HP Z800 killed with KB5066835 that cause boot failure, "A Disk Read Error Occurred" if you uninstall

[DGroves]

KB5066835 can/will be blocked if a later cumulative update is installed

best way to do this is to manually download the later  cumulative update from microsoft install the OS on the Zx00 system and then apply the newer update before connecting to the ms update servers

[vanadu]

I'm trying to understand why my posts on this topic keep disappearing. It's happened four times now.

Thanks.

[SDH]

Way too fiddly... the fix for that is to have Microsoft get their gurus involved but it is hard to expect that for these unsupported workstations. I'm hoping the issue might overlap into officially supported ones.

Vanadu... I've not seen missing posts. Nothing you say is questionable or impolite. Moderators here have been non-invasive with very few exceptions over many years.

[vanadu]

OK, thanks. I just wanted to ask -- you said you don't use RAID. My Z600 has a two-drive hardware Intel RST RAID array. I thought that was baked into all these Zx00 machines. Would it help this W11 issue if I were to disable the RAID array? Is that even possible and would the 2 hard drives then become inaccessable?

[SDH]

Vanadu,

The Z HP workstations have Intel licensing paid for already by HP to use the RSTe drivers and software, so that is "baked in". I don't believe disabling the RAID array would change the one issue that seems to be the current cause of broken ZX00 builds. I actually don't know exactly what extras come from the RSTe vs the non-e drivers, or if there is any downside to using just the non-e drivers. I have used both and saw no difference in performance. Or, if the chips on the motherboard are any different. It may just be that the e-licensing is baked into the workstation's BIOS and that the e-drivers won't install or work without first checking with the BIOS.

DGroves and Paul T know a lot more about those issues than I do.

When you probe one of these update-broken ZX00 builds with DiskPart all the expected partitions are still there with proper MBR/Legacy BIOS sizes.

[SDH]

I'll report back if I see any future update bork this Z400.  A couple of last points on technique. A key tool I use is the Microsoft DiskPart utility included for many years now that you access via an elevated command prompt. It is a powerful tool, and very quick to use. It uses a command line interface, and attached below is a brief PDF on how to use it. DGroves later explained to me later that doing the long-type NTFS format is not needed. Use the Microsoft Disk Management utility included in your OS to fully understand the drive numbers and sizes so you don't "clean" the wrong one!

1. I won't be turning on the Windows Update option to get updates as early as possible. There is some protection in waiting for issues to be discovered by early adopters, and even more protection by pausing updates for a while after the official releases come out.

2. I make sure I'm disconnected from the internet during the clean installs. The operating system can be expected to otherwise do things in the background that you don't want it to do yet, like starting hidden updates, if you don't stay disconnected.

3. I've found setting BIOS to factory defaults before these types of projects is worthwhile... I fine tune them later. Related, getting into BIOS seems smoother from a cold boot than from a restart. Once set to factory defaults I make a few changes from those to allow the install process from the properly created Rufus W11 25H2 drive go smoothly. F10 into BIOS and change the usual boot order, to shift the still-unallocated SSD up to the very top. If this was a GPT/UEFI install that would include shifting the UEFI section above the Legacy section if that is not already the case. The reason is that this way when the installer gets done with its first stage (having been F9 manually booted from the USB drive) and finishes its first auto-restart (to continue the install process with several more auto-restarts coming) it shifts properly to boot from the SSD rather than going back to boot from the USB installer drive. I see this as establishing the "Usual boot drive"... the SSD. After setting that I power down the workstation.

4. Again, from a cold boot, I see BIOS opening and press F9. This is the way to establish a "One-time boot drive"... and here is where you select the Rufus W11 25H2 USB drive. If this was a GPT/UEFI (ZX20 and beyond) install that thumb drive would show up in both the Legacy and the UEFI sections and you'd choose it from the UEFI section. Either way you then proceed with the full clean install, and the last auto-restart will take you into W11 25H2. You're still disconnected from the net.

5. I have my nVidia drivers installer and several utilities that I copy over onto the SSD at this stage, run and configure the video card installer as described on page 3 of this post, set my favorite Control Panel settings (one I highly recommend you turn off is fast startup via the Power Options app), and copy over my wuhideshow.cab folder. I can do a restart now from this build. I set some of my basic taskbar/startup settings. Then I get ready to reconnect to the net, plug in the cable, watch the taskbar icon to confirm network connectivity is established, and launch wuhideshow.cab. Then, run its "hide" mode which will contact Windows Update and show the available updates, and I hide what I want. Then quit out of that and finally run Windows Update the usual way which will install what you saw minus what you hid.

See... fiddly.

[DGroves]

the main difference between the workstation/server RSTe (Enterprise) driver vs the consumer RST driver is chipset support for the workstation/server chipsets supported features that are not available on the consumer chipsets or are accessed differently 

a case in point if you install the consumer RST driver on a z800/z820/z840 it will install, however this consumer driver will only update the two normal SATA ports on the motherboard the other intel "SCU" sata ports will remain inactive due to missing driver support that the RSTe (enterprise) driver includes

also changing the bios setting from RAID+AHCI to just AHCI is not recommended

all the RAID+AHCI setting does is allow the installed OS to properly configure the OS to have support for Raid and AHCI allowing you to enable/disable raid without issues

if you do not create a raid array the bios does not load or use any of the Raid code and only loads and uses the AHCI driver

From a factory default bios

the only bios settings you want to change is to disable the LSI boot rom option in the HP workstation bios

and either boot from one of the two MS compatible SATA ports from the z88/z820 or the nvme ssd on a z840

any other SATA/sas drives can be connected to either the intel "SCU" sata ports or the LSI SAS/SATA ports

and i recommend that you buy 6GBps SAS drives as on both the z800/z820 the allowed SAS speed will be faster than the onboard sata speeds for example the z820 has six Intel based SATA ports, but only the first two support 6Gbps while the other four are only 3Gbps the LSI sas/sata ports are 3GBps for sata but also support 6GBps for sas

disabling the boot rom for both onboard network ports will also decrease boot time

any other bios changes are on a case by case basis depending on hardware installed

also note that both the z800/z820 support user definable bios defaults,

and if set this will override the factory defaults on a bios reset

[vanadu]

SDH, DGroves & Akierum - Thank you all for you input on this issue. I'll need a few days to digest it all before I venture another W11 upgrade attempt. BTW I'm familiar with diskpart. I was an MS-DOS user back in the late 1980's. Yes, some of us are actually that old. 

I'm still not clear why Akierum's fix works. It seems some of these issues reside in the actual Windows partition, not the 100MB boot partition.  

BTW I think some of my posts were automatically deleted because the post I replied to was too long. Probably a forum glitch in processing long text/html content.

Anyway, I'm also wondering whether it'd be possible to build a custom W11 ISO that integrates SDH's fixes. I don't know what would be entailed in that but I do know Dong Knows Tech has posted custom W11 ISOs that disable unsupported hardware checks for all the W11 builds. 

https://dongknows.com/steps-for-windows-11-upgrade-on-unsupported-hardware/

They work and don't require any special Rufus settings - but still, I'll be sticking to the process SDH has detailed here from now on. SDH, I'm hoping this process prevents W11 upgrades from borking your Z400 install -- but if it does please let us know. Thanks again to everyone!

[capitan_baudo]

Hi everyone,

   I'm having the same problem with two HP Z400s and a Z600. Fortunately I found this forum trough suggestioni innother post! I carefully read the first few posts from start to finish. I have a feeling this thread has been closed. I'm not experienced enough to be sure, so I had to reply to the last post, hoping to keep it open.

I've been struggling with a Z400 for two weeks. After a clean install with Win 11, it would reboot with the fateful "A Disk Read Error Occurred" message. I couldn't fix it, despite dozens of attempts in different ways, changing memory, SSDs, and Win 11 ISOs. Even the same installations mounted on VMs worked perfectly, leading me to suspect a fatal error with the Z400. Discouraged, I turned to the Z600 and unfortunately discovered it was suffering from the exact same problem. I was desperate, but then over the weekend I stumbled upon this forum!

Tomorrow, I'll try the solutions suggested here and update you on the tests I manage to do. I sincerely hope this post stays open and can host new solutions.

Thanks to everyone who wrote in and tried to contribute to this problem.

[vanadu]

Capitan_baudo - I created that other post you mentioned, and I'm assuming you found it because it had Z600 in the title. I really hope this thread isn't the end of this discussion -- I do believe there are more people using Zx00 machines than just this handful of folks on this thread. 

I do intend to continue the work on this with my Z600. But since it's my main machine, I need to do the work on this issue while I'm still using the machine for my daily bread. SDH suggested creating a new thread for this a few days ago, so here it is:

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Business-PCs-Workstations-and-Point-of-Sale-Systems/Z200-Z400-Z600-Z80...

I created a new thread because the one linked to above only references Z800 machines and because the solutions provided 1) don't include all the scenarios in which this boot fail could occur (i.e. in-place upgrades, W11 builds with no backup). I'm afraid this issue might be with us for a while, so I figured it's best to have an overarching thread that is easier to find for people with other Zx00 machines than the Z800. How about if you introduce yourself in that thread and maybe we can take it from there? I'm not sure how many of the other participants in this thread are going to be active moving forward, but I'm sure you and I will be since we appear to depend on these machines more than others.