Knowledge Base Article: 000335250

Behaviour of PowerPath for Windows install, uninstall or upgrade in a boot from SAN environment
(000335250)
Primary Product : PowerPath for Windows
Product : PowerPath for Windows, PowerPath for Windows 5.7 SP1, PowerPath for
Windows 5.7 SP2, PowerPath for Windows 5.7, PowerPath for Windows
6.0, PowerPath for Windows 5.7 SP3, PowerPath for Windows 5.7
SP4,PowerPath for Windows 6.0 SP1

Version: 11 Article Type: Break Fix Audience: Level 30 = Customers Last Published: Thu Feb 27 20:31:14 GMT 2020

Summary:
Issue: To describe the behavior of PowerPath for Windows installation, upgrade or uninstall in a Boot from SAN environment.

After installing, uninstalling or upgrading PowerPath in a boot from SAN environment OS cannot see devices after reboot.

Resolution: In a boot from SAN environment uninstallation of PowerPath requires two reboots
Note:In case of 2K16 windows operating system installation and uninstallation of Powerpath requires two reboots
Please refer KB(514436) for more information

Note that if uninstalling PowerPath in a boot from SAN environment from the "Programs and Features" interface the uninstall will display a dialog
window with the information that two reboots are required. If using the <PowerPath Installer Executable> /r or the PPREMOVEALL Command Line
switch then this is not displayed.

The second reboot sometimes comes in the guise of an involuntary blue screen after the first reboot. Further reboots/bluescreens have been observed
- up to 3 before the host correctly booted.

During an install of PowerPath for Windows (both local boot and boot from SAN) PowerPath enables/installs the Microsoft MPIO feature. This is
required by PowerPath for normal operation. When it enables/installs the feature it configures it appropriatly. Different versions of PowerPath may
require this configuration to be different.

Upgrading PowerPath
Before upgrading PowerPath it should be noted that the following items should be followed.
1. Full administrative access to C:\program files\emc\powerpath or C:\program files\emc\powercommon is required.
2. Full administrative access to the registry is required.
3. Certain Anti-virus programs have been known to limit access to changes to device drivers - removal of antivirus programs (especially antivirus filter
drivers) may be required. Removal of the antivirus rather than just disabling the services may be required as interference has been found to happen
due to the presence of the Antivirus filter drivers.

After allowing for the above a safe way of upgrading PowerPath for Windows in a Boot From SAN environment is as follows.

1. If there are a lot of devices with four or more paths then reducing to a single path will speed up the process considerably.
Note this is optional and should leave the primary boot path as specified in the HBA Boot BIOS Active.
If path reduction is undertaken then a reboot to test single path with the old version of PowerPath should be done.
2. Uninstall PowerPath.
Methods include:
Uninstall from Programs and Features.
Use <PowerPath Installer Executable> /r
Use CLI command
<PowerPath Installation Executable> /s /v"/L*v C:\logs\PPremove.log NO_REBOOT=1 PPREMOVE=CLEAN"
If on Windows 2008 R2 if using the PowerPath 6.1 installation executable then use CLI command
<PowerPath Installation Executable> /s /v"/L*v C:\logs\PPremove.log NO_KBCHECK=1 NO_REBOOT=1
PPREMOVE=CLEAN"
3. Reboot.
4. Reboot again
5. At this stage the Microsoft Visual C++ redistributables can be uninstalled, the attached zip file may be used to facilitate the removal of
only the following versions 8.0.59192, 8.0.59193, 8.0.61000, 8.0.61001. Note that some or all of these may be present.
6. Uninstall/disable the Microsoft MPIO feature. Note that if this on Windows 2016 then the MPIO feature will need to be
reinstalled/re-enabled prior to installing PowerPath.
7. Reboot.
8. Reboot again
9. Install the new version of PowerPath.
10. Reboot.
11. Reboot again
12. If Path reduction was undertaken at step one then bring back the removed paths and scan for hardware changes in the device manager.

Note 1: Under certain circumstances the MPIO feature may need to be enabled immediately before the installation of PowerPath especially in a Boot
from SAN environment and the PowerPath install to be carried out before rebooting again.

Note 2: The reboots above may result in blue screens (BSD) when coming back up. This can be completely normal. And may occur more than once.

Note 3: Windows 2008 R2 requires Microsoft hotfixes 4474419 and 4490628 prior to installing PowerPath 6.1 or above. Note that these require
Windows 2008 R2 Service Pack 1.

The MPIO feature can be uninstalled in Windows 2008/2008R2 using the programs and features interface. To remove it in Windows 2012/2012R2 the
 following PowerShell command may be required. "Disable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName MultiPathIO"

Further Information. After each complete double boot cycle all of the devices are enumerated by the PnP manager and if you check in task manager
you can see instances (up to 16 at a time) of a process called drvinst.exe. proceeding to the next step (install or uninstall) cannot be done untill all
these drvinst processes complete (and disappear from the task list).

Note 4 Windows 2019 Microsoft KB 4487044 will remove the requirement to double boot.

Installing PowerPath
The safest way to install PowerPath is to again have the Microsoft MPIO feature uninstalled and the host rebooted so that the PowerPath install can
configure MPIO appropriately. Note full administrative access is required and antivirus programs may need to be removed (see notes in upgrading
PowerPath)

Note: Under certain circumstances the MPIO feature may need to be enabled immediately before the installation of PowerPath especially in a Boot
from SAN environment and the PowerPath install to be carried out before rebooting again.

Uninstalling PowerPath
The PowerPath uninstall routine does not disable or uninstall the Microsoft MPIO feature and this will have to be done after the reboots to remove
PowerPath manually by the user. Note full administrative access is required and antivirus programs may need to be removed (see notes in upgrading
PowerPath).

Notes: The above upgrade routine was carried out at a customer site successfully on a 4 node Boot From SAN Windows 2008 R2 cluster without any path
reduction.
Note that for each reboot cycle:
Nodes 1 and 2 bluescreened once
Node 3 bluescreened twice on the uninstall steps and three times on the install step
Node 4 bluescreened once on the uninstall steps and did not bluescreen at all on the install step.

All four nodes were identically configured with the same patch level HBA drivers and firmware and boot BIOS settings.

In the above example there were some 194 shared devices and a boot device along with a drive D for each node connected to SAN via 8 paths. It took
the PnP manager around 20-35 minutes to enumerate the devices after each 'multiple' reboot so this needs to be factored in when scheduling a
window for this operation.

Primary Product: PowerPath for Windows

Product: PowerPath for Windows, PowerPath for Windows 5.7 SP1, PowerPath for Windows 5.7 SP2, PowerPath for Windows 5.7, PowerPath for Windows
6.0, PowerPath for Windows 5.7 SP3, PowerPath for Windows 5.7 SP4,PowerPath for Windows 6.0 SP1,PowerPath for Windows 6.0 SP2,PowerPath
for Windows 6.1,PowerPath for Windows 6.2,PowerPath for Windows 6.3,PowerPath for Windows 6.4,PowerPath for Windows 6.5