Vista 64 Readyboost problem

D

Delrin

I've been working on trying to get ReadyBoost working on my Vista 64
system for a week or so now. It's a strange problem, I haven't seen
others mentioning it, so thought I'd post to see if anyone has an
idea.

First off, the system is an AMD X2-4400+ with 2 gig RAM. I'm running
Vista Ultimate, 64 bit version. When I first tried ReadyBoost, the
pen drive I tried didn't meet the performance req's so I picked up a 2
gig high speed CF card specifically to use with Ready Boost. It
surpassed the performance req's by a good amount, so I thought I was
good to go. I checked the "Use this device" radio button, and lights
flashed, things happened. It looked like it was doing it's thing, and
when I looked at the drive contents, I saw the ReadyBoost file on the
drive, with the exact size specified in the properties settings.

Then it got odd....for no good reason I could find, after a seemingly
random amount of time from 1 minute to 15 minutes, the ReadyBoost
cache file on the drive just vanishes, and no more caching takes place
on the CF card. I checked Event Viewer, and it had a couple items
pertaining to it. Here is one such message:

***
The device USB CF Reader (location (unknown)) is offline due to a
user-mode driver crash. Windows will attempt to restart the device 5
more times. Please contact the device manufacturer for more
information about this problem.
***

The oddest part is that the drive, even testing it with the same CF
card, works great for copying files to and from, I made sure to test
as much of it as possible, so I filled it up and copied it back
several times, worked great.

If I persist, and simply try checking the "Use this device" option
again, the same thing will happen...starts to copy files, eventually
just gives up and erases the ReadyBoost file from the drive. If I try
it "too many" times, the system will eventually reboot explorer, and
it gets ugly from there. I can't do a proper shutdown, etc. You
should see my reliability monitor from that! :)

I thought the card might be bad, so I took the CF card and the
internal card reader out of the system, and put it into my other
system running Vista Business, 32 bit, and it's working great in that
one. In an attempt to just get around this issue, I bought a new USB
pen drive, listed as ReadyBoost capable. Plugged it in, set it to
"Use this device to speed up my computer", watched the file get
created on it, and a moment later, I watched it get erased just like
before!

I tried shutting down the ReadyBoost service, and restarting it,
select it for use again, same thing happens. I tried reformatting the
CF card in various formats (FAT, FAT32, NTFS) with different cluster
sizes, same thing.

As a side note, the USB devices in my system work great on their own
for data storage, just not well at all with ReadyBoost.

Any thoughts on this issue at all? Anyone having good luck with
ReadyBoost in Vista Ultimate 64?

Dave
 
D

Dustin Harper

You might check the properties of the device under Device Manager, and go to
Power Options, and see if the option "Allow this device to go to sleep to
save power" is unchecked.


--
Dustin Harper
(e-mail address removed)
http://www.vistarip.com

--
 
G

gls858

Delrin said:
I've been working on trying to get ReadyBoost working on my Vista 64
system for a week or so now. It's a strange problem, I haven't seen
others mentioning it, so thought I'd post to see if anyone has an
idea.

First off, the system is an AMD X2-4400+ with 2 gig RAM. I'm running
Vista Ultimate, 64 bit version. When I first tried ReadyBoost, the
pen drive I tried didn't meet the performance req's so I picked up a 2
gig high speed CF card specifically to use with Ready Boost. It
surpassed the performance req's by a good amount, so I thought I was
good to go. I checked the "Use this device" radio button, and lights
flashed, things happened. It looked like it was doing it's thing, and
when I looked at the drive contents, I saw the ReadyBoost file on the
drive, with the exact size specified in the properties settings.

Then it got odd....for no good reason I could find, after a seemingly
random amount of time from 1 minute to 15 minutes, the ReadyBoost
cache file on the drive just vanishes, and no more caching takes place
on the CF card. I checked Event Viewer, and it had a couple items
pertaining to it. Here is one such message:

***
The device USB CF Reader (location (unknown)) is offline due to a
user-mode driver crash. Windows will attempt to restart the device 5
more times. Please contact the device manufacturer for more
information about this problem.
***

The oddest part is that the drive, even testing it with the same CF
card, works great for copying files to and from, I made sure to test
as much of it as possible, so I filled it up and copied it back
several times, worked great.

If I persist, and simply try checking the "Use this device" option
again, the same thing will happen...starts to copy files, eventually
just gives up and erases the ReadyBoost file from the drive. If I try
it "too many" times, the system will eventually reboot explorer, and
it gets ugly from there. I can't do a proper shutdown, etc. You
should see my reliability monitor from that! :)

I thought the card might be bad, so I took the CF card and the
internal card reader out of the system, and put it into my other
system running Vista Business, 32 bit, and it's working great in that
one. In an attempt to just get around this issue, I bought a new USB
pen drive, listed as ReadyBoost capable. Plugged it in, set it to
"Use this device to speed up my computer", watched the file get
created on it, and a moment later, I watched it get erased just like
before!

I tried shutting down the ReadyBoost service, and restarting it,
select it for use again, same thing happens. I tried reformatting the
CF card in various formats (FAT, FAT32, NTFS) with different cluster
sizes, same thing.

As a side note, the USB devices in my system work great on their own
for data storage, just not well at all with ReadyBoost.

Any thoughts on this issue at all? Anyone having good luck with
ReadyBoost in Vista Ultimate 64?

Dave
If you do some searches on Readyboost performance I think you'll find
that with 2 gigs of RAM you'll see little if any increase in speed.

gls858
 
J

Jeffrey S. Sparks

I've been using it with a sandisk 4gb cruser usb and it works fine. might
try a usb key instead of a flashcard and see if you get the same results.

Jeff
 

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