Hi everyone,
I’m having a strange problem while trying to get a ReadyCache drive running on an older Athlon II system with an AMD 785G chipset (running Windows 7 64bit). I’ve installed the drive and it’s seen by the AHCI controller and Windows as the correct drive type and using the correct name. And the ExpressCache software appears to be finding it and creating the partition. However, once the ExpressCache loading screen shows up after the first boot, it appears to hang. I’ve left it on with the green bar scrolling along the bottom of the loading window for more than 12 hours now with no luck.
So far to resolve this, I’ve tried removing the old IDE DVD drive, removing the add-in firewire controller, changing the SATA port it’s using, disabling the EC firmware (used to activate the fourth core on my Athlon II x3), and removing all USB devices except for the Logitech wireless transciever for my mouse and keyboard. I’ve also disabled all of my media programs at boot and turned off the firewall temporarily in case it was blocking something. I completely uninstalled and reinstalled the ExpressCache after each of those steps, but I get the exact same results each time.
The system is basically down to motherboard, TV tuner (it’s a living room media center), hard disk, and readycache. Oh, there is a floppy drive as well, for some reason. I’m going to remove the floppy and the TV tuner this afternoon and see if either works, but they seem like longshots to me.
Nothing seems to be working. It’s puzzling, since it does appear to find the drive and partition it, and the ExpressCacheApp.exe is using anywhere from 1% to 7% of CPU constantly. So it’s trying to do something, but it never times out or gives an error message to indicate what’s wrong. I’m running out of ideas at this point, so if anyone has a suggestion, please let me know.
Update: Ok, I’ve removed the SATA DVD burner, PCIe TV tuner, and floppy drive. Hardware wise it’s now just a power supply, MB/CPU/RAM, 1TB WD Green series hard disk, ReadyCache, and Logitech unified tranceiver for the keyboard and mouse. In additiona to disabling Media Center, I’ve now also removed PlayOn and disabled my firewall and anti-virus. I’ve also verified that IE 9 is enabled, checked that all Windows updates are installed, and updated my AMD drivers for the motherboard to the latest versions. Still no luck.
After removing the ExpressCache software, downloading a fresh copy and reinstalling, I still have the exact same problem. No errors are showing in the system logs either. This is the most rock solid system I own, so I’m baffled at this point by the lack of progress.
Update 2 (2/24/2012): I’ve solved my issue. It turns out my .Net installation was damaged or an incompatible version. After installing the latest 4.5 release and then removing/reinstalling ExpressCache it began working perfectly. Already at 24GB in the cache and geting really snappy responses from all of my regular programs after a few boots.
