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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.
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