How to stop windows7x64 from installing drivers

Raner · 17 May 2011

HI, can someone tell me what settings to use to stop windows 7 from auto installing sound drivers. I have Realteck onboard audio on my Asrock 890 Deluxe Am3 motherboard. And have ATI catalyst for my ATI video Cards (crossfired) . I want to use Realteck as my for default sound, so when I go to device manager and uninstall the ati hd audio drivers they get deleted, but when I reboot my pc windows 7 reinstalls the ati hd drivers. How can I stop windows 7 from reinstalling the ati hd drivers. The reason I don't want two well really three sets of audio drivers because the cards are crossfired windows 7 is installing two sets of ati hd sound drivers one for each video card and the Realteck drivers, is because windows 7 is crashing when gaming and I think the sound drivers are conflicting and causing the crashes.Thanks RaneR

pbcopter · 17 May 2011

The drivers that are installed by ATI are for the HDMI outputs on the video cards.
I would just disable the HD audio for the video cards in the device manager if you think there is a conflict.

Raner · 17 May 2011

Ok thanks,sorry for the miss spelling on drivers on the heading of post, tryed to fix it but it won't change.

Raner · 17 May 2011

O.K., PBCopter just came back to let you know I gamed for 4 hours and my on line game did not crash worked great. Windows 7x64 was crashing in 15 to 20 minutes on the game I checked it out with and all the other FPS games I have installed which by the way are quite a few. Looks like windows 7x64 bit pro does not like multiple sound drivers, I had a feeling that was causing the crashes but I was not sure. I wish there was a way to completly remove the ATI HD sound drivers because I have no use for them at this point, but since windows 7 just installes them back as soon as I reboot will just leave them disabled for now. I think the next time I upgrade my ATI catalyst I'll do a custom Install and see if I can leave them out. There are a ton of gamers having this crash problem and I checked all over the place and there are just gueses as to what is causing the crashes but no real fix. So keep this post in mind and if someone posts about windows 7 crashing when gaming this might do the trick for them. If it got a ATI crossfire rig going I'm sure it will also fix a single card rig also. Don't know about nvidia but they have HDMI outputs also!!! Later and thanks again for answering my post RaneR.

fimble · 17 May 2011

To stop auto install of drivers, GoTo > Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Devices and Printers.

Click on the yellow bar that appears and choose Open device installation settings.

In the next window you have two or three options regarding drivers and one concerning "enhanced icons".

HTH.

Raner · 17 May 2011

Hey fimbel, thanks for the comeback!
Went to All Control Panel Items\Devices and Printers.
but no yellow bar that appears and choose Open device installation settings.
Maybe it's because I have auto downloads disabled.
But I did find this will it do the same thing as you discribed

Update: Some people complained that the original method doesn’t work at all. Reader mufuti0815 points out a method to properly disable automatic driver installation. I have tested it and it seems to be working. Here is what you need to do:

Go to Start–>Search type in gpedit.msc
Click the file to open the Local Group Policy Editor and show Windows who is in control!!
You want to go here: Computer Configuration->Administrative Templates->System->Device Installation. Click on the subfolder Device Installation on the left and on the right side you will see the possible restrictions.
Right Click on Prevent Installation of Devices not described by other policy settings and edit this option, set it on ENABLED.
Reboot Windows and enjoy its inability to pollute your system with its standard driver, open gpedit.msc again and revert the change so you will be able to install your driver.

fimble · 17 May 2011

Thanks for the info!

Raner · 17 May 2011

Your Welcome

dsperber · 18 May 2011

Raner said:

have Realtek onboard audio on my Asrock 890 Deluxe Am3 motherboard. And have ATI catalyst for my ATI video Cards (crossfired) . I want to use Realtek as my for default sound

That what "playback devices" is for... to select your default sound device.

Right-click on the speaker icon in system tray, select "playback devices".

Then choose the particular device (and presumably connected speakers) you want to hear sound through.

For example, in my case I want to hear sound through my Creative X-Fi card, not through the ATI HDMI output from my ATI video card, nor from the onboard Realtek sound chip (which I've disabled in the BIOS, so it doesn't even get involved at Win7 install time or subsequently).

I DO have the ATI HDMI audio drivers installed (actually, I installed the Realtek HMDI audio driver, not the ATI HDMI audio driver) just to satisfy things so I don't have a yellow question mark, but I don't use it. Really doesn't matter which HDMI audio driver I'd installed, but I've had better luck with both the Realtek HD audio codec sound driver as well the Realtek HDMI audio driver (for the ATI video card).

Anyway, here's what it looks like in Device manager:

And here's what it looks like in "Playback Devices":

Just select your Realtek onboard HD audio as your default playback, and don't worry about the HDMI audio on the video card.

Here's from my second machine, which actually DOES use the Realtek onboard sound chip, and again has that checked as the default playback device. Again, the ATI HDMI sound is not used.