A day in the life of me: installing a mouse driver  

   Note

This is an informative text from several problems I encountered while installing something as simple as a mouse driver.

So a few months back I bought myself a new mouse; a Razer Ouroboros. I really liked it and never encountered any problems with it - until three days ago, that is.

Three days ago I got a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) after unplugging my mouse. Wondering why that'd cause the BSOD, I checked out the dumpfiles (which I created by following this tutorial). and everything pointed to my Razer Ouroboros his driver.

So I went to the driver page and downloaded the newest driver. Easy and simply.
After downloading it I ran the installer and everything went just fine, until it asked me to unplug my mouse. Which I did, but after plugging it back in, the installer failed to recognize it, in fact, my entire laptop failed to recognize it!

So I closed the installer and decided to manually install it via the Device Manager by following this tutorial. But ofcourse that didn't work.
Finding it weird that Windows did connect my mouse but didn't recognize the device, I went to Devices & Printers to do some troubleshooting. The troubleshooter naturally informed me that I needed to install the drivers and it gallantly offered to do it for me, but sadly enough failed to do so.

By this point I was getting mildly annoyed, so I decided to download the SF Diagnostic Tool and let the built in Driver Verifier to a few runs. But it sadly enough found nothing wrong.
Don't use the driver verifier by yourself unless you're told to do so by a member of the BSOD Team!

Remembering that Razer has a special tool for their mouses, I went ahead and download it (it's called Razer Synapse 2.0). So I downloaded the tool and let the installer and updater do it's thing. But when it was done it promped me that I needed to connect a Razer device. Darn.

Time for a restart I thought. Sometimes the hardest problems are resolved by the easiest things.
Unfortunately I couldn't be further from the truth. After restarting I was prompted to choose between running Windows normally or going to Startup Repair. I chose to run Windows normally - resulting in yet another BSOD.
After a reboot Windows automatically booted into Startup Repair, but after letting it run for one and a half hour it only prompted me if I wanted to restore my system to a previously made backup. I clicked yes. And after another two hours of waiting Windows informed me that the repairs were successful and that Windows was going to reboot.

Phew! Finally fixed! - Boy was I wrong. After rebooting Windows yet again became stuck in Startup Repair, and I basically repeated this process for five times, each time going straight back to startup repair.

By this time my so-called jimmies were severely rustled and I was being fueled by a blood boiling rage.

So I burned a System Repair Disc by following this tutorial. Which worked. Finally.

Thinking I was finally done I went ahead and logged in to remove all this Razer mumbo jumbo never to install it back again. Everything went smooth, I removed Synapse using Revo Uninstaller Free and after removing it I decided to reboot just to make sure that everything was done.

And then it happened again. "BootMGR is missing" (by this time my head was as red as a tomato and I was violently hissing all sorts of curses to MS, Razer, the inventor of computers and even to my dog).

Ofcourse Startup Repair couldn't fix it, and the only thing that seemed to work properly was the Command Prompt option of the repair disc I've created. So I tried following this tutorial (replace booting into sys rec to booting the repair disc), which obviously didn't work either.

I decided to manually rebuild BootMGR (no tut this time, I had the correct codes written down from helping someone a few weeks ago).
This is a quote from that thread, if anyone wants to know.

nommy the first said:

1. Go to Command Prompt.
2. Type Bootrec /rebuilt bcd" without the quotations.
3. You'll see one of the following messages in CMD;
   1.
   Scanning all disks for Windows installations.
   Please wait, since this may take a while...
   Successfully scanned Windows installations.
   Total identified Windows installations: 0
   The operation completed successfully.
   
   2.
   Scanning all disks for Windows installations.
   Please wait, since this may take a while...
   Successfully scanned Windows installations.
   Total identified Windows installations: 1
   [1] C:\Windows
   Add installation to boot list? Yes / No / All:
   
   
   If you see 1, go to step 4.
   If you see 2, enter "Yes" without the quotations and go to step 9.
4. Type "bcdedit /export c:\bcdbackup" without the quotations.
   You will get a message saying that the operation completed succesfully.
5. Type "attrib c:\boot\bcd -h -r -s" without the quotations.
6. Type "ren c:\boot bcd bcd.old" without the quotations.
   Step 4 til 6 are basically a manual way of what the command in step 2 did automatically if you were to get message 2.
7. Type the command from step 2 again, to rebuilt BCD.
8. Type "Yes" without the quotations.
   You should get a message informing you that the operation was completed succesfully.
9. Restart your machine, and boot mgr should be fixed now:)

It worked, I could finally get back into Windows and get over all this!
So after logging in and messing around a bit I noticed that my mouse still was connected, so I unplugged it - resulting in yet another BSOD!

By this time my head was as red as fire and steaming hot and I was roaring all sorts of insults to Razer while screaming and crying at the same time.

And I was back to my Startup Repair loop.
I decided that I'd had enough of this and rammed the repair disc back in, ending it once and for all.
I made a system recovery using one of the backups I weekly make, and as expected, it worked. Everything was good now and I recon I could even use my Razer again (which I was sure as heck not going to try).

So I immediately removed all drivers, programs and files even closely related to Razer from my computer and let SFC /SCANNOW do it's work (as described in option two of this tutorial).

And while SFC did it's job I sent an angry mail to Razer, attaching all created dumpfiles, demanding my money back because they delivered a flawed product.

Today, two days later, my lappy is working like a charm and there's not even a spot on the horizon. And to top it off I got a four paragraph letter from Razer in which they told me that they were sorry and that I could send the mouse back and get a full refund, even tho I am two months out of warranty.


What the morale of this tale is you can figure out by yourself, although I myself quite like the sound of "Razer: not even once".


Hope you all enjoyed the read,
Nommy

Great narrative! I hope to have no such problem, as Razer is not part of my system, but this will surely be helpful to someone experiencing similar difficulties.

That was a good read,
Hope the dog is doing well :)
I had an experience with a simple basic two button Microsoft mouse on my lappy,
As most people are aware laptops have a special section for the touch pad,
This Microsoft mouse removed and replaced this section so I couldn't do anything with the touch pad lol :)
Microsoft mouse and keyboard center,
What a mistake this was it came as a Windows update lol
System restore was useless,
I finally had to pay someone to cleanup the mess this windows update of my touch pad,
Live and learn you probably paid more than 10 bucks for your mouse mine ended up costing about 110.00 u.s.
ouch.

Mike
I do hope that since that experience you have avidly created regular system backups using Macrium Reflect or similar?

gini said:

Great narrative! I hope to have no such problem, as Razer is not part of my system, but this will surely be helpful to someone experiencing similar difficulties.

Thanks! And yeah, that was kinda why I wrote it:)

ThrashZone said:

This Microsoft mouse removed and replaced this section so I couldn't do anything with the touch pad lol

LOL nice going M$, messing up their own OS.

ThrashZone said:

Live and learn you probably paid more than 10 bucks for your mouse mine ended up costing about 110.00 u.s.
ouch.

Damn, expensive joke.. Couldn't you just send the receipt to MS? I'm sure that they'd refund it.

Yah, the Ouroboros is a €150,- mouse, but the jokes on Razer though. I posted this on various tech forums (including their own support forum) to gather attention, since it's commonly known that they use their end users as beta testers for their products:S Plus they agreed in giving me a full refund, so at the end of the day it only cost me a bit of my time, while they got a load of negative publicity.


Nommy

Yes Nommy but what about your blood pressure and the trauma suffered by your canine companion?

mitchell65 said:

Yes Nommy but what about your blood pressure and the trauma suffered by your canine companion?

We'll be fine I suppose


Nommy

I'm not worried about you. My concern is with the doggie. Have you apologised for your outburst?

Entertaining to read, very good!
I don't think you that you only lost from this experience, as much as you would have rather not experience
it personally I'm sure, you've earned experience in the process .

mitchell65 said:

I'm not worried about you. My concern is with the doggie. Have you apologised for your outburst?

Ofcourse I did! I even gave him a new mouse toy

YoYo155 said:

Entertaining to read, very good!
I don't think you that you only lost from this experience, as much as you would have rather not experience
it personally I'm sure, you've earned experience in the process .

Thanks YoYo!
IMO the only "new" thing I learned from this is how to hold my temper and not do this


Nommy