PC Crashes halfway through any major driver install/update.

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DrSvengali

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Oct 13, 2013
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Hello

This is more of a general question but one that i am often desperately seeking an answer to, I have had my PC for about a year and a half now and always from the very beginning i've had issues with installing any major drivers on it. I Built the PC myself specs are below.

Basically whenever i try to update my GPU or Soundcard drivers the installation gets about halfway through and the PC just freezes. Nothing else happens the screen just freezes and i cant move my mouse, no keyboard commands work... Nothing the only way out is to use the reset button my my PC and obviously this is not a healthy way of doing things. I recently managed to update my gpu somehow magically the new drivers installed but they were the latest beta drivers and even still after the installation competed when i pressed the finish button the PC crashed which forced me to reset it but after the reset the GPU drivers finally worked.

More recently i got an update for my Soundcard and after trying to use the update software which led to a crash (as per usual) i downloaded the update from the manufacturers site and uninstalled the driver and updated it manually.... again which led to another crash... and no matter what i try to do it always crashes and will not install...

I am usually quite competent when it comes down to PC's but this has me baffled...

I always make a Restore Point before major driver modification so that i can always go back to a working condition... This is important because i use the PC daily for University work.

Any suggestions at all would be very helpful

Thanks in advance

Jon.

PC Specs:

OS - Windows 8.1 64bit
MOBO - Asrock z77 Extreme 4
CPU - i7 3770k
GPU - XFX 7970 Black edition
PSU - Corsair 760i
Cooler - H100i
SSD - Samsung 840 Pro 285gb
HDD - Seagate Barracuda 1TB
Sound Card - Creative SoundBlaster Z
RAM - 32GB HyperX

 
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DrSvengali

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Thanks very much for getting back to me. I have considered reinstalling windows a lot in the past, however I use the PC a lot on a daily basis for my University work which means i would have to reinstall a lot of large CAD programs and my internet is very slow to download them. So this is my I wanted to keep re-installing windows as a last resort. Is there is anything else you or anybody else could suggest to try before committing to a clean re-install.
 
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Darkbreeze

Darkbreeze

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Here's my thought. If it was just one piece of hardware that continuously had issues with driver installations, I'd agree that perhaps it's just a hardware failure or "issue" with the drivers for that component. Since your issues span more than one hardware component, and have pretty much never been resolved since day one, it almost has to be due to the OS not having been correctly installed the first time or just something that went wrong during the installation process or something to do with problems in your BIOS version, see below.

You can try running an SFC/Scannow and see if there are OS issues that can be resolved that way. Sometimes it clears things right up, sometimes it doesn't do squat. I'd also run a couple of other tests to ensure there is not a hardware issue that's causing it rather than something with the OS. Run all of the following after doing the OS scan. Do all of them before attempting to play with the drivers some more. Ignore that it says Windows 8, it's the same process for 7.


SFC/Scannow: http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/3047-sfc-scannow-command-run-windows-8-a.html


Seatools for windows (Run on all attached drives. Run the short drive self test and long generic. Drive brand does not matter.): http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/item/seatools-win-master/


Memtest86 (Run 7 full passes on each module individually if you have more than one module otherwise you'll get false errors.): http://www.memtest86.com/download.htm



A faulty BIOS or a BIOS version in need of updating may also well be your issue. This I'd actually do before ANY of the above. Check your BIOS version and if it's older than version 2.9 then update it to the most recent version manually using one of the three listed methods:

http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z77%20Extreme4/?cat=Download&os=BIOS


Lastly, I'd go to the motherboard product page, and starting with the chipset drivers, reinstall ALL of the relevant drivers. Installing the chipset drivers first may correct further driver installations. The rest of the drivers are here. Your system may never have had the INF drivers installed which I believe is the Intel chipset drivers.:

http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z77%20Extreme4/?cat=Download&os=Win764

 
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DrSvengali

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Oct 13, 2013
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Hello again and thank you for the indepth guide i really do appreciate your assistance. I Started off with flashing my BIOS to the new 2.9 firmware (its was 2.7 before) and I also reinstalled the chipset and the rest of the drivers. However this did not lead to any success once again my Soundcard Drivers crashed the PC mid installation.... (it is really aggravating now...) After this I did the SFC/Scannow test and it came up saying that everything is fine. Then i ran the SeaTool tests which also said that everything is fine. I did not do the Memtest because I couldn't figure out how it works, but at this point i don'r believe it will make much of a difference.

So i guess im gonna have to reinstall windows...

Ill try that within the next few days, ill just have to spend some time backing up important documents, This will also probably be a good opportunity to add another SSD and RAID0 them, i always wanted to. I just have a few more questions regarding my re installation.

I only really use the SSD for the OS and a couple of programs that i want to run fast, the rest of my programs and files are on the HardDrive. If i just reinstall windows on the SSD will all the programs and files that are on the HardDrive still work on the new windows install, or will i have to format my HardDrive as well?

Also when i bought my OS it was a CD with the Windows 8 install. When the new Windows 8.1 upgrade came i upgraded at the time for free. If i was to reinstall windows 8 from my CD now, could i still upgrade to windows 8.1 again for free? If not is there another way around this?

Thanks again!
 
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Darkbreeze

Darkbreeze

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Yes, you can always upgrade 8 to 8.1, but it will require doing all the windows 8 updates again until you get to the point where the windows store allows the 8.1 update.

Any installed applications or games should be reinstalled. Steam games and things of that nature are fine to install on the non-OS drive, but any actual applications, I'd install on the OS drive. This could be a source of issues. While you CAN install applications and games to drives other than the OS drive, in my experience, aside from instances like steam where it's common to install them to another drive due to size restrictions, it often just leads to problems since the OS expects application supporting files to be accessible somewhere on the boot drive. You can make your own decision there.

It might be a good idea, if size is an issue, to simply not use RAID (Which I don't recommend for an SSD anyhow, it's not necessary. Current SSD drives are plenty fast. If redundancy is the purpose, just backup files to another source. SSD's are not good choices for RAID since writes shorten the life of the SSD) and go with a larger, newer SSD.

The Samsung 850 EVO is extremely fast on both sequential and non-sequential reads/writes. It also has a RAPID mode that DRAMATICALLY increases speed in some situations, far beyond what any RAID configuration could provide anyhow.
 
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DrSvengali

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Awesome thanks for the insight, I do know what you mean by RAIDs not being very efficient I just wanted to RAID the SSD's simply because I have an extra Samsung 840 Pro laying around not doing anything, it was an accidental send by amazon and they sent me 2 instead of one so I just kept the second one. So instead of RAIDing them perhaps I should just install it as an additional drive and just put some steam games on it instead? I think that might work.

To be honest I don't have an excessive collection of applications I mainly have CAD software, Rendering software and Adobe Suits. Basically stuff I use for University the rest of the stuff is just games, music, photos, general documents and movies so I could just dump that on the Hard drive.

So yeah again thanks for sticking with me this far, I do greatly appreciate it. I will get to re-installing the OS in the near future and see what happens from then. If it works I will mark your original answer as the solution. Thanks!
 
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DrSvengali

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One other thing, I don't know if its related or not but iv also recently got this weird thing where from a cold boot quite often the PC would start and I can see all the fans running the HDD light flashes a little like normal but my screens remain black and nothing happens at all, to get it to work I have to push the reset switch and then it boots fine. I am hopeful that the OS reinstall will clear that problem as well.
 
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Darkbreeze

Darkbreeze

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THAT probably has nothing to do with the OS, and may or may not be related to your current issue. I'd go forward with the OS installation according to the CLEAN install link I gave you, and if the issue persists we can address it at that time. Make sure to follow ALL of the steps including deleting ALL existing partitions and installing to the unallocated space, allowing windows to create the necessary boot and system partitions according to your bios settings.
 
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DrSvengali

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Oct 13, 2013
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Hello again.

Well earlier today I did the full Clean install of windows then updated to windows 8.1 and the first thing i installed were the motherboard drivers then i attempted to install the GPU and soundcard driver. The motherboard drivers installed fine no problem. But the graphics card and sound card drivers ones again made the PC crash half way through the installation process... I am really clueless to what to do now. Previous i would just reset the pc to an earlier point and it would still be usable but now i dont know what to to at all....

EDIT: Just tried the beta drivers for the GPU, they seemed to have installed fine, the sound card drivers are still not having it though....
 
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DrSvengali

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Yes that is where i downloaded the drivers, here is the actual page: http://support.creative.com/Downloads/welcome.aspx

and there is no option in the BIOS to disable onboard sound. But when i had it installed the first time i built the pc it didnt need it doing it just installed the software and then i just changed the output in the sound manager.

EDIT: I found how to disable the onboard audio in the BIOS which i did but the the driver still crashed the PC halfway through...
 
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Darkbreeze

Darkbreeze

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Then, and keep in mind this only a guess based on where we've gone with this so far, I'd guess that it's likely, even probable, that there is an issue with the soundcard. Try removing the soundcard from the system and rebooting. Then, install the SoundBlaster Z package with the card NOT installed. Then shut down, install the card and boot the system to see if it worked out. If not, I'd either RMA or replace the card.

It's possible the card has a hardware issue that was responsible for problems with anything connected to the PCI circuit including your graphics card. It's also possible that it's not the problem. That's the direction I'd go though since all else has failed. It may even be a motherboard issue.
 
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DrSvengali

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Oct 13, 2013
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Well in a fortunate turn of events I found the CD that came with the SoundCard and I thought that i'd give a try to installing the drivers from the CD (I mean at this point why the hell not...) So I did and Success! the drivers installed no problem. Then it prompt me to update with the auto update feature in the software which i did, and that also worked! So I am quite happy now, though I dont really see why the drivers that I downloaded from the site gave me so much problems...

But anyway I think that is sorted now, and I am very greatful for your input and advice. However Im still not sure whether or not the problem of the PC crashing from a cold boot is fixed itself or not, because I have not yet had the chance to start if from a cold boot since I re-installed windows today.

Do you have any ideas what might be causing that, I have read in a lot of places that this could be caused by the PSU, however the PC works fine when it gets going and the PSU is a good quality Corsair 760i Platinum, it also gets enough voltage. I used to have 2 7970's in crossfire and it didnt have that issue then.

But in the mean time I will keep a close eye on it for a few days.
 
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