PC Issues with a bit of a long story, please help

[KeyboardDemon]

Sorry, this is long, I'll try and keep it condensed.

My friend has a PC built on an Asus AMD 3 M4A78T-E mobo, Phenom II X4 955, 8gb ram and on board graphics Radeon HD 3300, which I think covers the main components.

Sometime ago he started experiencing random restarts and got a friend to look at it. The friend flashed to latest bios and updated all drivers etc... but couldn't resolve the issue. So they called MS to help who suggested that they upgrade to Windows 8, which created a few more issues as the drivers they installed didn't have any support for the HD3300 GPU. The guy that was helping him gave up and he ended up throwing in the towel so my owner brought the PC to me.

I have managed to fix the GPU issue by forcing it uninstall using an uninstall tool but now I still have an issue with the motherboard chipset installer. When I restart the computer it reports an error twice to say that the AsusSetup is not supported by the current OS. I want to uninstall the chipset drivers but can't work out how.

Does anyone know how? or what I could do to fix these issues. I have a strong feeling that if I can get rid of the original mobo chipset drivers I will find that Windows 8's native drivers will get the mobo working correctly.

[realstock]

Screams of a rebuild as the first place to start. There is no telling what crap has been installed, what mess the registry might be in... etc

[KeyboardDemon]

I've cleaned the registry with regsitry cleaner and a deep clean using Advanced System Care. I really think this can be recovered without reinstalling from scratch, and at the very least would like to try everything I can so I might learn some more about trouble shooting.

[c12038]

Do a fresh install of Windows 7 x64 this will sort the problem out as it sounds like a driver conflict.....

[MrJim]

I've never found registry cleaners do a particularly good job. IMHO I would do a clean install and start again.

Going back to the random restarts, my suspicion would be the PSU. You don't mention it in the list of components - what is its make & model? What capacity is it, & how old? You should also check the RAM with memtest or something similar.

Good luck!

Edit
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If you do want to stick with Windows 8, here's a link to the most up to date Catalyst driver I could find for legacy GPUs including the HD3xxx

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=373923

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

What PSU do you have??

so my owner

Who owns the PC??

[KeyboardDemon]

Going back to the random restarts, my suspicion would be the PSU. You don't mention it in the list of components - what is its make & model? What capacity is it, & how old? You should also check the RAM with memtest or something similar.

Good luck!

Edit
------

If you do want to stick with Windows 8, here's a link to the most up to date Catalyst driver I could find for legacy GPUs including the HD3xxx

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=373923

I'll try the Cat drivers, thanks. Uninstalling the previous Cat drivers seems to have stopped the random restarts, but I haven't really soak tested it and don't really know what software I could use to simulate long sessions with large Word documents, but that's usually what he is doing when the PC crashes.

His PC has a Coolermaster 550 watt model and is fairly new, I think less than 12 months old.

RAM went through a 14 hour run on Memtest and no errors were reported.

Who owns the PC??

Yeah, sorry, it's a bit of a confusing post but he is my brother's father in law and the guy who looked at first was his son, it was his son that thought it would be a good idea to call Microsoft. My brother's father in law is a writer and started getting issues while working on a 650 page book and it happened shortly after a big MS update which is why I thought that the PSU would most likely not be at fault. Though I'd be happy to soak test it with something that would ensure the PSU gets a good work out if anyone can suggest a program to do that.

[MrJim]

If the random restarts stop as a result of uninstalling the previous Catalyst drivers, then it would seem to be a software problem & not a hardware one. The PSU should be fine, and as you say, the RAM has been tested too. My inclination would be to do a clean install of Windows & Microsoft Word. I would use the drivers that come with windows where possible, as although they might not be the best performance-wise, they should as least be stable. Once Windows is installed & updated, check in Device Manager & see if there are any drivers missing, or if anything is not functioning properly. Once Windows is installed and stable, then reinstall Word & update that too. All probably quite time-consuming, but hopefully it'll fix your stability issues.

[Thorsson]

I don't know if it will work with Win 7/8, but what I've done with earlier versions of windows is delete the motherboard components in Device Manager (which with modern motherboards will probably take a fair time), then boot into safe mode and clean everything which way, checking again in device manager that no components are left, and finally re-launch and let everything be reinstalled.

[KeyboardDemon]

I don't know if it will work with Win 7/8, but what I've done with earlier versions of windows is delete the motherboard components in Device Manager (which with modern motherboards will probably take a fair time), then boot into safe mode and clean everything which way, checking again in device manager that no components are left, and finally re-launch and let everything be reinstalled.

I'll be going round to look at the PC over the weekend so hopefully will be able to uninstall/delete all of the mobo driver parts then, but I think the first part would be to stop the installers from running on start up, I seem to have the same installer running twice at the moment as I am getting two errors on startup and the task manager shows two installer processes running if I check before I clear the message. Once I've done that I will create a restore point, uninstall the driver parts, create a new restore point and then try the latest legacy cat drivers for Windows 8.

[Thorsson]

Sounds like you may have the motherboard partly installed twice, which I think bodes well for my suggestion - if you can make the deletes stick before you re-boot.

[mickyjim]

These problems soak up a hell of a lot of time sorting I would back up all data or take a system image then bite the bullet and do a fresh install of either Win 7 or 8 you will save a whole bunch of time. asus support has no drivers listed for windows 8 but all the installs i have done of windows 8 have had no issues regarding drivers

[KeyboardDemon]

If it was my rig I would have re-installed by now. But the owner wants to avoid a fresh install as he no longer has access to the media to reinstall some of the tools he uses, since he no longer works for the company that supplied it, he needs to get the rig working properly until the book is completed and then he can do the fresh install, so basically I need to get it to run without issue for the next six to nine months.

[very deli reef]

I'll be going round to look at the PC over the weekend so hopefully will be able to uninstall/delete all of the mobo driver parts then, but I think the first part would be to stop the installers from running on start up, I seem to have the same installer running twice at the moment as I am getting two errors on startup and the task manager shows two installer processes running if I check before I clear the message. Once I've done that I will create a restore point, uninstall the driver parts, create a new restore point and then try the latest legacy cat drivers for Windows 8.

WinKey + R, and open 'msconfig'. Uncheck anything related to the installers.

Is the computer still experiencing random restarts? It's not clear to me.

[KeyboardDemon]

WinKey + R, and open 'msconfig'. Uncheck anything related to the installers.

Is the computer still experiencing random restarts? It's not clear to me.

Thanks for the tip, I'll be going round over the weekend, I might bring it home with me if I can't fix it there, I don't know for sure if it is working correctly and fortunately he has gone away for a conference abroad and will be spending time researching before he comes back, around the 10th February.

[KeyboardDemon]

WinKey + R, and open 'msconfig'. Uncheck anything related to the installers.

I tried this yesterday, was really strange though, nothing in the services or startup sections was referencing the installers, so long as I didn't clear the error messages on restarting the PC I could still see the installer running in the processess tab, so I tried renaming the folder the installer was running from and restarting the PC then hey presto no errors!

All I need to do now is find something suitable to soak test the PC. It is used mostly for office applications with Word being the most frequently used software, can anyone recommend me a good stability testing application that I can download and use for free?