ReadyBoost

[seekermeister]

I've done a couple more reboots since last posting, and the hang delays still remain, even though I disabled everything on the Startup tab of msconfig. This seems to leave only two possibilities, either some part of ReadyBoost remains enabled in the OS, or the delays are caused by some driver problems. Since the problem began with ReadyBoost, that seems more likely to be the cause, but since I can't rule out coincidence, I ran Autoruns, to see what I might find.

I do not find anything that is obviously related to ReadyBoost, but there is so many possibilities listed, I thought that the Boot Execute tab would be the place to start. However, there are only two items listed....O&O Defrag, which has been there for a while and is among those disabled previously in msconfig, and an item named "Auto Check Utility". What is this for?

Since I know that there are many drivers loaded during boot, not listed on the Boot Execute tab, How should one determine which to disable for troubleshooting purposes? Obviously, one can't disable them all, like in msconfig, otherwise the system is certain not to boot.

Auto chkdsk will run if it detects any possible hard drive issues. That's fine. As for the drivers, try a clean boot, the link is in the troubleshooting guide in my sig. Honestly, your performance would have increased with another stick of RAM. 2GB is not enough for 7, no matter what Microsoft says.

I assume that clean boot is something in your troubleshooting link, but that link took me to a page that forced me to select a link to redirect to your thread. Once there, I didn't see the term "clean boot", and I'm not inclined to do a broad spectrum analysis at the moment, unless it seems to become unavoidable.

Without links and tutorials, can you simply define what you mean by clean boot?

 

[Frostmourne]

The link is a preview, so the site is genuine and not a malware link. Anyway, the link is here:

How to troubleshoot a problem by performing a clean boot in Windows Vista or in Windows 7

 

[seekermeister]

whs,

Try the following. Set Superfetch (in services) to "manual" and see whether that helps

I just tried that, and while it "may" have shortened the hang time (not sure, because I didn't time it), the hangs remain in both drive detection and the Windows logo screen. Since both of these hangs began with ReadyBoost, I feel that they are somehow related to each other...as though both the BIOS and OS were looking for the flash drive.

 

[Frostmourne]

Can you plug in the drive, disable ReadyBoost and reboot?

 

[seekermeister]

Can you plug in the drive, disable ReadyBoost and reboot?

That sounds like a reasonable thought, but I asked prior to pulling it how to disable it and no one responded. Do you know how? The instructions in Help are vague.

 

[Frostmourne]

Right click the drive and there should be an option in the ReadyBoost tab:

How to Disable and Reclaim Space Used by ReadyBoost on USB Flash Drive My Digital Life

Like so.

 

[whs]

whs,

Try the following. Set Superfetch (in services) to "manual" and see whether that helps

I just tried that, and while it "may" have shortened the hang time (not sure, because I didn't time it), the hangs remain in both drive detection and the Windows logo screen. Since both of these hangs began with ReadyBoost, I feel that they are somehow related to each other...as though both the BIOS and OS were looking for the flash drive.

This is very unlikely. The system makes sure that it still operates properly when the stick is off. And the settings can only be made in the Properties of the stick (or Autoplay). From then on, it is Superfetch that manages it.
There must be another problem if your boot times went up all of a sudden. Just to make sure, you can put the stick back in and disable Ready Boost (in Properties). I doubt this makes a difference, but it is worth a try.

 

[seekermeister]

Right click the drive and there should be an option in the ReadyBoost tab:

How to Disable and Reclaim Space Used by ReadyBoost on USB Flash Drive My Digital Life

Like so.

No joy on the clean boot. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, going to drive's Properties while it was still installed, I found no Readyboost tab, either by right clicking the drive in a file manager, or in Disk Management.

 

[Frostmourne]

Right click the drive and there should be an option in the ReadyBoost tab:

How to Disable and Reclaim Space Used by ReadyBoost on USB Flash Drive My Digital Life

Like so.

No joy on the clean boot. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, going to drive's Properties while it was still installed, I found no Readyboost tab, either by right clicking the drive in a file manager, or in Disk Management.

Quick format the drive in Explorer and then re-enable ReadyBoost.

 

[whs]

I found no Readyboost tab

Hmm, that is strange - to say the least. Any old USB stick has a Ready Boost tab.

Edit: I think Frostmourne has a good idea.

 

[seekermeister]

I found no Readyboost tab

Hmm, that is strange - to say the least. Any old USB stick has a Ready Boost tab.

Edit: I think Frostmourne has a good idea.

To check this out, I just installed another drive, and OCZ Diesel, and went to Properties...no Readyboost tab.

EDIT: Correcction: No tab when I went to properties in the file manager, but it does appear in Properties accessed in Disk Management.

EDIT 2: I put the SanDisk back in and checked Disk Management...no ReadyBoost tab, but it still shows it loaded fully red, as before, so as before, I have found no way to confirmj that ReadyBoost is actually enable, despite the fact that the drive contains the ReadyBiist cacge

 

[hubris]

Hi.
i remember this from my vista days.


may not help or not, but i had all sorts of trouble with readyboost back then.

not with W7 though. same reg key, search in reg for EMDMgmt

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/06/25/trick-to-use-any-usb-key-or-flash-drive-to-ready-boost-vista/

 

[whs]

I found no Readyboost tab

Hmm, that is strange - to say the least. Any old USB stick has a Ready Boost tab.

Edit: I think Frostmourne has a good idea.

To check this out, I just installed another drive, and OCZ Diesel, and went to Properties...no Readyboost tab.

Did you reenable (set to automatic) Superfetch?

 

[Frostmourne]

Open up resmon.exe and/or process explorer and monitor the resource and memory usage to see if a process is causing these hiccups. You can also add paging counters and other helpful addins to perfmon.msc.

 

[seekermeister]

Hi.
i remember this from my vista days.


may not help or not, but i had all sorts of trouble with readyboost back then.

not with W7 though. same reg key, search in reg for EMDMgmt

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/06/25/trick-to-use-any-usb-key-or-flash-drive-to-ready-boost-vista/

The path to the key has change since Vista, it is now

"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\EMDMgmt"

None of the values for: "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\EMDMgmt\_??_USBSTOR#Disk&Ven_USB&Prod_Driver&Rev_0.00#E6880C0003E7&0#{53f56307-b6bf-11d0-94f2-00a0c91efb8b}PEN DRIVE_2603728728"

Contained any referebces to ReadyBoost, nor did any of the values suggest that it is enabled.

 

[seekermeister]

Hmm, that is strange - to say the least. Any old USB stick has a Ready Boost tab.

Edit: I think Frostmourne has a good idea.

To check this out, I just installed another drive, and OCZ Diesel, and went to Properties...no Readyboost tab.

Did you reenable (set to automatic) Superfetch?

I just reset it to automatic and started the service, then went to Disk Management and checked the Properties, but there still is no ReadyBoost tab.

EDIT: Another oddity that I found in Disk Management is that it still show the OCZ drive as installed, despite the fact that I traded it for the SanDisk. At the moment, it shows 2 flash drives installed.

EDIT 2; I have to retract what I said, apparently both of the flash drives shown in Disk Management are the SanDisk. Ine shows a 7MB drive, as it did from the start, and the newer one show a 3.91MB drive, which is the actual capacity after deducting the space taken by the U3 file system. This one does have a ReadyBoost tab, but it shows it as already disabled.

 

[whs]

You probably forgot to eject the ocz drive

 

[seekermeister]

You probably forgot to eject the ocz drive

No, the OCZ is sitting in front of me on the desk, plus it is a 16GB drive, so it is not either of the ones now displayed.

Somehow, it doesn't seem too surprising that there is a duplicate of this drive, because the BIOS also showed two of them earlier.

 

[hubris]

EDIT: Another oddity that I found in Disk Management is that it still show the OCZ drive as installed, despite the fact that I traded it for the SanDisk. At the moment, it shows 2 flash drives installed.

do a reg backup and delete flash drive entries in EMDMgmt, remove drives and reboot.

after reboot insert drives. sorry i should have explained a bit more before.

just trying to help.

 

[seekermeister]

It just dawned on me why it shows 2 drives in Drive Management. The first is 3.81GB, with 14MB unallocated, formatted FAT32. The second drive is 7MB U3, formatted CDFS. Obviously, neither the BIOS nor the OS can reconcile this without showing them as separate drives.

EDIT: This raises the question of how to return the flash drive fully to it's U3 purpose, since I assume that the entire drive would need to be CDFS. I could delete the FAT32 portion, but I just checked the options for formatting in Disk Management, and it doesn't include CDFS. Even if it did, that would probably leave two separate CDFS partitions on the drive, which U3 probably wouldn't like.