Glad it worked for you. So-called delayed write "failures" are one of those weird Windows things that in reality may be or not be a real failure of your hardware. As the Microsoft Knowledgebase page you link to says, in typical Microsoft arrogance they admit to a coding error (sort of) say they have a fix for it (sort of) but don't link to the file, say call them, they may or may not let you have the fix and they may or may not charge you for the call. Only Microsoft is big enough to get away with such crap over and over.

I'm glad it worked for you. I'm sorry I was gone for several months and missed your original post about this back in January. I try to always point people to that fix (there is a similar patch for SP2). It seems to cure a lot of ills with Firewire drives. Only downside is a slight performance degradation, but nothing severe enough to interfere with capture or print to tape.

John
Could you please email me the fix.
I tried contacting Bill but Micro$oft Support doesn't work weekends in Australia which is a disgrace.

Thanks

Yeah. Email me to. I'll PayPal you some of what it cost you to get it -- maybe if others do the same we'll all get it for a negligible price :D

info@ideaspora.net

- jim

Have you guys been able to get and install the patch? Microsoft didn't charge me anything so I would be surprised if they charge you. I'm hesistant to send it to anyone since it is not available for download on the page. The patch is still working great for me and I have not had a single Delayed Write Failure since installing it several weeks ago.

John

Well, I have exactly the symptoms described for this fix but I'm having a nightmare getting hold of it because I have to go through Sony Vaio OEM channels as my XP was bundled with my laptops. i.e. Being held in telephone queues on expensive foreign support numbers. If anyone would care to email the hotfix to *removed email address* I'd be eternally grateful and I won't tell a soul.

same here. my vaio is driving me to drinking(more than before) if anyone would be so kind as to make this fix available to me, i'd be eternally greatful

cuervo@newmexico.com

DCV -- any chance you could tell us the filename for the patch you mention? I ask because I'm curious if you got this patch. I haven't installed it yet because once two of the three ADS enclosures I have were taken out of the loop, my problems disappeared. No sense in fixin' what ain't broke, eh?

- jim

Jim,

I don't have access to my laptop with the patch on it right now, but I'll check and reply later. My guess is it probably uses standard Microsoft convention and has the KB article number as the name.

I don't know for the life of me why they don't make this hotfix readily available! As I said before, after two years of suffering with various Delayed Write Failures and drives that mysteriously wouldn't mount, my problems disappeared overnight with this patch. No more failures, everything mounts fine in whatever order I bring it up.

John

For what it's worth I too had experienced the same problem on my Sony Vaio XP after upgrading to SP2 system. I contacted Microsoft support and they gave me a patch that fixed the problem. The patch was also password protected and expired after seven days so I can't pass it along since the password has expired. The patch filename is WindowsXP-KB885464-X86-enu.exe. FYI, I have four EZQuest 120GB and two EZQuest 250GB external firewire drives daisy-chained and it is working great. SIDENOTE: When I mounted the seventh drive in the loop, the problem came back. By removing the seventh drive all worked fine again. I don't know what that was a about but I can live without the seventh drive.
Hope this helps.
Darrell

As I understand it, there are separate issues here -- there's intermittent, though common enough 1394 problems with XP, generally speaking; and then there's an altogether different set of problems with service pack 2. Your patch is an SP2 related issue, not SP1. For a related discussion, look here.

I'm on SP1a and have no intentions of moving "up" to SP2 because of these new problems (for one reason). As of the moment, things for me seem to be winding down to an ADS enclosure issue, and not any of the other links in the chain -- I've had no problems with my new setup, and the difference between it and my previous, buggy situation is the absence of two troublesome ADS enclosures.

- jim

Here, someone again insists it's SP2 that's playing foul, and has a manual fix:

I don't see the link for the file download, but I'll give you the manual way to do this. That is if your fortunate enough to have SP1 drivers available. If not, you can borrow someone else's SP1 CD.
Firewire Fix;
Go to C:\WINDOWS\Driver Cache\i386 & C:\dllcache in SP1 and copy out the
following files
SBP2port.sys is in C:\Windows\System32\Drivers & \system32\dllcache
1394bus.sys is in C:\Windows\System32\Drivers
arp1394.sys is in C:\Windows\System32\Drivers
nic1394.sys is in c:\Windows\System32\Drivers
ohci1394.sys is in C:\windows\System32\drivers
enum1394.sys is in C:\windows\system32\drivers

Copy out the following files to a new folder you can call "Firewirefix," (without quotes)

Stop XP Sp2 from re-installing it's drivers again by:
Renaming the XP2.cab file to (e.g. to XP2old.cab)

Replace the SP2 versions of these files with the SP1 versions in C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers & C:\WINDOWS\system32\dllcache in safe mode.

Go to device manager for your ohci firewire card and update SP2 drivers to the SP1 drivers by pointing to Firewirefix folder.(warning message normal) Reboot.
Treeman

For some real fun, check this out.

Hmmm... I'm having these problems with a USB-2 drive. And I'm using SP1, so the hotfix won't install.

Anyone else have a USB-2 drive disappear?
Are these issues related or unrelated? Has anyone isolated exactly which of the hundreds of updates and hotfixes to SP1 is the likely culprit?

What a &^%$#@! mess!

Brian,

The issues I was having were not limited to Firewire. I also had Delayed Write Failures and disappearing drives on USB 2.0 as well. I had dumped Firewire 400/800 and went with USB 2.0 thinking my problems would go away. Boy was I in for a surprise, it got worse! The patch I've mentioned, though limited to SP2, did finally fix the problems. You're right, it was a terrible mess that caused damage to my mental health as well as my business before I finally got it under control.

John

DCV,

O.K., that is indeed good to know.
Any other problems with SP2? I keep hearing horror stories, especially with respect to DSL connections.

Are you a happy SP2 user now?