Intel Motherboards : Win 10 1607 update on z170 Extreme7+ SOLVED!

Author: parsec
Subject: Win 10 1607 update on z170 Extreme7+ SOLVED!
Posted: 12 Feb 2017 at 11:33pm

Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. wardog wrote: Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. parsec wrote: [While Kruge's work and results are useful, the question becomes, what caused the freezing during the Windows 10 Anniversary edition update, via a Windows update or clean install? Simply disconnecting an optical drive from the ASMedia SATA ports, while fixing the freezing problem, does not explain the underlying cause. Or why should the freezing be limited to the Win 10 Anniversary edition? Do we truly know that is the case? If it is, what is so different about the Win 10 Anniversary update? Parsec, you know I don't use ANY MSoft drivers than I need and have intoned here that my ODDs work just fine on the ASMedia ports. Using ASMedia drivers. Never a problem. Now. I don't do Windows major version upgrades. Instead choosing a bare metal install, with the bare necessities hardware wise installed while doing so. That means no ODD as I prefer to use the USB installation. Could it be an issue with "whatever' ODD driver the pre-OS installs when it enumerates the hardware installed while using a CD/DVD to install?

The only MSoft driver that could be installed for the ASMedia chipset during a Windows installation would be storahci, for Windows 8 - 10. That assumes the SATA mode for the ASMedia chipset is set to AHCI, which is the default in the UEFI/BIOS. If the ASMedia chipset is enabled when Windows is installed, storahci will be installed, even if no drives are connected to it, again in AHCI mode. That can be confirmed in the Device Manager entry, ATA/ATAPI controllers. You then install the ASMedia driver, so the MSoft driver is not used. You might find see that in the Events tab of the ASMedia chipset Properties.

One other thing worth noting, the Z170 Extreme7+ board does not include an ASMedia SATA driver in the download list for any version of Windows. The ASMedia driver we can find in the download list for Z270 boards (2.0.8.0) contains the driver files that can be used during a Windows installation, to load the ASMedia driver, if we chose to do so.

We also have the Disk drives entry in Device Manager, where optical drives will appear. The drivers we find there are all from MSoft, we can't install them ourselves. That would be the ODD driver you mentioned.

What's strange is, the optical drive functions enough to start a Windows installation, but expires at some point during the actual installation. Why does that happen? You offered a possibility, which could be true, but how would we ever know if that is correct? I guess this will become a matter of, just don't use the ASMedia chipset with an optical drive for an OS installation. I vaguely recall reading that in the past, can't prove it.