Disabling Intel Optane when it says "There are no valid disk pairs in your system", and Intel RST

[exseven]

I received one week ago my new laptop a pavilion 15 with the latest i5, and a PCIe® NVMe™ M.2 SDD, very happy with the laptop till I tried to create a dual boot for Manjaro, where it became clear the Optane functionality "hides" the Linux partition for the boot EFI, as it is placed offline.

This is part of the default Optane Setup. Intels manual says:
Only one Intel® Optane™ memory volume is allowed per system. If more than one volume is detected during boot, the second volume will be placed offline

My next step was looking into disabling Optane;

The manual for the software says go to the "Intel Optane Memory" tab and click on disable.

However, when going to the tab the message mentioned is, "Your System is not Optane ready" + "the following requirements were not met" + "There are no valid disk pairs in your system".

My question: Does this mean that Optane is disabled and that I can without any worry disable it from the Bios too?

[banhien]

@exseven 

What is your Pavilion 15-eg0xxx  ? Are you sure it does have Optane pre-installed ?

Regards.

[exseven]

Hi Banhien ,

Thank you for your response!

The laptop is the HP pavilion 15-eg0847nd 

The drivers of Intel RST VDM are visible in device management, the RST is mentioned in the BIOS and the Optane Memory and Storage management was preinstalled

And when you look at the first tab you can see the SSD with (system) which indicates its actively seen and controlled by RST according to the guideline

[banhien]

@exseven 

Its specs

        https://support.hp.com/gb-en/document/c06982227

which says nothing about Optane. If it does have, Device Manager should show Optane in Disk Drives.  Message "Your System is not Optane ready" may also explain this.

Regards.

[exseven]

Dear Banhien,

Thank you for the confirmation, which I think is good news! Even though the behaviour is the same, but caused by the Intel RST.

In the Bios it says (under Configurations) >UEFI HII Configuration > Intel (R) Rapid Storage Technology > Non-Raid Physical Disk: PCIe 0.0 WDC <SSD name> > Drive details

And within the Device Manager >Storage Controllers >Intel RST VMD Controller 9AOB (TGL) and Intel RST VMD Managed Controller 09AB

As such is my question, how can I remove RST?

I can uninstall the drivers but is this enough and can this be done safely?

My Computer is still in "everything is new stage" as such I have no worry of losing data and the digital key of Windows has been backed up too, to allow a clean install if needed.

Appreciate your knowledge!

[banhien]

@exseven 

The following way is a safe way:

         https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-hardware/uninstalling-the-intelr-rapid-s...

Regards.

[exseven]

Hi Banhien,

Thank you for your reply! but the described solution does not work.

I uninstalled the 2 drivers but this led to the boot to be removed or inaccessible. Windows was able to restore itself and I was as such back where I started.

This computer is of course  a new computer and it seems to run drivers unique to Intel 11th generation processors

The Drivers are called Intel RST VMD Controller 9AOB (TGL), and Intel RST VMD Managed Controller 9AOB

Looking at the driver details it did show the inclusion of an Optane DLL. The version of the driver was 18.0.1.1138

Searching for the exact details, this page showed up:
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000057787/memory-and-storage/intel-optane-m...

With completely at the bottom the note under "Step 4: in the operation system"

• The Intel® RST VMD driver should not be uninstalled/removed after installation. This could result in an Inaccessible Boot Device blue screen and potential data loss.
• VMD device is always enabled on a platform where VMD device is deployed. There is a possible configuration where VMD does not own any device. This is an empty VMD configuration. As a result of this, the RST VMD driver should always be installed on such a platform to avoid a yellow bang device in Window’s Device Manager

I have today done a system reset but the RST was immediately installed,

Can this be disabled or removed or configuration changed in BIOS that it will stop affecting the partitions and boot management?

[NotDetected]

I have the same issue on a Pavilion 15T-eg000 COG and need to disable RST.

[exseven]

It's very silent! I would appreciate if a i5-1135g7  or Intel VMD driver specialist would give his or her opinion. My findings or conclusions might be incorrect but there seems nobody with the knowledge? Is it too new?