Intel Rapid Start Technology (IRST / IRSTRT) on Samsung Notebooks

Hibernate mode also won't enable before installing any Rapid Start stuff. So I'm stuck with Rapid Start and can't even evaluate other options.

The webcam driver isn't required, at least with Skype. Skype can see me through the cam without installing any Cyberlink stuff.

Okay, these were the final tests. I haven't found an easy way to backup that recovery partition. The DVD contains a Windows 7 setup, so that must be good, too. I have now deleted all partitions and installed my Windows. After installing all drivers from the system software backup, my Rapid Start partition was automatically created. So everything's fine now.

 

I might add the following tip which I used before making a backup image.
To delete the hibernate partition:
Turn off rapid start by sliding the bar in easy settings. Restart.
Run elevated command prompt
Diskpart
Select Disk #
Select Partition # (hibernate partition careful)
Delete Partition overrride
To recreate the partition change the slider back in easy settings and reboot.

 

So does the little blue Rapid Start Manager start up properly for everybody when the computer powers on?

Openning the manager triggers the UAC alert, and I suspect that that's what's stopping it from autoloading as per taskscheduler instructions.

I've looked up an instruction set on how to schedule a task bypassing UAC, but it's a little involving requiring things to be run from a command prompt and all. Just wondered if you guys ran into similar problems. I'm pretty sure the service still runs even if the manager doesn't work... but I'm not sure if it uses its default timer value or not.. whatever that value is.

The first time I went through the instructions John posted, the Rapid Start Manager had the slider on Zero. I have noticed in the past before I came across this thread that the computer takes longer to start and attributed that to hibernation mode so it's probably working behind the scenes..

 

I had a lot of problems getting IRST to work properly on my X4C (annoying since after teething problems on the X3B it has behaved impeccably). In fact, I'm still only 90% successful because, although it starts, there's half a chance that the timer has gone back to zero after a reboot. I think some of the issues are to do with Administrator permissions. I think it needs to run as administrator.

John

 

This may sound like a naive question, but are we sure we even need that Rapid Start Manager running? To me it looks like all it's really needed for is setting the timer to the value we want. After that, I cannot see how the manager would serve any useful purpose.

Disclaimer: I just set my sleep time to 60 minutes, and I have not changed the value of InvisibleMode in the registry. I'll put the machine to sleep overnight, and see what happened to my battery life tomorrow.

 

I will be interested in your findings. The current timer setting is in the registry at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Intel\irstrt\Parameters but it also needs to be known by the firmware (or whatever makes IRSTRT tick) so that it works outside of Windows. There's something that stays awake in the background and decides when to change from sleep to hibernation without Windows knowing about it.

John

 

Looks like my theory was wrong. This morning my battery was at 36%, from 45% when I put the laptop to sleep maybe 20 hours ago. This is is with the timer set to 60 minutes.

 

Thanks for the update.

John

 

I did the counter-test tonight: Put the laptop to sleep with Rapid Start Manager running. This time it went from 75% to 74% overnight. So it looks like you need to have the manager running in order to get the timed switch to hibernation.

P.S.: I am now auto-starting the manager at login via a scheduled task, which is set to run on an Administrators account. Seems to work fine.

 

- IRST needs to be off to disable/enable Windows Hibernate.
- You can actually see if IRST is working. Set the timer to zero (meaning go directly to IRST), when you press the power button to sleep, the power blue will go off, 1 sec later go back on (IRST), then go off again. If the laptop is sleeping only (ie draning), you will not see the second blue light go off.

 

Thanks John for the detailed guide. Very helpful! I've enabled the timer. I cannot disable hibernate (shows firmware doesn't support hibernate). So I think I'll just manually delete hiberfil.sys to gain back the space. Any cons to manually deleting hiberfil.sys?

 

No. It has become a waste of space now you have a hibernation partition.

John

 

My timer was set to 0 by default and I've now set it to 30. Timer setting seems to be surviving reboots.

I'm a little confused by the the timer description (the little ? mark on the timer gui) which says it's the time after which intel rapid start takes over from sleep (if I remember correctly). If it was set to 0 by default, I'm assuming that meant IRST was taking over right after closing the lid. But now it is going to sleep for 30 minutes before IRST kicks in. The wake up time within the 30 minutes still seem about the same. So I'm wondering if it's working properly.

 

I think it's working properly. The time delay is for when IRST (which is running all the time) transitions from sleep to hibernation. Until that timeout happens the RAM is being refreshed so resume is only a couple of seconds. After hibernation cuts in then resume is more like 10 seconds because the RAM contents have to be rewritten from the hibernation partition.

John

 

Thanks for the explanation. I was confused because the default timeout was 0 which should've meant that hibernation kicked in right away. But my wake-up time was still only a couple of seconds. Maybe the IRST default timeout wasn't working properly before setting it manually.

 

So I followed the instructions on the first post to fix IRST on my series 9 NP900X3B. It all went well I thought but I am having some major issues.
I set the timer to 30 minutes as recommended, and when my computer is closed and it enters hibernation, it wont turn on when I open the lid. The power is on but the screen stays off. When I force my computer to reset, it tells me windows has suffered an unexpected shutdown.
This has happened a few times since I went through with this fix. Any ideas as to whats going on?

Also if it makes a difference, my version of windows is a clean install.

 

John, could you help me with the Diskpart commands...?
I assume that diskpart won't "damage" the file system, because it's in ExtremeFFS, a Sandisk proprietary file system, and I won't be able to get it again...
I have a series 5, with a 24 Gb iSSD. I have a 6 Gb hibernate partition, but can't find a way to increase it to 8 (I Have 8 gb of ram).
I think I need to erase the second partition, and create one of 8120 something... Thanks

 

At one stage I was suffering occasional black screens on resume. I discovered that shutting the display, waiting a minute and opening again would fix the problem. However, the problem disappeared, possibly either due to a graphics driver or BIOS update. Note that the BIOS update program, which is a few months old, is not a BIOS update but a program which checks for and manages BIOS updates.

I can't help on ddiskpart (I use Acronis Disk Director) but this thread about the ExpressCache might help in understanding how the iSSD works.

John

 

I have a NP900X3B since launched. IRST used to work great, but starting in July, I started having the same problem as you. If you go in the Event Viewer, you should see a critical error after each crash, some "Kernel-Power." The bugcheckcode sometimes says 119, sometimes nothing, sometimes random. I've played with different video card drivers, during the time have upgraded to the Crucial 256GB (seems slower then the Samsung), but the problem is still there. Now I am thinking it was the Bios upgrade x07 in late June. Hence, I have given up for the time being and using the normal boring Windows hibernate until the next Bios.

 

I think the critical error message is from the fact that the system if forced to shut down improperly i.e. holding down the power button for 5 seconds. If you figure anything out keep us updated..this whole thing is pretty irritating...

 

I am getting a similar problem and deactivated IRST. Everytime I would wake up my machine from hibernate, it would show that windows was restarted and asked to start in normal or safe mode..

 

I get the exact same problem. Every time I but the pc to sleep and I try to start it it says windows did not close properly and I can select normal or safe mode.

I got my 900x4c yesterday and the problem was there from I got it, tried to install recovery partition, but still same problem. Even tried a clean Win 7 installation and manually installed IRST as per instructions in this thread but still the same issue.

I think I also got this problem without IRST installed (regular sleep), but I'll test more.

Anyone else with this issue who has some ideas?

Edit: Just disabled IRST but the problem is still there. If I close the lid, wait a moment and open the lid I see a short flash on the led on the power button (like it tries to wake up), but nothing happens. Then when I press the power button it boots up with the error message that windows did not close properly.

 

John, you're the man!! Last night I finally could create the 8 Gb hibernate partition on iSSD, ONLY with IRST 1.0.0.1007!! It really has that tool to create the partition according to RAM size. The problem is that it's not "registered" as Hibernate partition, ando also de Rapid button didn't appear in Easy Manager... I couldn't install the next version of IRST, maybe because i've already messed-up alot with windows. But tomorrow I'll recover to the factory state and see if it finally uses the hibernate partition.

 

Did you use "Samsung" sleep, or windows? I also have problems with samsung's, but the windows one works just fine.

 

I'm very confused by this thread in that I'm not sure how to proceed. I have a NP900X3C. It came from the Microsoft Store so has their "Signature" OS installation.

In Disk manager, it shows the hibernate partition, and then a recovery partition located above that. I want to delete the recovery partition to regain that storage space and I guess retain the hibernate partition. However I would think that I would need to expand the windows partition - does that require deleting the hibernate partition as well - and then getting it back later?

I would prefer to not re-install windows from scratch - but is that the only way to proceed?

In the windows shutdown it only shows the Sleep and Shutdown options, not a hibernate option - so how do I get it to hibernate?

 

I never had a problem with Windows sleep/hibernate. How are you disabling IRST? Are you disabling it in the Easy Setting?

 

First switch off Intel Rapid Start Technology at the bottom of the General page in Easy Settings. Then do your work on the partitions. Then re-enable IRST in Easy Settings. If that doesn't automatically recreate the hibernation partition then see this post.

No.

When IRST is working properly you just close the lid and the computer will go to sleep and automatically change to hibernation after the time delay you have set using the IRST manager (which should be available as a notification area icon). Unlike Windows hibernation, the computer does not need to wake up to do the transition: The hibernation partition contents are kept up to date in the background. This whole process works outside of Windows so hibernation is no longer offered as a Windows power option.

John

 

Yeah, I just tried to disable it in the Easy settings program. I went back to the store I bought it yesterday and they took a look aswell but couldn't figure it out. Since Samsung support was closed they suggested I take it back with me and come back on Monday (or try calling Samsung support myself).

Very strange, but I can't think what else this could be except a hardware issue as I've tried reinstalling everything several times (Both recovery partition and clean Win7 cd then installed every driver etc) but sleep always behaves the same.

 

John,

Thanks for the instructions. I used the EaseUS partition tool to delete the recovery and hibernate partitions, and then to expand the windows partition. No problems there.

Then I went into the Easy settings, enable the Intel rapid start, and it created a new 4.29 GB partition just above the windows partion - but Disk management shows this as unallocated space. So I guess I need to do something further? The option in Disk management is to create a new simple volume.

Ben

 

Try reinstalling IRST. You may need to first use the older version linked to in my first post (see here). While my IRST (almost) works I'm not planning to zap it and recheck the whole procedure to get it working.

John

 

I went through this four or five times until I found an approach that worked. (I was also getting the "not supported" problem when trying to install Easy Software Manager.)

Each time I deleted partitions, and then went into Easy Settings to enable the Intel rapid start - it would create a "4.29 GB" partition, but it would be "unallocated" space instead of a Hibernate partition. Then one time I turned the rapid start off, and a bit later back on - and then it did create the Hibernate partition just above the top of the windows partition, and just below the previously created unallocated 4.29 GB space.

Getting closer to a solution...

I tried to copy that new Hibernate partition to the unallocated space (where both showed up as 4.29 GB, but it said that the space wasn't large enough.

So then I figured that maybe there was some issue with making the hibernate partition at the very top of the space. So I deleted the Hibernate partion, and expanded the Windows partition back up - but not all the way. I left 8 MB's of unallocated space at the very top. Then after rebooting, etc., and selecting Intel Rapid Start in Easy Settings, it finally created the correct Hibernate partition.

And after that point was also able to install Easy Software Manager as well.

EDIT: I was able to "install" Easy Software Manager, but when I try and run that program I get the same "not supported" error message others have posted about. I actually see the Easy Software Manager Agent Icon down in the status window at the lower right, but get the error if I click on the agent icon.

Note: I only used the Easy Settings that came with my NP900X3C, and used the free tool from EaseUS to manage the partitions.

I still don't see the settings to set the timer to go from sleep to hibernate, but haven't yet tried the registry changes that were referred to in one of your earlier posts.

Ben

 

Thanks for the update. You are nearly there.

John

 

On my installation, it seems to be working and all, but once I got the application out of the invisible mode, every time I click on the icon to adjust the setting, I get an error message that the configuration could not be read and then the application shows up after that. Will have to try to modify some settings to see if they're stored, but if the configuration reading doesn't work, I suppose they won't be.

EDIT: the problem was solved after I modified something and saved the settings. It seems that the installation didn't provide a default configuration file. A confusing choice by Intel, but OK..

 

Check the timer setting after each reboot. I have a similar problem where I get the error message when running Rapid Start Manager (that blue icon) after about 3 reboots and then have to reset the timer.

John

 

It seems that my IRST is working 100% now. I only did 3 things,

1. Make it visible by changing reg key
2. Change the default timer so there is no error on start up
3. Put in a proper admin user (myself) in Task Scheduler for the IRST start up task that Samsung made (it was an invalid account that doesn't even exist before I changed it)

Result: IRST is always running (I've done quite a few restarts) and working. The timer value stays at 60 which I set.

 

Well, thought I was almost there, but even after changing the registry values, still couldn't see the status bar icon. So then removed intel rapid start, etc. to start over. But now, when I try to install intel rapid start, it says that it isn't authorized on my laptop... Evidently there is some magic sequence to when things need to be installed, and I haven't hit upon it. In the intel rapid start directory (version 1.0.0.15 (after unzipping the download), there is a setup executable and also a Inst.exe. Instructions say run the setup (which then invokes the Inst.exe), but I can't run the setup without the error popping up. I can run the Inst.exe, but that doesn't do the scripts that modifies the registry, etc. so really doesn't do the job.

I think I'm also similarly at the point of having done a clear install, so maybe just need to install necessary drivers, etc. in the proper order (if I can figure that out).

Or would I be better off just doing a clean install from here? or trying to do a recover from the files I copied off the recovery partition before deleting it?

Ben

Right now everything seems to work ok, except for the rapid Start stuff.

 

Is this right?!?

I'm on Win7 x64 with IRST 11.5.2.1001 and only have "HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node\Intel\ IRST"
Note the bold on. Also no Paramenters folder inside IRST...

Any ideas?!?

 

IRST refers to the Intel Rapid Storage Technology. The Rapid Start Technology entries are under irstrt.

John

 

I've just found a folder called "C:\Program Files (x86)\Samsung\Fast Flash Sleep Resume" on my X4C. It appears to contain the routine for creating the hibernation partition: A file called "shrinkPartition.FFSR" contains:

And "CreatePartition.FFSR" contains:

The X4C comes with 8GB RAM, which would normally be 8192, so there's some extra space used, perhaps as a cache or status table.

That same folder also contains some Express Cache files (not needed for the Series 9).

John

 

How are you guys deleting the hibernate partition and reclaiming that space. I turned off IRST from the easy software console, rebooted. I then logged in as admin into a command prompt and typed in the commands to delete the hibernate file as shown in the beginning of the thread (step 6), however when i go to DISK MANAGEMENT, i see the Healthy 8 GB partition, when i right click on it, it only shows HELP, no options to delete?

 

From my understanding, its deleting the windows partition for hibernation (which would be tucked away as 8 additional gigs on your C . The partition you are seeing on your partition viewer is a separate partition used by the intel rapid start technology.

 

Are you seeing a healthy partition or 8GB of empty space? However, I would like to understand why you want to disable this feature. For me, IRST (when working) is one of the joys of owning an ultrabook. Resume from sleep in about 3 seconds and resume from hibernation in around 10 seconds and a transition from sleep to hibernation that doesn't require the computer to wake up. Unless you never want to use hibernation (and get about 1%/hour power drain on a sleeping computer) then IRST is the best option. Windows hibernation still needs space on the SSD.

windows does not use a hibernation partition: It uses a file called hiberfil.sys in C:\.

John

 

Wanted to reclaim the 8GB of space, also when my machines goes into hibernate and wakes up - strange behavior occurs. Like windows waking up to safe mode or normal mode screen for a reboot, wifi not working as well. i most likely have to reboot every time post a hibernate. So just want to delete and shut-off.

 

After struggling to get ITST to work, finally just went ahead and re-installed windows from the Samsung Windows Media that came with the NP900X3C. My laptop was one that came from the Microsoft store and so had the "clean" install of Win 7x64. Of course Microsoft's "clean" install had a few applications installed that I'm not sure I want - so I probably could have saved time by doing this at first (instead of trying to clean up their installation).

I think that there are some inconsistencies between the MS Signature installation, and the regular installation that created some of the issues I was having. Easy Software Manager kept telling me to re-install the Intel Rapid start Technology - but the re-installation would fail because "because it wasn't supported on my hardware," and the program wasn't listed as something I could uninstall, and then perhaps being able to more cleanly install it.

After the re-installation of Windows, using some of the applications from my previously saved copy of the drive, etc. I was able to then easily install the updates, and Intel Rapid Start and then edit the registry as John had described, and now it words the way it should!

I did the "sleep" test last night, with the move to hibernate time set at 25 minutes, and it correctly switched to the Rapid Start hibernate, and my battery was only down 1 % overnight.

 

I am having problems getting irst to make a partition for itself. Here are the steps I tried:

-Created an image of disk using Acronis
-Turned off irst via EasySettings (reboot)
-Deleted recovery and hibernate (irst) partitions using EaseUS
-Extended boot partition (C) (reboot)
-Cleared out temp files, etc
-Re-enabled irst via EasySettings, waited while the little green circle spun around, rebooted

Based on all of the above posts this should do the trick, but the software doesn't appear to want to create the new partition. Does anyone have a suggestion as to what might be going wrong? Based on the script/instructions located in the Samsung folder (that John posted earlier), it should be working its magic, correct?

 

Nevermind - turns out I wasn't being patient enough. I clicked cancel instead of restarted right away with the Easy Settings dialog prompted me to and waited until my processor was idle. Checked disk management and there was my partition, right on the end of my newly liberated/extended C drive.

Thanks for the tips, everyone!

 

This software gives more than its fair share of headaches (hence it has its own thread). Some thoughts:

1. Are you running as a user with full admin rights?
2. In ModelEnvironment.ini (in the folder with the configuration software) try setting IsFFSRConfiguredBefore to 0. (It is possible that if you reinstall IRST and/or Easy Settings then it resets this ini file to the unconfigured values).
3. Try running FFSRConfigurer.exe as administrator.

John

PS: I see that these suggestions weren't needed. However, you have a few more steps before you can be sure IRST is properly working.

 

I followed the following steps taken from this url ( Intel Rapid Start Technology - Laptop General Hardware Forum - Laptop - Dell Community) to create my IRST partition. After creating the partition I was able to install the IRST setup that I downloaded from the Samsung website. This was on a Windows 8 install, but it should work on Windows 7 as well.

So the big thing here is getting the 8 gyg iFFS (Intel Rapid Start Technologies) partition on the SSD. If you try, please BACK UP all data before attempting.

1. In Windows click start and right click “computer”, click on “Manage” then click “Disk Manager”.

2. In Disk Manager find a partition that is installed on the SSD, right click it and click “Shrink Volume”

3. Choose 8 gygs for the size of the partition.

Then open a command prompt, click start, search and type in command. Select the command prompt. Type the following commands.

a) Diskpart <enter>

b) Select disk 0 ( select disk 0 means select the first disk, select disk 1 will be the second disk, you need to select the SSD disk)

c) Create partition primary size=8192 id=84

Return to Disk Manager and verify that the SSD partition is still listed and is the correct size. Install the iRST file and see if it now works.

-j

 

So is your setup working properly. The Samsung config that I noted here makes a hibernation partition that is slightly bigger than the RAM size (BTW, I've just looked in my X3B and note that the partition size for 4GB RAM is 4396 MB).

John

 

As far as I can tell it is switching from sleep to hibernate as expected. That being said, my easy settings do not show the option for IRST. I have the IRST manager from intel running in my task bar and that shows up as enabled.



I do still have the problem that others are reporting about the "Open Lid" action not working. I have to press the power button.