Windows 10 BSOD with Intel Optane Memory

[Br3aking]

Here are my specs:

 

CPU: Intel i8-8700k

Water Cooler: Corsair H60 AIO Water Cooler

GPU: Zotac GTX 1070 Mini 8gb
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z370N WiFi

SSD: MyDigitalSSD 240GB (256GB) BPX 80mm (2280) M.2 PCI Express 3.0 x4 (PCIe Gen3 x4) NVMe MLC SSD

SSD: Intel Optane Memory
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 2TB

PSU: Corsair CX600M

RAM: G.Skill Ripjaw 16gb

Case: Silverstone SG13 Mini-ITX

 

Ok so I'm having some pretty nasty problems with my boot drive when using Intel Optane Memory.

I just bought all brand new parts from Amazon about a week ago, excluding the RAM, PSU and NVME SSD which I had left over from my old rig, and threw it all together yesterday. I was debating whether or not to get a 500gb SSD and take the $150 hit, but then I saw a video about Intel Optane Memory and decided to give it a go for the 2TB storage for SSD-like performance. I installed the Intel Optane Memory to the back panel of my mobo, and the nvme ssd to the one above. The HDD is using the same SATA power cable as the Water Pump. The NVME SSD is my boot drive. At first the computer wasn't recognizing the HDD so I went into disk management and added a "Simple Volume" partition, (I believe that's what I did? Not too familiar with partitions) and it showed up as D: drive. At this point I still had all my stuff from my old system on my NVME SSD and went to look up a video for installing Intel Optane Memory. Since he has the same bios as I do it was pretty easy to follow-q-flashed the bios, updated it to F4 version, changed SATA mode to Intel RST Premium and booted back into the system.

 

I then installed the Intel Optane Driver from my Mobo product page on Gigabyte and ran it. At first it told me that it wouldn't run because the drive I was trying to install to was NVME, so I thought maybe the Mobo product page was giving me an old version. I went and installed the newest Optane drivers from Intels page and ran them, then it gave me the option to pick which drive I wanted to accelerate. After choosing the HDD it went through a semi-long process and then told me it would restart the computer. Everything was fine and I booted back into windows normally, but after a few minutes Windows 10 started to crash. It started to freeze, I couldn't select icons but I could still move the mouse. Then I got my first BSOD which said CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED. Hm, well that's definitely not good I thought. I looked up the error and it seems that that error happens when there is a problem with the driver or memory. I tried getting back into Windows 10, but I then was stuck on a "Running diagnostics" loop, the computer would try to fix the problem, then restart and try to fix it again over and over again. I flipped off my PSU power because my power button wouldn't work and then it finally told me it couldn't fix the problem.

 

I tried to look up fixes such as cleaning the drive and converting it to GPT, but that didn't work. Then it was telling me that there was no Windows 10 installed on the system so I just gave up and installed the Media Creation Tool to a USB on a different PC and re-installed Windows with that. I re-installed the Intel Optane Memory Drive and got exactly the same problem. This problem does not happen if I don't install Intel Optane Memory Drive. I noticed that there was not a long process for installing the driver anymore like the first time I did it, and it doesn't give me the option to choose the drive I want to accelerate anymore (it chooses the right one to accelerate and it shows that in the tool however) even on a new installation of Windows. I thought maybe that if I tried plugging the Intel Optane Memory to the front panel and the NVME to the back one on the mobo, it might make a difference but it did not. My next step is to try installing Windows 10 onto the HDD and try accelerating that with Optane to see if the problem persists even with that, but now Windows 10 can't even install itself anymore, I'll try and fix on that problem next.

 

Sorry I know this is a wall of text but I'm at my wits end and just trying to document everything that I've done to try and solve the issue.

[kb5zue]

Easy fix, ditch Optane, send it back and get your money back.

[Br3aking]

4 minutes ago, kb5zue said:

Easy fix, ditch Optane, send it back and get your money back.

It's making me wish I would have gone the StoreMi route instead, that's for sure.

[kb5zue]

1 minute ago, Br3aking said:

It's making me wish I would have gone the StoreMi route instead, that's for sure.

I got to be honest with you.  I read the forums here on a pretty regular basis (every day, different times), and I have read more bad complaints about Optane than I have good things.  Seems to me the folks at Intel had a neat idea but didn't fully understand, configure, and/or test what they had before sending it out to the market.  I myself considered Optane for my system but after going over some details of Optane, SSD, NVME and all the rest including just regular HDD's, I decided to drop the Optain, drop NVME and just stick with SSD.  Depending on the system and the mobo, Optane and NVME can sometimes occupy some/and/or/all of the PCIe lanes and has a tendency to just screw things up.  Went with a larger SSD (went from 256 to 512) and all is fine on my end of the rope.  Good luck, something tells me that you may need it.  BTW, I have an Asus TUF Sabertooth 3.0 board with an AMD FX8370 and 32gigs of ram.  Oops, forgot the Samsung Evo Pro 512 SSD.  Some people say that I may be a little behind the curve with the AMD CPU but that's okay.  It works great, I have no complaints, and couldn't afford a full upgrade to Ryzen anyway.

[O_B_O]

hi guys

 

sorry to jump out but it im looking for a solution everywhere and it sounds like you have experience with this optane crap so maybe you found a solution or you can guide or refer me to a source to solve my issue :