Microsoft fixes Windows 7 SATA bug

Robert Hallock 29 Dec, 2009 at 1:00pm ET Article published in Tech

Microsoft last week announced a patch to resolve 0x0000007A, 0x00000077 and 0x000000F4 stop errors users have been experiencing when taking their computers out of sleep or hibernate.

The issue lies in the Windows 7 SATA hard disk drivers which expect SATA disks to be ready within 10 seconds of the computer coming out of sleep or hibernate. Disks greater than 1TB, Microsoft says, may take longer than 10 seconds to ready, and that causes the resume operation to time out with an unrecoverable STOP error. The December 22 patch extends the resume timeout duration to avoid system halts.

Users looking to see if the patch will resolve these errors must meet the following criteria:

You have a computer that is running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2.
The computer has a Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) hard disk.
The size of the SATA hard disk is large. For example, the size of the SATA hard disk is 1 terabyte (TB).
You put the computer into the Sleep state or into the Hibernate state.
You try to resume the computer.

Comments

29 Dec 2009 ~ 1:04pm QuadWhore I've never occurred any problem with windows 7, nevertheless this sata problem. Of course my sata drive doesn't reach that high in capacity.
29 Dec 2009 ~ 2:12pm photodude I've got a 1TB SATA drive on my system but it's not my main drive. I wonder if this is an issue isolated to people's primary [c:\] SATA drives that are larger then 1TB?
I've had less issues with windows 7 then any other version of windows.

I guess the programmer who wrote the original code assumed OEM manufacturers wouldn't put 1TB drives on stock equipment (something I'm seeing a lot of right now)
29 Dec 2009 ~ 5:07pm huh? i have 2 1TB sata drives in my Win7 64 box (one is C:). no problems/errors coming outa sleep.
29 Dec 2009 ~ 5:08pm huh? D'oh! no smilies!
29 Dec 2009 ~ 5:18pm Thrax Smilies fixed.
29 Dec 2009 ~ 9:13pm redchief Win 7 64 seems to go into the Coma mode occasionally. Only a power off revives.
I heard this was a feature. 1 Tb SATA + 1 750GbIDE + 1 300Gb IDE. I'll try waiting a full minute and see if I can wake the dead.
30 Dec 2009 ~ 8:56am AlexDeGruven

photodude wrote:

I've got a 1TB SATA drive on my system but it's not my main drive. I wonder if this is an issue isolated to people's primary [c:\] SATA drives that are larger then 1TB?
I've had less issues with windows 7 then any other version of windows.

I guess the programmer who wrote the original code assumed OEM manufacturers wouldn't put 1TB drives on stock equipment (something I'm seeing a lot of right now)

Since the issue is probably rooted in being able to access pagefile.sys and hiberfile.sys (or is it hiberfil?), that would probably be why. This is not saying that every person with a 1TB+ drive will experience the issue, though, so even if it were your system disk, it's not a guarantee that you'll see the bug.
30 Dec 2009 ~ 8:36pm Leonardo Hmm, one of my Win7 64 computers seems to go into hibernation when left alone (but not idle) for a few hours. Today I had into it remotely through Ultra VNC to 'wake' it. The thing is, I have all "sleep" and hibernate/hibernation options turned off. The largest capacity drive in the machine is 500GB. I don't know if this is a related issue or not, in reference to the SATA patch.
31 Dec 2009 ~ 8:25am AlexDeGruven If you can wake it remotely (assuming you don't have Wake On LAN configured), then it doesn't sound like it's hibernating. What kind of a state is it in when you see it this way? It almost sounds like it's standard power-saving/DPMS and turning off the drive and monitor after a period of inactivity at the keyboard. These options need to be set separately from the regular sleep/hibernate cycles.

Of course, it might be something else, making half of the previous paragraph irrelevant.