Recurring installation of drivers after restart Win 7 Ultimate

[foxdelta]

Hey all,

Reformatted a colleague's PC (Mesh Premier Pro Desktop with AMD Athlon 64 2.0ghz processor, 1GB DDR RAM, Asus motherboard (cant remember serial as am at work atm)) which was a few years old. I have put a retail version of Windows 7 Ultimate on without a hitch. Looking in device manager, there are no yellow exclamation warnings which indicates to me that all drivers are good and installed correctly.

The problem is that every time the PC restarts, it installs drivers for PCI Bridge, audio drivers and a few others. They all install correctly and the PC goes about its business but it is annoying that the PC 'forgets' it has drivers installed already.

Anyone please shed any light on this peculiar issue? I am thinking it could be chipset drivers or the BIOS needs updating or maybe a new CMOS battery required? I would very much appreciate some other views or ideas. I hope to have a crack at it again tonight (UK time) and will hopefully be able to post a solution!

Many thanks for reading.

 

[LookinAround]

Windows reinstalling the drivers when there's no yellow icons? in Device Manager is very weird.

I agree you should try reinstalling the chipset drivers first. you can check BIOS update after if one seems to apply

 

[foxdelta]

Ok Update time....

The Mobo is an ASUS A8V-VM-SE (is it me or do ASUS have quite a way to go to improve their support pages as I had a nightmare on their site?).

I flashed the BIOS with the latest BIOS and that seemed to sort the problem of recurring driver install which is a bonus! There is one lingering problem in that the onboard sound card (shows as HD Audio Controller) is not compatible with Win 7 and so no amount of tinkering would solve it. Frustrating! I googled all night to try various methods but had no joy. Seems a shame that all the other devices are supported by Win 7 aside from the Audio! It shows as a S/PDIF device and it appears that it is working as when you play with the volume settings it appears that there is sound being made but nothing comes out of the speakers. Many people on the various forums I visited said that the device is actually a Realtek ALC660 but there are no compatible Win 7 drivers for it. Tried compatibility mode with XP and Vista drivers - still no joy. I even tried the DriverMax program which told me that the device needed Realtek 0.1.6043 drivers. Tried to install them but the installation failed.

I am all out of ideas apart from probably going to have to get a cheap PCI sound card and admit defeat (but i hate getting beat by these kind of things)......

Any ideas folks?

Many thanks for reading and brain storming!

Regards.

 

[LookinAround]

Hold off on the new sound card just yet..

in general
> Seems you have High Definition Audio (HD audio) on that machine (vs the older AC97 sound standard)
> By definition, HD audio requires TWO audio chips: An HD audio controller and an HD audio device where

Windows <===> HD Audio Controller <===> HD Audio device​

meaning Windows can only "talk to" and "see" the audio device IF the controller is working (i.e. detected and driver working)

AND Windows 7 comes with a generic driver for HD Audio Controllers. (Tho some HD Audio Controllers specifically want their vendor's driver not Windows generic - will have to find out for sure for your case) So there's still more to check out i think. I'll have to post later when i have the time but a couple quick things

Open Device Manager
> 1. Look under System Devices category for HD Audio Controller. Rt click-Properties. Look at General tab. Is Device Status = Working Properly? On Driver tab, who is listed as Provider??

> 2. Look under Sound category in Device Manager. Do you see any HD Audio devices listed? Do they have yellow icons?

> 3. Do you have an Other devcies category? If yes, what are their device names

> 4. If the controller is working, but there's no audio device, rt click the HD Audio Controller->Uninstall then reboot. (this forces the controller's driver to search for the attached HD Audio devices. Sometimes does the trick

/* Edit */
Also do this

• Make sure devices are connected and powered on
• Click Start->Run, enter: msinfo32. Click the + sign next to Components to expand it
• Click Problem Devices. Anything appear?
• If yes, click on it, Ctrl-A to select all, Ctrl-C to copy it, Ctrl-V to paste into next post
• On the other hand, if no devices are listed, tell me so

 

[foxdelta]

D'oh...missed your reply!

LookinAround - Firstly, apologies for my late reply and secondly, apologies but I was on a short fix timeline for the colleague who wanted the fix! I went ahead and put in a Creative SB Live card having not checked Techspot! Doh!! (spare I had forgotten about in another machine)which worked fine (well once I had figured out that there were no Win7 drivers and had to tweak it using the compatibility with Win2K drivers).

I will bear your proposed diagnostic in mind as I am sure I will come across this issue again; rest assured your time and effort have not been in vain!

I still dont like being defeated by this one........

Hearty thanks again.