I noticed some stuttering in gaming recently and before I dug into xperf, procmon, or anything else, I opened Event Viewer, ’cause it’s there for a reason.
Lo and behold, Event ID 157 errors were occurring at the same time I noticed stuttering in games. “Disk 20 has been surprise removed.” and so forth.
So that’s awesome right? Normally with this I’d be freaking out that my motherboard or disk was going bad. But, that’s kinda a high value in disk land for a workstation, let’s take a look at Device Manager.
I do have a few SSDs. But I don’t have a bunch of drives named xvd….or do I?
So I started poking around in Device Manager, the properties of one of the Xvd’s specifically. It’s an interesting glimpse into how Microsoft Store game apps work actually. What’s happened is, I’m using the Microsoft Store with Xbox Game Pass. And the games install to a directory but are contained in vhd files. Sort of like a hyper-visor might run a virtual machine. But instead, they are just disk containers for games. If you show hidden devices in Device Manager, you’ll note a disk controller named “Xvdd SCSI Miniport” in the Storage controllers section.
The random disks being surprise removed seem to be reflected inside the Events tab of this device.
So, what’s the fix for gamers who don’t want stuttering while these disks are being surprise removed? I’d expect disabling the Gaming services in service manager would do the trick. I think the removals are game updates or licensing validation checks happening. All the network traffic for the Microsoft store games is encrypted, so who knows.
Until next time,
Jeff
Credit to Reddit for some of the information here and here.
hi ,
i have tons of them and have strange problem with my pc too . windows game pass too . it crash my other games to desktop while playing . i can see with latencymon a tons of pagefault error in origin for example et sysport is going far too crazy / global system problem now …. i hate the way they handle it . it feel like i have a virus in my system . i will surely stop the rental of this service cause it is too invasive and buggy for my other games .
yeah I was really surprised this is how the windows store games really worked..
They are used 100% for Xbox game files through game pass. Its not specifically for “windows store” per se but for the integration of Xbox Live and for the Xbox Play Anywhere games. In essence they are virtual files on a virtual device, therefore you get the ‘addition and deletion’ of these. I have had the service for a good year almost now and not 1 issue, so im not sure why you are getting these issues and maybe other people as well. Windows store apps that do NOT use Live/Game services, do not use this Xvd format but a format that does NOT allow you to see the files in said folders. Apparently for security issues, malware/viruses, this blocks all access to these folders.
Oh interesting, thank you for the reply!. Ill see about updating this post. I did notice the Store WinDBG Preview did some weirdness with file systems, but I never circled back to check on the xvd status to see if I could tie them together (having 10 installed games doesn’t make it any easier to really mess with either) 🙂
Sorry my blog isn’t telling me people reply. 🙁
I found Origin was playing a video ad in the background a while back, even when minimized to systray…
I don’t let it run unless I’m running one of their games now.