Hey all! Hope things are swinging freely with everyone. As usual, I have meddleborked one of my machines. It's a fairly simple problem I've caused, but the solution doesn't seem to be. I went up to the grimlaws' a few weeks back and they have disgracefully slow internet. In order to rule out the wi-fi adapter on my ageing laptop though, I thought I'd uninstall it and re-install the drivers. That was the first mistake - it didn't seem to want to re-install without some faff (although can't remember the detail) and now all my browsers are ridiculously slow; re-installing those doesn't seem to help either. I then used CCleaner to run a driver scan and it said that there were a bunch that needed updating, all of which failed and promptly disappeared from any history. I then today updated CCleaner upon its own suggestion and re-scanned, when it now said I needed to (only) update the ICH9M-E driver, but bizarrely from v11.7.3.1001 (released ~2/2013?) to v9.1.9.1005 (25/7/2013). I did so, after creating a restore point, logic being that they might know something I don't on the basis the v9 date was later (maybe they changed nomenclature? I dunno, but assumed I could roll back) and was hoping this might fix whatever has happened to slow the machine down, but would be an easy reinstatement if not. CCleaner then bade me restart but now it won't boot, with an 0x07b error. This appears to be where the Win install disk can't be found, which would make sense if the SATA/chipset driver is now knacked. That's fine, I'll roll back using system restore. Nope. Unable to now complete the rollback process (indeed, scanning for affected programs shows the v9 driver due to be deleted, but no v11 to be restored) and to boot (nice pun!), the message after attempting the restore says that the registry is corrupted. I do have a CCleaner reg backup file on the disk, but have no idea how to get to it and/or install it, other than perhaps using the command prompt from the recovery mode (if this would even work). That's the long; short is I really need to get back up and running for work stuff, so if anyone can help at all, I'd massively appreciate it. Thanks in advance, all!
First of all, get rid of CCleaner. Anything that medels with the registry is bad news. Microsoft know what they're doing with the registry and there's rarely anything good that comes out of bulk meddling. Next up, I wouldn't bother attempting to restore the registry file as a lot of things have changed since then, namely the SATA/AHCI drivers. Are you able to boot into safe mode with networking or have access to another computer? If so, go to your laptop manufacturer's downloads page and get the latest SATA/AHCI driver and Wi-Fi driver available. If there isn't one, try reinstalling it through the device manager or the windows update optional downloads. Install them while in safe mode with networking. EDIT: you can also search for your SATA/AHCI driver on Intel's website or using their driver update utility which actually works, usually.
Ah, cheers bud! Will have a crack tonight after dinner and post back - appreciate the swift response!
Right - got it sorted in the end (I think). Took your suggestion and rebooted to the advanced options menu and for some reason the Last Known Good option had also reappeared, so I thought I'd give that a punt first. It seems to have worked (touch wood), but strangely the driver has rolled back to 8.9.0.1023, not the v11 it was rocking before. I did try to update the driver again from Device Manager manually, at which point it both installed the v11 automatically and then flashed a message saying "incomplete installation, not for this platform" which was odd, considering the version number updated. It didn't then read a USB stick though, plus a reboot resulted in the same 0x07b error, so I re-did the above and restored Last Known Good again and it seems to have held for now. Not entirely sure, but it may also have fixed the slow browsing for the minute. Either I messed up more than was immediately obvious when I fiddled with the wireless adapter some weeks back, or the magical Windows mechanic elves have done their thing. Not sure how the v11 got installed in the first place if it's incompatible though, nor why I had no issues with that version until CCleaner decided to "update" it to that v9. I had in the meantime sent a note to Piriform support, whose response interestingly said that their Driver Updater is unable to roll back an unsuccessful update to a previous driver version, if it wasn't installed by Driver Updater before. I can't honestly see the point or logic in that, so I think I'm just going to stay way away from it for now. Can't do a +rep any more, @yuusou, so I've added a Like for pointing me in the right direction - cheers bud!
I use CCleaner for clean-up duties but, never let it mess with drivers. So far, have had no problems in at least 6 or 7 years. BTW, I leave version updates until well after release, in case of bugs being found.
