Vista to Windows 7 Upgrades Fail Because of Intel Storage Driver

For the development process of Windows 7, Microsoft has worked closely with hardware manufacturers in order to ensure seamless compatibility and support for the latest iteration of the Windows client. This strategy has put Windows 7 light years away from Windows Vista in terms of incompatibility issues, but still, there are exceptions “designed” to confirm the rule. According to Microsoft, there are users that experienced failures when upgrading from Vista to Windows 7 because of an Intel storage driver.

The Redmond company noted that the upgrade process would fail with the following error message: “\$windows.~bt\windows\system32\drivers\iastor.sys. Status: 0xc0000359. Windows failed to load because a critical system driver is missing or corrupt.” The machine would subsequently be rolled back to Vista. At fault for the error message and failed upgrades are incorrect versions of the iastor that are referenced during the move to Windows 7.

Microsoft hasn’t produced an update or a hotfix designed to resolve this particular issue. Users affected by this specific problem will have to manually resolve it in order to be able to upgrade from Vista to Windows 7. Fortunately enough, the Redmond company did detail the necessary steps in KB 2008373. You will be able to find them included bellow.

“1. Access Driver Repository Folder under C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository and move any folders that contain the file: iastor.inf to a temporary location.

2. Search for references to iastor within the oem inf files in the c:\windows\inf folder - Example Command: findstr /i /c:"iastor" %windir%/inf/oem*.inf.

3. Make a note of the oem##.inf files reported where ## is a numeral. Move the oem##.inf and corresponding oem##.pnf from c:\windows\inf folder to a temporary folder.

4. Delete $~bt, $~LS and $~Upgrade folders from c:\ drive if they exist

5. Download and install the latest version of the iastor.sys driver from Intel website on the Vista machine.

6. Start the Windows 7 upgrade process. It should complete successfully now.”