What is happening:
When I installed the GTX 880M video card onto my Alienware M18XR1 the system crashed with a BSOD stop code 0x7b during bootup.
Upgrading the IRST driver to 12.9. allowed the system to boot up properly without a BSOD, but the IRST 12.9 does not recognize the RAID 1 volume, and classifies it as "incompatible".
Question:
What is the right version of IRST to support RAID 1 and not have a conflict with GTX 880M controller.
Is there any risk to continue to run the system with IRST 12.9 and GTX 880M (aka ignoring the warning from IRST control panel)?
Configuration:
Operating System:
Windows 7, 64 bit, Ultimate
Per Device Manager:
Intel Mobile Express Chipset SATA RAID Controller
Intel Core i7-2960XM CPU
Intel 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family Family SMBus Controller (I believe this is for USB ports, per Belarc, and is a red herring as storage controller)
Originally installed: Dual-SLI GTX 580M
New Video Controller: GTX 880M
Storage is configured as a RAID 1 volume with 2x 750 GB WD drives.
I've replaced with 2x Seagate 1TB SSHD (the problems I encountered the boot problems with WD or Seagate drives.
What I found so far:
IRST 10.1.2.1004 with GTX 580M
IRST driver from Alienware/Dell version 10.1.2.1004 is the latest version of the driver from Dell.
This works fine with GTX 580M controller and recognizes the RAID 1 volume.
IRST 10.1.2.1004 with GTX 880M
The system does not boot up. It generates a BSOD with stop code 0x7b.
Booting up in SafeMode: Hangs on classpnp.sys, or BSOD with 0x7b, both behavior has been observed.
Intel's IRST 11.7 with GTX 880M
Per Readme file, this does support the Intel Mobile Express Chipset SATA RAID Controller
But does not list support for the i7 series processors.
Control-I during boot up shows RAID volume is normal.
When booting into Windows, IRST application does not allow for Management of RAID volume. But no errors or warnings.
IRST 12.9 with GTX 880M
Per Readme file, this does not list Intel Mobile Express Chipset SATA RAID Controller.
Does list Intel 6 Series/C200 Series AHCI/RAID controller
Does list support for Intel Core i7 processors.
Control-I during boot up shows RAID volume is normal.
When booting into Windows, IRST shows a warning that there's an incompatible RAID volume. Type unknown.
No RAID management tools are available in IRST.
System seems to be operating correctly with the exception of the WARNING shown in the IRST control panel and service.