INACCESSIBLE BOOT DEVICE on Windows 10 boot after update of the Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver

Have a BSOD after you’ve installed the latest version of Intel RST from Intel’s download center? During the boot, staring at the Windows logo and the spinning wheel, after a minute or two getting just INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE error and “we must reboot” message?  Restarts, nothing helps?  Yeah, I’ve been there.

How to fix the BSOD

Note: can be applied only when you have updated the driver from a previously working version, since it counts with a previous driver file stored on your disk.

  • Check your BIOS and RAID setting are as expected, since I once encountered iRST update that screwed that up – actually turned off RAID!
  • During boot hold F8, if this doesn’t work for you, you need to “Create a recovery drive” on a USB and boot using that
  • Choose Troubleshoot
  • Choose Advanced options
  • Choose Command Prompt, a command prompt window, as you know it, should open
  • My system drive was mounted as E:, if yours is mounted elsewhere, replace E: in below commands with that letter
  • At the prompt type:

    [text gutter=”false”]
    cd /d E:\Windows\system32\drivers
    ren iaStorA.sys iaStorA.sys-bad-version
    cd ..
    dir /s iaStorA.sys
    [/text]

  • That will list something like this:

    [text gutter=”false”] Volume in drive C has no label.
    Volume Serial Number is XXXX-XXXX

     Directory of E:\Windows\System32\drivers

    07/29/2015  19:44         1,462,720 iaStorA.sys
                   1 File(s)      1,462,720 bytes

     Directory of E:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\iastorac.inf_amd64_26544f4e51074f52

    05/28/2014  10:10           672,104 iaStorA.sys
                   1 File(s)        672,104 bytes

     Directory of E:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\iastorac.inf_amd64_61378e65f4f142a0

    07/29/2015  19:44         1,462,720 iaStorA.sys
                   1 File(s)      1,462,720 bytes

         Total Files Listed:
                   3 File(s)      2,806,928 bytes

    [/text]

  • For me the previous working driver file is apparently at

    [text gutter=”false”]DriverStore\FileRepository\iastorac.inf_amd64_26544f4e51074f52[/text]

    , yours can be elsewhere, so update the source directory in the copy command below according that

  • Continue typing following commands, you should still be at the E:\Windows\System32 directory:

    [text gutter=”false”]copy DriverStore\FileRepository\iastorac.inf_amd64_26544f4e51074f52\iaStorA.sys drivers\iaStorA.sys[/text]

  • You should see a “1 file(s) copied” message
  • [text gutter=”false”]exit[/text]

  • Now normally reboot
  • Good luck!

After that Intel RST service still starts up, shows the status etc, disks are fine, everything seems to work, even after another (deliberate) reboot. Only weird thing was that System Restore for the C: drive was turned off. Not sure if it was caused by the RST update, by the boot problems, by some of my other manual changes (not listed here) or what.. Re-enabling it works fortunately well, so not an issue.

A good thing to do is yet to rollback the driver from the Device Manager (Storage Controllers/Intel(R) *** SATA RAID Controller/Properties/Driver/Roll Back Driver) to put the registry records back to the correct state.

Known iRST BIOS and iRST driver combinations

driver ↓BIOS 11.1.0.1413BIOS 14.8.0.2377
13.1.0.1058worksunknonwn
14.0.0.1143worksunknonwn
14.8.0.1042 BSOD unknonwn
15.2.0.1020 BSOD works

Dear readers, if you know about other versions combinations, please let me know so that we can fill this table with more data. Thanks in advance!

44 thoughts on “INACCESSIBLE BOOT DEVICE on Windows 10 boot after update of the Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver

  1. Having the same problem after a clean install of Win10. Everything installed fine, then I decided to install the Intel 14.6.0.1029 driver package and rebooted to find the INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE BSOD. Was able to boot back into windows startup repair and used system restore to revert back and working again now. 14.6.0.1029 driver is definitely bad.

    1. Seajay, can you elaborate on your solution? I’ve just experienced this exact problem. Did a clean install of Win10. Intel RST 14.6.0.1029 was the first and only version of the software/driver installed. Which version did you revert back to? My understanding is that 14.6.0.1029 is the first version to support Win10. Any help is greatly appreciated.

      1. Not sure it helps, but the version that works for me and which I reverted to is 13.1.0.1058, with date 5/2/2014.

  2. This happend to me aswell.

    BOOT_DEVICE_INACCESSABLE

    couldn’t get it to boot. The solution was not to install intel-rst (Rapid-storage-manager). I wanted write-through in my raid0 setup enabled, but I guess it’s not worth the trouble, already lost 500gb data because of this driver-fail.

    Not going to install it again, unless Intel states in a newer version, that they fixed this issue.

  3. hello my friends
    i have this error and i did your solution like this :-

    cd /d E:\Windows\system32\drivers
    ren iaStorA.sys iaStorA.sys-bad-version
    cd ..
    dir /s iaStorA.sys

    and i get >>>

    Volume in drive C has no label.
    Volume Serial Number is 42XX-XXXX
    File Not Found

    it looks there is no drivers for me
    help me please ?

    1. Yes, it looks like you don’t have an older version available. I never tried myself by maybe just deleting (renaming) the only driver version you have may fix the problem. Strange is that you don’t have the current version stored under DriverStore\FileRepository. Anyway, I’m sorry I cannot provide you a reliable way to help.

  4. Same issue – I”ve copied the only drivers I could find, even tried copying the regback files back but it still has a blue screen.

    1. Sorry to hear that. I provide the solution as is – w/o any warranty. You could also try to extract a working driver version file from an older ZIP, intel provides also ZIPs for download, not just setups. You of course need a different machine to do it. You can probably then copy it via a USB stick or something to the failed machine, but I’ve never tried that myself. Just a suggestion. I can also send you the working driver file I have privately by email.

  5. Many many thanks for pointing me into the right direction!
    My case was as follows: I’ve upgraded from Win7, where I’d had the old Intel Matrix Storage Console installed, to Win10. Upgrade worked fine, so I didn’t bother about drivers and such. Recently, I thought it would be a good idea to run the Matrix Storage Console once again to see how my drives are doing. But it wouldn’t start since “no drivers are installed”. OK, went to the Intel web site to download the latest version (noticed they renamed it to Rapid), installed it without rebooting and woohoo, I could run a check on the array (which even found and corrected some issues).
    Well, the rude awakening came this morning: The well-known BSOD during boot. And as I didn’t have any older Intel drivers installed since I had upgraded to Windows 10, the “roll back” by rename as described here also wasn’t an option. But what did the trick luckily was to rename the Windows built-in driver (iaStorAV.sys in my case, might also be iaStorV.sys in others’) to iaStoreA.sys. I do have some version mismatch now (properties of “Intel Chipset SATA RAID Controller” in Device Manager shows 14.8 whereas “Driver Details” lists 13.2), but at least Windows boots again and since the Rapid toolbox thinks I’m still using an Intel driver, it continues to work :-)
    But all of this was totally unnecessary and cost me some hours of my Sunday spare time, so finally a line dedicated to Intel driver developers: You bunch of incompetent morons!

    1. So your fix was to rename either iaStorAV.sys or iaStorV.sys, whichever is present, to iaStoreA.sys, interesting. That honestly sounds pretty much crazy :)

      Anyway, thanks a lot for more info to the bank here!

      (Now I would love to find a way to install just the RST service, not the driver. It just disappeared from my machine some time ago.)

    2. Wow, this along with the steps above saved me! I don’t know how or why this worked, but it did! Hallelujah!

  6. Hi,

    Upgraded from Windows 7 Pro x64 to Windows 10 Pro x64 with 13.6.0.1002 RST installed. Following the upgrade the RST application was not working and the RST Intel driver was not installed (windows driver running). Attempted installation of 14.8.0.1042 and experienced the failure above. Windows restore worked perfectly and I did not need to move any files around. Tried all the different versions on the intel website. 14.0.0.1143 installed and restarted perfectly normally and now all is running well.

  7. I confirm, installing 14.0.0.1143 fix the problem. I’ve installed 14.8.0.1042 then used System Restore to get back in the OS and then I’ve installed 14.0.0.1143 and everything works fine

    Thanks

    1. I haven’t tried yet myself, but this sounds like a good news! Thanks for your effort.

  8. I experienced the inaccessible_boot_device issue on Win10, 2 days after upgrading from Win7, and right after upgrading Intel RST software/driver. Luckily for me, after unplugging all drives (single HDD and two other HDDs as Raid 1 matrix) except from SSD system drive, Win10 loaded properly, but after plugging in the HDDs the issue reoccured. After finding this tread I uninstalled the Intel RST application, and then via device manager restored previous version of the driver. Then shut the system down, connected all HDDs, and it started working fine!

    Anyone knows what is the latest working fine version of Intel RST app/driver?

    Thanks :)

    1. Thanks for the info. I personally look for a solution that brings back the RST service (I want to monitor and manage my RAID 0 system array) with any functioning driver version.

      Regarding your question, Rob was the first to reported here in a comment that version 14.0.0.1143 is the last (and maybe only) one that works properly. I want to give it a try soon. I will definitely report on the results!

  9. Hallelujah! Thanks for this article. I am on an upgraded Windows 10 machine on an EVGA X58 motherboard with a JMicron RAID controller and got the bright idea to try to update the Intel RST driver to the latest 14.8 version after which I couldn’t do anything to boot windows. System restore did not appear to have taken a proper snapshot and finally the only thing that worked was replacing isStorA.sys using the command prompt with a downloaded version of 13.2 that I downloaded and put on a USB. Finally, the machine boots again and I don’t think I want to touch that stupid driver again.

  10. Thanks, got caught by this issue after upgrading to Windows 10 and then upgrading Intel. Appreciate your posting the fix.

  11. any update on the new 15.2.0.1020 version? still working with microsoft standard drivers and performance sucks…

    1. Few days ago I tried installing RST 15.2.0.1020 on a mostly vanilla installation of Windows 10.0.14393 (the Anniversary Update). Everything worked OK!

      However, I didn’t perceive any performance difference (RAID1 of two SSDs), so it’s hard to say if it’s worth installing. Soon I will try again (I did a Restore Point rollback later) and compare once more – how else than with building the Firefox browser.

      According some articles on Microsoft’s forums or blog posts (don’t have links by hand), they (MS) intentionally remove RST because of high rate of crashes in that driver. Me personally never experienced any visible crash, with any version of the driver, though.

  12. for some awkward reason i got a BSOD after a windows update (13/Dec/2016).

    i downloaded the f6 (x64) zip files and extracted iaStoreA.sys to C:\windows\system32\drivers but am still getting the BSOD

    1. I just did the update too. No BSOD, the iRST driver version is 15.2.0.1020, Win 10 Pro.

      Maybe try removing the driver altogether, but question is if your BSOD really comes from iRST. Note that if there is no iRST driver, there is one from Microsoft or an older one from Windows Update (not from Intel). A fresh installation of Windows 10 usually ends up with 13.x version of iRST automatically.

      Also, you may try to go back to the update restore point. There were 2 updates recently (10th and 14th Dec for me) and I can see restore points for both of them. There should be a guidance how to proceed with it in this post.

  13. The same for me, BSOD after install. Luckily I found an option with revert and it worked. I’m a bit afraid to try the 15.xx version :).
    Anyway thanks for the article.

    1. I think the BSOD is coming from a combination of the Intel RAID BIOS version and the iRST version you are installing. I just tried installing iRST 15.xx version to a fresh installation of today’s Windows 10 on an older board. BSOD! So, 15.xx version DOESN’T fix this for everyone.

      I’m just about to update the post with a table of known combination and the results (at least for me.)

  14. I found this thread after experiencing the same problem described above. I have an older Dell Dimension E520 with a RAID 1 array for data storage. I just did a clean install of Windows 10 and tried to install the latest version of IRST. The machine would not boot and produced the dreaded INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE message. Fortunately, the start up repair function was able to remove the offending software and Windows booted OK. I have since found that the only version of IRST that doesn’t cause this problem for me is 14.0.0.1143, which paradoxically is only supposed to support Windows 8.1, not Windows 10! Anyway, I now have that version installed and it works fine. Don’t think I will try messing with any later versions.

  15. Had a similar BSOD issue (iastorA.sys Error code 0xc0000359) after installing a wrong river for intel storage. 2 weeks struggeling. Than I read the hint in comments about renaming iaStorAV.sys to iaStorA.sys . And this did the trick. Win10 booting again. Now I could install the drivers freshly and all works like a charm. Thanks so much.

    1. Could you please provide data on what version you have installed that didn’t work and what was the version of the iRST BIOS on your board of the affected system? Thanks!

  16. My hard disk was not booting anymore after having installed latest Intel Store Manager

    Wow M8 you gave a cool solution

    Thank you
    R.

    1. As well, here – could you please provide data on what version you have installed that didn’t work and what was the version of the iRST BIOS on your board of the affected system? Thanks!

  17. I installed Windows 10 64 on a blank drive (RAID1) and everything was working fine. Installing any version of Intel RST would cause it to not boot (spinning circles forever…) note: I am using an older Gigabyte motherboard that RST worked fine with under Win7.

    The fix I found was to install the .exe (driver and UI) of RST and DO NOT REBOOT!!! Go immediately into Device Manager, find your storage device and rollback the driver to the one that Windows 10 used on install. From that point, it has worked perfectly. If you reboot right after installing RST, the computer will hang, so make sure to not reboot.

    By the way, I ended up using RST 14.XX because I had been using it with my Windows 7 install on the same machine. Not sure why Windows 10 did not like the driver, but after rolling it back, the UI works fine and the system boots.

    1. Yes, this is the legal way to revert when you know what iRST does after boot. It’s also good to do this revert when you manually rename the file on disk directly (when you are at BSOD loop already.)

      Thanks for sharing this!

    2. Hi,

      What can i do once i’ve already rebooted?

      I made the mistake in installing most recent RST on an older Intel S3200SHV Server board with Intel® 82801IR I/O Controller, evidently all hell broke loose as i got spinning dots at reboot. In order to address the issue I set the controller to IDE after unplugging one of the drives. I did some research and apparently version 10.8.0.1003 is the latest one that would work with this legacy controller, can anyone please confirm this and if so, how can i go back to my RAID setup if the server no longer boots when set to RAID (Latest RST has already been uninstalled).

      Your suggestions are greatly appreciated

      1. Honestly, I won’t be much of a help here, sorry. But I believe that switching back to IDE was a very bad decision. I don’t think you can go back and that would help at all with the problem. I once killed a functional installation doing that (or, when iRST did that for me…) and there were no going back, the volume broke.

  18. I can’t thank you enough for this thread. In my case I had to go into the Command Prompt mode and rename the iaStorA.sys to isStorA.sy_ and then take the iaStorAVC.sys file and rename to iaStorA.sys. Doing that got my Windows 10 working again!

    I only had the original Windows 10 driver in place so nothing to revert back to. There was also a iaStorV.sys file there but using that one did not work.

    It’s just ridiculous that this would happen, considering it indicated it was compatible.

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