Microsoft Releases Update for Windows 7 to Prevent Disk Corruption in Case of Hibernation or Crash

Problem Symptom:
Consider the following scenario:

• You have a computer that is running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2.
• You attach a hard disk drive that has more than 2 terabytes of disk space to the computer.
• You configure the operating system to save dump files to a volume of the hard disk drive. Some data of the dump file is offset at a disk offset greater than the 2 terabyte address of the hard disk drive.
• The operating system crashes, generates a Stop code error message, and saves memory data to a dump file.

In this scenario, one or more volumes of the hard disk drive may be corrupted. Additionally, all data on these volumes are lost.
This issue also occurs when the operating system enters into hibernation and generates a Hiberfile.sys file that is at a disk offset greater than the 2 terabyte disk offset of the hard disk drive.
If the corrupted volumes include the system partition, you cannot start the computer

Cause:

This issue occurs because of the crash dump disk driver (Diskdump.sys) cannot address more than 2 terabytes of disk space.
The Diskdump.sys driver can address up to 2 to the power of 32 sectors. If the sector size is 512 bytes, the driver can address up to 2 terabytes of disk space. If the actual offset is larger than this limitation, the driver incorrectly truncates the offset and saves data to a wrong location. Therefore, one or more volumes on the disk are corrupted.

Solution:

Download the update KB2249857 using following links:
Windows 7 (32-bit)
Windows 7 (64-bit)
Windows Server 2008 R2 (64-bit)
Windows Server 2008 R2 (IA-64)
Windows Embedded Standard 7 (32-bit)
Windows Embedded Standard 7 (64-bit)

Posted in: win 7