Driver installation question

[Grondir]

Hey guys,

After purchasing 4 new hard drives and a new PSU for my PC, I decided to do a fresh install of everything.

System Specs are as follows

i7 920
6gb ram
HD5770
2 x 2TB Sata HDD
2 x 1TB Sata HDD
2 x 64GB Corsair 6GBPS SSD's
Antec True Power 650w
Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit

I installed Win7 on 1 SSD (Still connected to standard Sata 2 port, as stupid Sata3 cable I got are so thick that the connectors wont fit into Sata3 ports one above the other) and WoW on the other (Connected to the Sata3 port)

Installed drivers from discs that came with the mobo/gpu and this is where the problems begin. Had major issues with the graphics driver, causing crashes and .dll errors. Sorted those with a driver wipe and reinstall of Catalyst drivers from ATi website.

But my PC seems to be running really slow now, internet taking ages to load pages etc and for 2 days I was unable to log into WoW at all.

The question is:

Am I better off doing another fresh install of Win7 (Everything else is on the other drives, only Win7 on the boot drive) and letting Win7 download all the drivers for mobo etc or should I manually download all drivers from respective sites first, clean install then install all downloaded drivers before running Win7 update?

Installed Windows loads of times in the past and this is the first time I have hit major problems

Thanks in advance guys

[d0z3rr]

Did you download the updated mobo drivers? What do you mean by "unable to login to WoW"? Does WoW launch, and does login screen lag?

This doesn't appear to be a Win7 problem, so reinstalling will get you nowhere. Did you adjust any settings in the BIOS?

Do some large file transfers from disk to disk so you can eliminate if it's a hard drive issue or not. A 1gig file should copy in seconds.

What happens when you ping 4.2.2.2

[Grondir]

It's a general pc problem matey, my entire system seems to be running at snails pace. When I run speedtest.net I get my normal broadband speed, around 6mbps but it can take ages to load a web page and sometimes they just 'hang' and nothing happens

Haven't touched anything in the bios. Installed everything that came with motherboard and everything I can download from Gigabyte website, got the GA-X58A-UD3R motherboard.

Just wondering if it could be because i've got my boot drive plugged into SATA_0 and I vaguely recall that this port is controlled by the Gigabyte Sata controller and it's a bit slow....

With WoW I was getting to connected and it just sat there until the 'you have been disconnected form server' message.

My whole system seems a lot worse than it was before I 'upgraded' my hdd's .

I wondered if my PSU was a bit low, but ran a power calculator and it says I only need a 350w psu so don't thin it's that.

I've transferred files around to all HDD's in the process of sorting my files out (one of the main reasons for getting more HDD space) so don't think they're an issue.

I'm wondering wether to download all drivers I can now, reinstall Win7 again and then run windows update and see what happens.

Never had any issues with any pc's before and i've built quite a few but this one has me stumped.

The next step would be to open it up again and check all the connectors are in properly (which will be a major pain again as my case has been 'modified/botched' to get the H50 cpu cooler in)

Thanks for the help

[Ughmahedhurtz]

For Windows 7 installs, I never install motherboard drivers that come on discs in the box with the sole exception of RAID drivers. Always go to the chipset manufacturer (Intel, AMD, SiS, etc.) and get the chipset INFs direct from them. Once those enumerate, just use the native stuff. Those discs you get in the box usually also have these "tweak" utilities that get installed that, IMO, are the buggiest pieces of shit I've ever dealt with (except for S3 graphics drivers on Win98 but I digress).

TL;DR version:

1. Install Win7
2. Manually initiate Windows Update and let it finish. If you have to reboot, initiate it again until it reports no new important updates.
3. Install chipset drivers IF THEY DO NOT ID PROPERLY. If you look in Device Manager-->System devices, you should see several "Intel(R) ICHxx ?????" devices. If you don't, go grab the latest from Intel.
4. After updating chipset drivers, go get the latest generic WHQL ATI driver for the 5770 from ATI's main site.
5. Manually initiate Windows Update and let it finish. If you have to reboot, initiate it again until it reports no new important updates.
6. Once you finish that, check Device Manager for "banged out" devices (show a yellow triangle and report that no driver is installed). If you're sure what the device is, grab the manufacturer's latest driver for them. Otherwise, post which ones are banged out and the hardware PnP IDs for them and we can help with those. (To see the HW PnP ID, right-click the device in device manager--> Properties--> Details tab--> Pull down the "Property" list and select "Hardware IDs."
7. Manually initiate Windows Update and let it finish. If you have to reboot, initiate it again until it reports no new important updates.