Question Missing PCI driver causing GPU to stop or die?

[Robomcd]

The W10 March 2032 update showed a screen saying its ready. So shortly thereafter switched off my PC. Turns out it was not ready at all, so I interrupted the update process. CRASH. Could not restart, role back or anything but getting stuck in a repair-diagnostics-reboot loop. Tried everything, but no dice.

After 3 days trying, decided to do a clean reinstall: no dice either. Checking all the error messages decided that maybe the GPU was the problem. NVIDIA GTX 570. Took that one physically out, reinstall went smoothly.

Once running and updated, Device Manager warned that "PCI Simple Communication Controller" was not installed, no driver.

I also checked my Device Manager System to see if there was any mention of a MEI at all, also nothing.

Could not find a driver for that PCI controller, probably because I am running a i7 2600K from 2011.

Whatever. I tried to put back the GPU, but the PC would not start or was running with a blocked display, because I only had a black screen. Switching from GPU to integrated graphics also did not work.

Until the March 2023 update, this old rig was running perfectly and still very quick. The GPU was never under heavy load, at least not for long, no gaming and only occasionally video editing at 1080p max. After W7 I did a clean reinstall to W10. This rig worked perfect and never had problems with updates.

Now it looks I might end up having to buy at least a new GPU, maybe a complete new rig.

Some questions:

• Can the missing driver stop the GPU from being instlled or accessed?
• Would a clean install using a very early Windows 10 version maybe solve the PCI driver problem or the GPU not being accepted?
• Can the repeated hard reboots during the initial crash finish off (killl) my GPU?

Any idea how to solve this? As said, this PC was running more than enough for my needs at this moment, but this is really upsetting. Our non-profit does not have the funds for a new PC.

Some additional details:
PC home-buildt 2011.
Motherboard Asus P8Z68-V Pro gen 3 ; CPU i7-2600k; 16 GB Kingston RAM (4 sticks), GPU ASUS-NVIDIA GTX 570, integrated graphics HD3600.

I plundered some old pc's and laptops recently, and bought something new, so now I have a 240 GB SSD as OS drive, a 250 GB SSD for video editing, and a 1 TB SSD for daily data work and pictures. And 2 HDDs (1TB+2TB) as data and media backup.

 

[rgd1101]

brand and model of the psu?

 

[drea.drechsler]

...
Some questions:

• Can the missing driver stop the GPU from being instlled or accessed?
• Would a clean install using a very early Windows 10 version maybe solve the PCI driver problem or the GPU not being accepted?
• Can the repeated hard reboots during the initial crash finish off (killl) my GPU?

...

W10 is pretty robust but it can develop system file corruption. For that it has some repair tools you could try before going as far as a clean install. One is to open a command prompt with admin rights and run "SFC /SCANNOW". It may take a while but it will check all system files and attempt to repair any corruption it may find.

Another is repair the online windows image with DISM tool. You should really follow "SFC /SCANNOW" with the DISM repair as a matter of practice when trying to fix a problem.
https://www.windowscentral.com/how-use-dism-command-line-utility-repair-windows-10-image

And last before a full-on clean install is a repair install with in place upgrade. This leaves all user accounts, files and customizations untouched and as well all applications are left installed:
https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/16397-repair-install-windows-10-place-upgrade.html

For both the SFC repair and the repair install repairs the system needs to be on-line so it can download necessary files to be successful. The repair install in particular will probably go through a series of updates.

 

[Robomcd]

PSU: Coolmaster Silent Pro 850W

I managed to get the missing driver installed by getting the ASUS 8.1 ME software installed, and that fixed it.

However, still nothing.

So I disconnected the W10 OS SSD, connected an empty SSD, and installed Windows 7. Still nothing. Device manager mentions that Windows has stopped the device because it reported problems. Code 43.

I manually installed the drivers for the GTX 570 DirectCu II, still nothing.

I am afraid this now 11 year old GPU has died. Probably the rather intensive hard reboots or something else killed it off.

It frustrates me that there were absolutely no indications this GPU was going down. Few days ago, I did some video-editing with Premiere Pro CS6 and PP Cloud trial 2023, no problems or hesitations. So it definitely was a direct or indirect effect of this W10 update.

Our non-profit is without money at this moment, so I am considering to buy a Gigabyte Geforce gt 1030 silent low profile 2g GDDR5 graphic card as budget replacement for now, can get it here in the Czech Republic for 90$ here. Hopefully that will carry me over the summer, and later this year we will see if we have the funds to buy something newer but equally good back as what I had 11 years ago.

 

[Robomcd]

In the W7 configuration I put another GPU, an old GEFORCE 8800 GT that I had laying around, in this rig. Presumably this one was still good, only needing 110 WATT, but Windows gave the same error code 43.

So either both GPUs are kaput, or there is another problem.