[SOLVED] attempting to update realtek drivers caused a complete failure blue screen of death.

[Deepwaterlife48]

so every few months i will check for new drivers for my hardware. decided last night i was going to apply the 3 various realtek drivers that were a bit outdated. y'alllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll. it kept causing multiple issues.

think they were:
oxcoooooo1
oxcooooooe
oxcooooo21

had to dig out my windows 10 boot drive. which even it didnt work for the first few HOURS because for some reason automatic repair/ starting repair whatever would not let me login to my windows account. took me 6 hours to get it working properly again. i have no bloody reason why realtek drivers would cause that. i now have re-install all my steam games, which is going to take alllllllllllllllllllllll day. lost about 4 gigs of info from my pictures and documents folders. oof.

ahh heck.....i have to redownload all my itunes audio books and music too. blahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

You should take this as an important lesson. If your system is running fine, do not update drivers. If their graphic drivers only update them, if you were playing the actual game, they’re optimized for otherwise leave it alone. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

were you thinking you were going to magically get more performance out of the sound chips?

The most important lesson you need to learn is to keep proper backups because with a proper backup you could’ve easily restored within a few minutes, so that’s your first and most pressing problem. Get a handle on that situation and this won’t be a problem anymore.

 

[Deepwaterlife48]

Outside of the epic failure that my system just had. Why wouldn't you want newer drivers? The ones I attempted to update were from July of this year where the ones that I have on system are from October 2020. I have a few others that could be updated. Figured the USB, Realtek, and I forgot the others off hand would not be an issue. Isn't the point if new drivers to fix efficiency and utilities of devices?

 

[Bob.B]

Outside of the epic failure that my system just had. Why wouldn't you want newer drivers? The ones I attempted to update were from July of this year where the ones that I have on system are from October 2020. I have a few others that could be updated. Figured the USB, Realtek, and I forgot the others off hand would not be an issue. Isn't the point if new drivers to fix efficiency and utilities of devices?

I don't see a problem with updating stuff but assume it's going to make a big mess.

Have a tested method of being able to go back with minimal fuss.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

I highly doubt you would see any efficiency increases of any kind or any performance increases as well. They’re probably just minor bug fixes that aren’t even affecting you again, Why would you fix something if it’s not broken? If your PC is running great, and there is no problems, I would just leave it alone. Until you have the actual problems that those driver updates address don’t bother. I update drivers when Windows updates them for me. And I never have an issue.

but I never install optional drivers, unless I have the exact problem that they are fixing

anyway, back to your main problem, without proper back ups, and being able to restore from such a thing, you don’t stand a chance and you will always face this chance whenever you update drivers or the operating system, or even install some third-party software

with graphical drivers yeah, you probably want to keep them updated as you play the new games that they’re modified for

 

[Deepwaterlife48]

well my current windows 10 boot drive is about 4 years old, so i ordered a brand new 250gb usb drive for $15. i will keep a fresh backup of windows on it just in case and turn the old drive into i dunno an external drive for important documents.