Question What are the common symptoms of a faulty/corrupted chipset driver?

[stewuie]

Just a question that isn't being asked around the internet but im just curious. What are the symptoms?

 

[hotaru.hino]

More than likely BSODs or other system related crashes.

However I'm fairly certain (since it's how I'd design things) that there are integrity checks before the driver is loaded to prevent it from being loaded if it's corrupted.

 

[stewuie]

More than likely BSODs or other system related crashes.

However I'm fairly certain (since it's how I'd design things) that there are integrity checks before the driver is loaded to prevent it from being loaded if it's corrupted.

If for example, It gets corrupted. Can you just go to the control panel and uninstall the intel chipset driver no? only from Intel though. And booting to Safe Mode and uninstalling the Chipset Driver is optional?

 

[ubuysa]

BSOD. A corrupted (or just badly coded) driver (including chipset drivers) typically fails in one of two ways...

It performs an illegal action (an invalid memory reference, for example) which the kernel traps and BSODs. In these cases the faulty driver is usually on the call stack in the dump.

It corrupts a shared data structure (like a linked list, for example) and the problem is not discovered until a completely different driver accesses the corrupted structure and BSODs. In these cases the failing driver is not on the call stack in the dump. It's these kinds of failure where Driver Verifier is useful.

 

[hotaru.hino]

If for example, It gets corrupted. Can you just go to the control panel and uninstall the intel chipset driver no? only from Intel though. And booting to Safe Mode and uninstalling the Chipset Driver is optional?

Yes, you can uninstall and reinstall the chipset driver. You don't have to be in safe mode to do this either.

 

[stewuie]

Yes, you can uninstall and reinstall the chipset driver. You don't have to be in safe mode to do this either.

Also is it generally safe for example to install a chipset driver before or after a install of a Nvidia Driver? haven't had issues but thats the only thing im nervous about

 

[hotaru.hino]

Also is it generally safe for example to install a chipset driver before or after a install of a Nvidia Driver? haven't had issues but thats the only thing im nervous about

Order of installation doesn't matter.

 

[stewuie]

Order of installation doesn't matter.

Thanks for the reassurement.

 

[hotaru.hino]

It's probably important to relay this: drivers are mostly compartmentalized and can't affect hardware that it wasn't designed to touch.

Hardware have baked in IDs that the OS can get using standardized commands. Drivers declare what IDs that they're supposed to work with. The OS on boot scans what hardware is connected to the system, pings for its ID, then sees if it has a driver with a matching ID. If the OS doesn't have a matching driver, hardware may also report what kind of device it is and the OS can see if it has a generic driver based on that device.

So for example, a video card will report its hardware class as a display adapter, a hardware vendor ID (e.g., AMD or NVIDIA), and its device specific ID (e.g., Radeon RX 7900 XT or Geforce RTX 4080), though the IDs are hexadecimal values in practice. So if the OS doesn't have a driver for the specific vendor and device ID, it'll see it's a display adapter and load the generic display driver.

A source of contention is when there are multiple versions of a driver or components of the driver available that things become a problem. If you had installed say driver version 2.1, but there were components from 2.0 that lingered, the OS may load the 2.0 components over the 2.1 components, and then you have mish-mash of drivers loaded.

 

[stewuie]

It's probably important to relay this: drivers are mostly compartmentalized and can't affect hardware that it wasn't designed to touch.

Hardware have baked in IDs that the OS can get using standardized commands. Drivers declare what IDs that they're supposed to work with. The OS on boot scans what hardware is connected to the system, pings for its ID, then sees if it has a driver with a matching ID. If the OS doesn't have a matching driver, hardware may also report what kind of device it is and the OS can see if it has a generic driver based on that device.

So for example, a video card will report its hardware class as a display adapter, a hardware vendor ID (e.g., AMD or NVIDIA), and its device specific ID (e.g., Radeon RX 7900 XT or Geforce RTX 4080), though the IDs are hexadecimal values in practice. So if the OS doesn't have a driver for the specific vendor and device ID, it'll see it's a display adapter and load the generic display driver.

A source of contention is when there are multiple versions of a driver or components of the driver available that things become a problem. If you had installed say driver version 2.1, but there were components from 2.0 that lingered, the OS may load the 2.0 components over the 2.1 components, and then you have mish-mash of drivers loaded.

Im also curious as to what happens when you dont click "Finish" after a driver install and just restart pc ofc you installed the drivers successfully but what's gonna happen when you just reboot and "forgot to click finish"

It wouldnt corrupt the driver no?

 

[SkyNetRising]

Order of installation doesn't matter.

It does matter.
Chipset drivers have to be installed first. Only then certain chipset connected devices can be properly detected.
If a device is not detected, you can not install device drivers to it.
After chiset drivers have been installed, all the other device drivers can be installed.

 

[stewuie]

It does matter.
Chipset drivers have to be installed first. Only then certain chipset connected devices can be properly detected.
If a device is not detected, you can not install device drivers to it.
After chiset drivers have been installed, all the other device drivers can be installed.

Should i be nervous when i installed the Intel Chipset Driver before or after the Nvidia Driver? I forgot which order i did it. It was either after or before 😅

Seriously, should i be mad concerned? though both drivers said drivers successfully installed with no errors/bugs.

 

[stewuie]

Should i be nervous when i installed the Intel Chipset Driver before or after the Nvidia Driver? i forgot when i did it after or before 😅

And also they said that the Intel Chipset Driver i installed for my motherboard only functioned as to fix the "warnings" And the first time you would install it would install the drivers to Device Manager and cannot be installed through control panel. And the said driver i installed and showing up on Control Panel functions none other than just a ghost/uninstallable app that does nothing and just there to get uninstalled but i would leave it be though. And it's only on Asus Motherboards from what i observed.

 

[hotaru.hino]

It does matter.
Chipset drivers have to be installed first. Only then certain chipset connected devices can be properly detected.
If a device is not detected, you can not install device drivers to it.
After chiset drivers have been installed, all the other device drivers can be installed.

I would argue this is largely a myth. For one, everything today is more or less connected over PCIe, which devices must implement a set of standard commands. Those commands would include being able to ping and poll for devices and identify them. For instance, here's a block diagram of an AMD B550 board:

As I have one myself, I can tell you I've been able to use the SATA, USB, and LAN ports without needing to install the driver.

And going back even further on an LGA775 board where basically all of the peripherals connected over the chipset in some form or fashion

How would you be able to install Windows on a drive connected to the chipset (which is all of them) if you don't have the chipset drivers installed yet? And if you wanted to bring up say Windows XP's setup going "Press F6 to install a third party SCSI or RAID driver...", it's exactly what it says on the tin. You can still install it on a PATA drive, which is connected to the chipset.

However, if there's some vendor specific item that a device is connected to, where that vendor specific item first needs to have its drivers installed, then sure. But I can't recall where this was actually the case. And even then, this was likely an optional component. But for the most part, what's included in a typical chipset driver package are for components that are specific to that manufacturer, like Intel's IME or AMD's GPIO.