X99 Chipset platform no longer supported? (Solved)

Hello all,

This is my build.

Long time and stable partner to my online and offline endeavors through the years. And I really don’t want to part with it, because in all honesty there simply is no need to do so yet.

Now that being said, Windows 10 decided to enforce upon me the 20H2 version, and then all hell broke loose.

Initially I couldn’t install the chipset driver that I got from here.

So I reverted to an older version of said driver that could actually install. But that resulted with a week of blue screens. I haven’t seen one since I bought the machine. One of the main reasons I got ECC and Xeon was to have stability.

Long story short, I talked to Asus, which basically told me to hide back to my corner, because apparently a server grade motherboard of 2015 has a chipset that is no longer supported by them. This is NOT the Asus that I came to respect in the past. In the past years they would actually sit down and write a driver for you if the need was raised. Today? They couldn’t give a damn.

Intel has dropped support you see, and if you want to even contact them to ask for a workaround, you are out of luck, since there isn’t even the option to do so on their website for the X99 platform…

If someone told me that by spending somewhere around the 1,3K mark in 2015 only to have them be unsupported less than five years later (mind you, last chipset driver is 2016/07/04 per the Asus site above), I would probably tell them to get that tin foil hat off. Ha, jokes on me now. Weirdly enough I am not the one laughing though.

I find this completely unprofessional on both Intel’s and Asus part. We are talking about server grade components here, that should to the very least have a decade of driver support if not more.

Now what’s the problem you may ask? Fair question.
Well for once, the usb 3.1 support is out of the window, all usb hubs are being treated as 2.0, and the speeds are down to minimum. Then it’s the device manager that looks like this.

Anyone here has any thoughts that might help me by the way?

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  1. Replace the motherboard with another that is still supported
  2. Buy Windows Enterprise LTSC, that won’t update your version, just security updates
  3. Depending on what is used for, use a Linux distro
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Thank you for the reply. LTSC is also one of my thoughts.

As for new motherboard. That means a new CPU, and that defats the purpose of me wanting to keep this one.

Linux distro is something I have been using all the time for years now, and naturally there are no such malarkeys there. Everything is as it should be, perfect. But I need to have a bare metal W10 install as well sadly (no VMs), so windows is a one way street for me. At least for now.

Now that being said, thank you for your input, and it’s a solid response if I don’t get anywhere else.

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You have a system that’s nearly 7 years old and expect a company to write you custom drivers? Sorry, but that’s absolutely absurd. Computers have from the beginning never been intended to be something that has useful life of more than 5 years (and that doesn’t include new software/firmware updates - just the fact the hardware will be semi-useable for 5 years). Seriously just upgrade. I spent $2000 on a system just 3 years ago, and have already spent another $2500 this year to build a new one… because I’m realistic.

Your opinion of course. As well as your own point of view. One that I do not share, naturally. As for the characterization absurd, honestly not needed.

I am asking for feedback on how to solve, if I can my situation. And besides the upgrade option which I have excluded on my original post, I see nothing on your end on that matter besides frustration about my choices. Uncalled for.

Regardless I wish you well.

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Obviously I am referring to some refurbished, that will provide a 6m warranty without the need to upgrade the rest of the system. I wouldn’t suggest a used one from private seller, unless you can trust them.

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If the only problem is the usb ports, maybe a cheap usb pci-e add in card could be a fix? If you have any free pci-e slots that is?

For older hardware, as mentioned by others, Linux is the best bet. But I understand that you need a bare metal Windows machine.
Is it for gaming or work? Cause if it’s for gaming, then perhaps a new machine with an ryzen 3600/5600x for that. And then your X99 system can be dedicated to Linux.

I understand your frustration. Turning perfectly functioning hardware into e waste because of a software update, is incredibly stupid.

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you cant turn driver signing off for the usb ?..
or run the installer in compatibility mode?.

if not then try and track down which update that came with the o.s is causing the issue and remove it if possible… you may be able to roll back windows also, then set updates to postponed allowing you to install the old version of the driver.

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What I did was to follow @lI_Simo_Hayha_Il advice, and got rid of the 20H2 with an Enterprise LTSC edition. Obviously I didn’t even need to install a chipset driver, as it gets fetched from the Windows update automatically on it’s own.

So USB 3.1, Xeon, root ports etc, are all visible from the OS, and operating as normally. It’s not a huge loss on my end, since the PC is being used for work, and all the software I need is being run exactly the same as before.

I cannot thank you enough all for your inputs. For once more you prove the great value this forum has through the years.
VERY much appreciated. tips fedora

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While Asus may not directly assist you, other vendors may have released drivers for the same hardware. Download and install SDI tool, lite install. Afterwards, download the “indexes”.

Once done, that will show you all available drivers that can be updated.

You can also attempt to install the drivers from Asus’ website in legacy mode. That should work as well.

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Yeah, that’s also a good point. I will check it out. Thank you.

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I have tried all the Asus drivers.
The ones that are even able to be installed are older ones.

But here’s another thing that just happened.

I made the Enterprise LTSC install, it got in windows update, got all the drivers on it’s own, I just had to install a newer Nvidia driver and the monitor driver and the device manager had zero errors.

I am typing to a friend through discord, talking about how many blue screens I had the past week, with just a browser up, and discord, nothing else, and it happened again. Blue screen.

So I am thinking now out loud, but bare with me here.

What if my SSD is failing?
So I got to intel, and downloaded this tool ( as advised by my Intel SSD support, and it gives me this reading.

So naturally I am buying a new one first thing in the morning, but my rhetorical mostly question still stands.

Since I cannot verify the reason of the blue screens, since the dump files are not being formed by windows (which enforces further my thoughts of the faulty SSD being the culprit here), how likely is that this is reason and that alone, boys and girls?

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looks like its about to die.
back it up now without writing any more data to it if you can.

then run something like crystal disk mark or use the bios nvme? drive check if the options there.
or open a cmd and type: wmic diskdrive get model,status

just to make sure the tool you used isnt erroring.
but back up first.

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I did exactly as you suggested, and thank you so much for the input by the way, here’s the output of crystal disk mark.

Summary

CrystalDiskMark 7.0.0 x64 © 2007-2019 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World: https://crystalmark.info/

  • MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
  • KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes

[Read]
Sequential 1MiB (Q= 8, T= 1): 549.010 MB/s [ 523.6 IOPS] < 15247.72 us>
Sequential 1MiB (Q= 1, T= 1): 499.021 MB/s [ 475.9 IOPS] < 2098.93 us>
Random 4KiB (Q= 32, T=16): 243.996 MB/s [ 59569.3 IOPS] < 8581.02 us>
Random 4KiB (Q= 1, T= 1): 21.823 MB/s [ 5327.9 IOPS] < 186.85 us>

[Write]
Sequential 1MiB (Q= 8, T= 1): 300.350 MB/s [ 286.4 IOPS] < 27692.30 us>
Sequential 1MiB (Q= 1, T= 1): 287.941 MB/s [ 274.6 IOPS] < 3635.13 us>
Random 4KiB (Q= 32, T=16): 93.174 MB/s [ 22747.6 IOPS] < 22422.47 us>
Random 4KiB (Q= 1, T= 1): 22.591 MB/s [ 5515.4 IOPS] < 180.27 us>

Profile: Default
Test: 1 GiB (x5) [Interval: 5 sec] <DefaultAffinity=DISABLED>
Date: 2021/05/26 22:34:42
OS: Windows 10 [10.0 Build 17763] (x64)

What I do not know is what do these data show? Is it actually dying?

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You actually would want CrystalDiskInfo, not CrystalDiskMark. Same person/people, but different tools.

It’ll show you data read/written, time powered on, et cetera.

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Thank you. Here’s the output of that, sadly confirming that the drive is dying.

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I read through this wondering how the hell Windows dropped support for X99 when I just updated to 20H2 on my test bench with an AM3 board that predates X99 by a full 4 years, and got drivers loaded for it immediately from the driver repository. Anyone saying Windows isn’t meant to support hardware for more than 5 years clearly doesn’t know anything about Windows. The entire angle is that it’s got stupid wide compatibility for a proprietary OS… Shit dude there’s 386 hooks still in Windows from nearly 30 years ago just to make sure some stuff works.

A failed SSD makes way more sense. Sucks, but as long as you caught it you can get your data migrated straight over to a new drive and be back to business.

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Yeah, I understand how you feel. And I do apologize for the confusion, I was just reading with what data I had at the time.

One thing that is weird to me, is what people have been reporting, that the 20H2 fetches their chipset driver automatically and not mine, but even so the Enterprise LTSC was able to do so even with the faulty SSD.

I am honestly tired at this point and drained. I have been about this for hours now, and I will simply get a new install tomorrow after I buy a new SSD, and take it from there.

Naturally, I will report on what happened, just in case someone in the future runs into a similar issue.

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WTF are you talking about?

There are still active support contract on computers that were sold in the 80’s.

If this where seen in Linux Release Candidate, it would be a show stopper. They go to great lengths to avoid breaking drivers that have any active users they can identify. That’s Rule #2. Rule #1 is don’t break userspace. Rule #2 if you have to break a driver, you have to have a fix before the breaking change is accepted.

And X99 is still a perfectly serviceable platform (DDR4 4 channel, usb and sata 3. And not just for recyclers and the secondhand market, but I guarantee there are systems critical boxes still running X99.

So yes, I want Asus and Microsoft to stop selling disposable crap. Microsoft to stop offloading so much development to poor-quality third party drivers. I want Intel and Asus to take some pride in their product and yell at Microsoft for breaking things.

Real people rely on these system to important purposes and ends. Stop making excuses for people breaking shit and pretending it’s okay because it makes people throw perfectly good stuff away and consume consume consume, and if it created even a 1 cent increase in stock price the it’s justified.

Edit : In light of the actual problem this may have been an over-reaction. This is a hardware failure, not Asus/Intel/Microsoft’s fault. But I’m leaving it as-is as the sentiment stands. Designing for obsolescence and quick disposal is bad on several levels.

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Or is it purely from the SSD?

I too have the X99-E WS/3.1 with 5960X & 32Gb DDR4 but missing the dying SSD.

Same type of errors but no bluescreens since I havent tried to install any chipset/Asus drivers yet.

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