Windows - Write Delay Failed.

Windows - Write Delay Failed. What is the cause?

  • hard drive controller

    Votes: 8 57.1%
  • hard drive

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • motherboard

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • as usual, windows

    Votes: 6 42.9%

  • Total voters
    14

eTRP

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May 12, 2006
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Good day I am having problems while installing any game that requires big file transfers, such as some files from TES4:Oblivion and LOTR:BFME2.
The error I get is Windows - Write Delay Failed.

System specs:

AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Socket 939
ASRock 939 Dual Sata-2 ULi 1695 chipset (ULi M1695/ ULi M1567)
Seagate ST3808110AS 3.0Gbps sATA HDD on JMicron 20360/20363 AHCI controller
Geil 512Mb DDR400/PC3200

Programs installed are mostly games, Windows XP Home SP2 updated, Daemon Tools v. 3.47, Faronics DeepFreeze 5.7 without debug.

Thanks for your help.
 

kwalker

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May 3, 2006
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If it a controller driver, then would that not be windows fault:)

not really.
motherboard driver support maybe.
my guess is you need at least 2 gig of ram to enjoy that level of gaming.
a higher quality video card is a must.
 

Codesmith

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Jul 6, 2003
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Don't forget a intermittent fault in a data or power cable, and the PSU could be a suspect as well.

I would definately try the latest drivers for your motherboard.

I would also run the system through a full battery of stress tests.

Extened Hard Drive Test
Memtest86
Prime95 (from DOS or priority 10)
Sandra's Burn in Wizzard
3d Mark 2006

HDTach is also good program for giving your hard drive a workout.

I also try to test the PSU by running benchmarks on all the Optical and Hard Drives while running Graphics Demo/Benchmark. Plus Sandra monitoring the power levels and temperatures in the background.

Last time I was having problems it turned out that my old reliable Antec 550 Watt just couldn't handle the loads it used to.

If a system is the least bit unstable I can usually learn how to make it fail on deman within 2 hours.

---
The point is once you can reproduce the problem 100% of the time, then troubleshooting becomes a simple process of elimination.

Well simple as long as you have a compatible system handy for swaping out suspect parts.
 

eTRP

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May 12, 2006
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I headed off to www.asrockamerica.com then downloaded and updated all of the drivers as well as the BIOS, no such luck. I will investigate this further by replacing the said 7200.9 gen 3.0Gbps NCQ hard drive with the 7200.7 gen 1.5Gbps NCQ hard drive. If this too fails, most likely the driver at least is at fault or the motherboard/hdd/sata/sata2 controller is at fault too, if not, then most likely it is the 7200.9 gen hard drive.

Wish me luck! Thanks to those who provided insight into the concern.
 

GregD

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May 14, 2006
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If you have an ATI card, catalyst drivers(of course) and have "Large system Cache" turned on in windows, then you have run into a really old incompatability between XP and catalyst.

This is an old known problem. Simply turn off "Large System Cache" and all will be well.

Trust me, been there, done that.
 

eTRP

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May 12, 2006
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Thanks for the feedback, tried that also, even though I have an nVidia card. Disabled tagged queuing and synchronous transfers in the SCSI Properties tab in the Device Manager, same thing.

Here is an extended information about my system.

OS: (Windows XP Home Edition, Service Pack 2 (5.1 - 2600)) ¤ OSInstall: (XP was installed 16wks 3days 4hrs 26mins 33secs ago) ¤ Up: (16m 43s) ¤ Mem: (Usage: 372/512MB (72.66%))
HD: (Total/Free: 74.53/2.12GB) ¤ BW: (0.18) ¤ Conn: (ULi PCI Fast Ethernet Controller @ 100.0 Mbps (Rec: 7.47MB Sent: 1.56MB)) ¤ CPU: (1 CPU - AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3000+, 1.80 GHz, L1: 64KB L2: 512KB (17% Load))
Disp: (1024x768 32bit 85Hz) ¤ VidCard: (nVidia GeForce 6600) ¤ Moni: (Default Monitor) ¤ Network: (#1 (ULi PCI Fast Ethernet Controller (100Mb/s) 7.47MB In, 1.56MB Out))
Page File: (Usage: 318/1245MB (25.54%)) ¤ RecUP: (1h 20s set on Wed Apr 05 12:00:20 2006) ¤ Sound: (Realtek AC97 Audio)
Virtual Memory: (Usage: 57/2048MB (2.8%))

Also freed up space temporarily while installing said games.

I will swap drives when I have migrated my data from my other hard drives to try to see if it is indeed the 7200.9 gen hard drive at fault.

BTW, I have 16 units of identical specifications and they all manifest the same problem.
 

FrontierDK

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May 15, 2006
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18,510
OK, I've had this error as well for quite some time - and it has been bugging me too. Besides being unable to copy large files, Virtualdub (except in the latest version which has a work-around setting) would also fail when creating large files over network.

I've also tried all of the numerous ideas here and there. I even looked into the Microsoft hotfix, despite that the hotfix contains older files than what I have in my WinXP SP2.

The solution
So what did I do to fix the error? I turned off Quality of Service (QoS) on both 2003 server and client. This has allowed me to copy even gigabyte-size files again without any type of error).

This was also fixed
Also, disabling quality of service allowed me to connect with my ol' MS LANMAN again (I use Norton Ghost to replicate contents of PCs in our network). Before doing this, the connection would die after a few minutes of ghosting (MS LANMAN), and I experienced all sorts of odd errors when I used "ghost-casting" (sending same information to all clients).

I hope this works for you too.


Sincerely,
Klaus J.
Aspergers.eu