DDU disabled signature for amd_sata.sys. Use backup and restore first and disable sig check in BIOS if unable to boot

[dontdownload]

I downloaded DDU's latest version last night from Guru3d.com page. I ran it and was instantly unable to boot. Unable to start windows, unable to fix with Windows Repair, System Restore, or command prompt lines. It corrupted my amd_sata.sys driver, which made the MB unable to run my new SSD or HD. Around 5am after a long night of desperately grasping at straws I discovered the "disable signature verification" under windows 7 bootmenu and was finally able to boot and begin rebuilding my drivers. The program apparently trashed the digital signature for the driver.

There appears to be a small number of reputable positive feedback for this program, and I have been unable to find negative feedback out there, which means this post needs to be made. For me it was the same as running a malicious rootkit, trojan or virus which caused me a lot of headache.

DDU should not be trusted in my opinion and I would stick to more reputable and proven software for cleaning your old drivers.

[Wagnard]

I downloaded DDU's latest version last night from Guru3d.com page. I ran it and was instantly unable to boot. Unable to start windows, unable to fix with Windows Repair, System Restore, or command prompt lines. It corrupted my amd_sata.sys driver, which made the MB unable to run my new SSD or HD. Around 5am after a long night of desperately grasping at straws I discovered the "disable signature verification" under windows 7 bootmenu and was finally able to boot and begin rebuilding my drivers. The program apparently trashed the digital signature for the driver.

There appears to be a small number of reputable positive feedback for this program, and I have been unable to find negative feedback out there, which means this post needs to be made. For me it was the same as running a malicious rootkit, trojan or virus which caused me a lot of headache.

DDU should not be trusted in my opinion and I would stick to more reputable and proven software for cleaning your old drivers.

I need more details and precision on this.

Can you provide me the logs of DDU?

It is the first time I hear that DDU could "trash" a driver signature...

[dontdownload]

My computer did have issues but until running DDU I could still operate normally.

I did not have a working System Restore since I had just migrated to a new SSD. Maybe it would have been easily fixed if I did.

I do not have logs because I had problems reinstalling C++ modules and have decided to format and reinstall.

It is possible there was a version issue with my BIOS which then caused DDU to trigger something with the SATA driver. In any case, it was a signature issue with amd_sata.sys that had not cropped up before.

Thanks for your reply and email and I'm glad I'm the only one who has had this problem. However, it is apparently possible.

[Wagnard]

My computer did have issues but until running DDU I could still operate normally.

I did not have a working System Restore since I had just migrated to a new SSD. Maybe it would have been easily fixed if I did.

I do not have logs because I had problems reinstalling C++ modules and have decided to format and reinstall.

It is possible there was a version issue with my BIOS which then caused DDU to trigger something with the SATA driver. In any case, it was a signature issue with amd_sata.sys that had not cropped up before.

Thanks for your reply and email and I'm glad I'm the only one who has had this problem. However, it is apparently possible.

If you ever encounter this again, I would appreciate to have the logs.
Also, not forcing you, I would prefer if you could change the title of your thread a bit. Like Warning, do a backup before or something like that as this
may scare users of for a single issue. Not to mention you seemed to have some issue prior running DDU that *may* have affected the whole process..

For the title, I didn't want to change it myself as it would have been a lack of respect from me imo

[Shady]

Seems hard to take you serious when you can't even take the time to use a proper username, or apparently doing any proper searching;



I guess having a sticky post on the GeForce forums doesn't count as reputable. Hm.

[dontdownload]

My computer did have issues but until running DDU I could still operate normally.

I did not have a working System Restore since I had just migrated to a new SSD. Maybe it would have been easily fixed if I did.

I do not have logs because I had problems reinstalling C++ modules and have decided to format and reinstall.

It is possible there was a version issue with my BIOS which then caused DDU to trigger something with the SATA driver. In any case, it was a signature issue with amd_sata.sys that had not cropped up before.

Thanks for your reply and email and I'm glad I'm the only one who has had this problem. However, it is apparently possible.

If you ever encounter this again, I would appreciate to have the logs.
Also, not forcing you, I would prefer if you could change the title of your thread a bit. Like Warning, do a backup before or something like that as this
may scare users of for a single issue. Not to mention you seemed to have some issue prior running DDU that *may* have affected the whole process..

For the title, I didn't want to change it myself as it would have been a lack of respect from me imo

Thread title has been changed to reflect issue, prevention measure and workaround. Yes the original title seemed alarmist, but it is 100% true. I don't doubt my crash was made possible by preexisting conditions on my Win7 install, but as I mentioned the catalyst was DDU in this case. If it happens to someone again, they can reference this post. Thanks for leaving it up.

[Wagnard]

My computer did have issues but until running DDU I could still operate normally.

I did not have a working System Restore since I had just migrated to a new SSD. Maybe it would have been easily fixed if I did.

I do not have logs because I had problems reinstalling C++ modules and have decided to format and reinstall.

It is possible there was a version issue with my BIOS which then caused DDU to trigger something with the SATA driver. In any case, it was a signature issue with amd_sata.sys that had not cropped up before.

Thanks for your reply and email and I'm glad I'm the only one who has had this problem. However, it is apparently possible.

If you ever encounter this again, I would appreciate to have the logs.
Also, not forcing you, I would prefer if you could change the title of your thread a bit. Like Warning, do a backup before or something like that as this
may scare users of for a single issue. Not to mention you seemed to have some issue prior running DDU that *may* have affected the whole process..

For the title, I didn't want to change it myself as it would have been a lack of respect from me imo

Thread title has been changed to reflect issue, prevention measure and workaround. Yes the original title seemed alarmist, but it is 100% true. I don't doubt my crash was made possible by preexisting conditions on my Win7 install, but as I mentioned the catalyst was DDU in this case. If it happens to someone again, they can reference this post. Thanks for leaving it up.

Thanks, appreciated. And like I said, if you happens to use DDU again, if it work correctly, it would be good to know as it would confirm that it is not corruptting the file directly. f the problem still rise again tho, send me the logs so I can check where things went wrong.

[HaTaX]

I ran into this exact same problem, went to update from Catalyst 15.7 to Crimson 16.6.1 and after removing the drivers using AMD's utility I rebooted in safe mode and ran DDU. After running it, it automatically rebooted and started getting caught looping in the automated recovery console. I saw in the log that it thought amd_sata.sys was corrupted, along with amd_xata.sys as I believe I saw an entry in there for it as well but am not sure.

Anyway, I did disable driver signature checking and was able to boot into windows. From there I went to my device manager to ensure that the SATA controller was using the default Windows 7 driver and not the AMD driver. I also enabled hidden devices from the view menu and removed 'amd_sata' & 'amd_xata' from the non-plug and play devices list. This wasn't enough to get it to boot without disabling driver signatures unfortunately, I had to also go into repair mode and rename those files in c:\windows\system32\drivers to get it to boot normally. I then went into the registry editor and removed the service references to 'amd_sata' & 'amd_xata'.

After all that nonsense I was able to install Crimson 16.6.1 and everything is back to normal.

Of note, I had the AMD SATA drivers installed at one point, but thought I had rolled off of them. I guess just because the device manager doesn't show the drivers are being used doesn't mean they haven't left services & files behind. Additionally I have 2 older files in the drivers directory that don't seem to have a problem; amdsata.sys & amdxata.sys. I'm going to look into these files and if they're actually used now, they're from 3-11-2011 where the amd_sata.sys & amd_xata.sys are from 6-27-2013.

If you'd like the logs from DDU I'd be happy to provide them, I saw a few errors in there where a 'ToString' was called on a Byte object, and obviously there's no direct cast for that data type to a string. Perhaps that threw the flow of things off? Let me know where to send / submit the logs and I'll send them your way.

[Wagnard]

I ran into this exact same problem, went to update from Catalyst 15.7 to Crimson 16.6.1 and after removing the drivers using AMD's utility I rebooted in safe mode and ran DDU. After running it, it automatically rebooted and started getting caught looping in the automated recovery console. I saw in the log that it thought amd_sata.sys was corrupted, along with amd_xata.sys as I believe I saw an entry in there for it as well but am not sure.

Anyway, I did disable driver signature checking and was able to boot into windows. From there I went to my device manager to ensure that the SATA controller was using the default Windows 7 driver and not the AMD driver. I also enabled hidden devices from the view menu and removed 'amd_sata' & 'amd_xata' from the non-plug and play devices list. This wasn't enough to get it to boot without disabling driver signatures unfortunately, I had to also go into repair mode and rename those files in c:\windows\system32\drivers to get it to boot normally. I then went into the registry editor and removed the service references to 'amd_sata' & 'amd_xata'.

After all that nonsense I was able to install Crimson 16.6.1 and everything is back to normal.

Of note, I had the AMD SATA drivers installed at one point, but thought I had rolled off of them. I guess just because the device manager doesn't show the drivers are being used doesn't mean they haven't left services & files behind. Additionally I have 2 older files in the drivers directory that don't seem to have a problem; amdsata.sys & amdxata.sys. I'm going to look into these files and if they're actually used now, they're from 3-11-2011 where the amd_sata.sys & amd_xata.sys are from 6-27-2013.

If you'd like the logs from DDU I'd be happy to provide them, I saw a few errors in there where a 'ToString' was called on a Byte object, and obviously there's no direct cast for that data type to a string. Perhaps that threw the flow of things off? Let me know where to send / submit the logs and I'll send them your way.

Some version of the AMD removal Utility is known to cause this.
Also DDU doesnt require that you use another removing utility.

And yes please send me the DDU logs has it could help identifying possibles issues.

[HaTaX]

Some version of the AMD removal Utility is known to cause this.
Also DDU doesnt require that you use another removing utility.

And yes please send me the DDU logs has it could help identifying possibles issues.

I just sent the logs to your gmail account (at least I believe it's correct, I grabbed it from a GeForce forums post I found). There wasn't any other removing utility used, I only used the uninstaller provided with the drivers themselves by removing them from my installed programs list. (Used the express uninstaller & rebooted) The AMD removal utility wasn't used at all here, just a reboot into safe mode after driver un-installation and then DDU.

Hope the logs reveal something, but I didn't find any references to 'amd_sata' in them.