Finally a solution. Yes, I was in driver hell and I am just now successfully emerging from it. To refresh, after replacing a defective hard drive and performing a system recovery, the computer lost many functions. It didn't have an Ethernet connection, video drivers, audio drivers and a couple of others. The original recovery CD did not help. After contacting AMD (processor), eMachines (tower), and MIS (motherboard), I ended up at NVidia. Very long story short, I ended up using NVidia's automatic driver finder which worked superbly! It found and installed about a dozen drivers which ultimately solved everything. Even the missing Ethernet port showed back up in the Device Manager. I was also surprised to learn that it is a smart idea to back up all existing drivers from an operating system so that they can be used after recovery. AMD's support said that the top 3 drivers that fail to be installed during a system recovery are Video controller, PCI Simple Communications Controller, and processor.
Thanks for letting me know I was in driver hell so I was able to begin crawling my way out of it. Richard P. On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 9:50 AM, Tom Piwowar <> wrote: >>I uninstalled them all and tried to reinstall them when the computer >>found them upon reboot, but that installation failed. The monitor >>refresh is sluggish, and the Ethernet port still doesn't work. Any >>suggestions or is it time to give up. Can't figure out if it's >>hardware or software or both at this point. > > Looks like you are in driver hell. Sometimes the cuase of the problem is > a conflict caused by a driver that is not flagged. To get around that you > must uninstall devices that are both flagged and not flagged with a "?" > and then let plug and play put everything back together, hopefull in an > order that will work. Best to try this after you are sure you have > current drivers for everything involved. Driver voodoo can drive you nuts. > > The problem could also be a too new driver. One that doesn't really match > the version of the OS you are running. > > This is the toughest thing about reinstalling Windows. You can't be sure > that the OS and the bunch of drivers you got are really compatable. > > Another approach woule be to install OS and drivers from your original CD > that came with the computer. After installing and making sure everything > works you are starting from a known state. Then start updating and > checking gradually while taking careful notes. > The only thing I found with a yellow question mark were "Other Devices" which listed 5 items: Video controller SM Bus Controller Other PCI Bridge Device PCI Device PCI Simple Communications Controller I uninstalled them all and tried to reinstall them when the computer found them upon reboot, but that installation failed. The monitor refresh is sluggish, and the Ethernet port still doesn't work. Any suggestions or is it time to give up. Can't figure out if it's hardware or software or both at this point. ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
