

Just renaming a driver which was not being used should not have caused you any problems. I would check my Device Manager for the SATA controller driver or look at msinfo32.exe to see if the driver is running or shows as stopped.

I don't normally run any of the Dell helper utilities on my systems. So, I suppose, it may have made some repair which led to the problem.

 

[boss281]

This situation is all over the Internet. Microsoft put in a check for that specific driver if it had certain dates. If the Upgrade found the driver, it gave you that message.

Just renaming a driver which was not being used should not have caused you any problems. I would check my Device Manager for the SATA controller driver or look at msinfo32.exe to see if the driver is running or shows as stopped.

I don't normally run any of the Dell helper utilities on my systems. So, I suppose, it may have made some repair which led to the problem.

Interesting. Once I renamed the driver back through the command line and rebooted, the system booted back to W10 normally. I read that iaspora.sys should NOT be renamed to iaspora.OLD but Iaspora_OLD.sys. The period after "iaspora" is what caused the hangup on my wife's laptop. I haven't tested it yet. My personal laptop took 6 hours to update to 1903 last night, and the hard drive went wonky so I let it sit overnight. All seems well. Another laptop is updating now. She told me to leave hers alone for now and I'll get to it another time.

I had completely forgot I could create a bootable USB, made one for each of our systems last night. Lessons learned.

 

[Saltgrass]

If you check the dates on the Intel SATA drivers, you will see an iastorac.sys, iastoravc.sys and maybe an iastorv.sys. These drivers will have a date after the iastora.sys driver. I don't remember seeing an iastora.sys driver later than Nov 2017 where my other drivers were from March 2019. I believe Intel stopped updating that driver and just left what was there.

I also believe, this is one of those "Your system is not ready for upgrade, we will alert you when it is" type situations. But if you don't show that driver as controlling some device, then it would appear the Dell utility was involved.

This is what Dell says about it..

Windows 10 May 2019 Update (build 1903) fails to install due to an out-of-date Intel Rapid Storage Technology (RST) driver | Dell US

 

[boss281]

Ah, I'll do that when my wife is ready. Thanks for the link!