Where are you getting teh video and chipset drivers from? With having both a Nvidia chipset and video cards I wouldn't get them from anywhere other than Nvidia (and definitely not through Windows Update),
NVIDIA DRIVERS 257.21 WHQL
NVIDIA DRIVERS 15.53 WHQL
also agree, when I was testing the RC build my laptop only had 1 gig for a while before I upgraded it.
I checked the op's specs and I fail to see why he had so many graphics card issues, his card is a 7900GT, my test machine has a 7600GT and works out of the box with the windows drivers as well as nvidia drivers.
Honestly, not one. It had many chances to try though, thanks to family and friends who don't like a working, running system apparently.
The fix, for me, has always been just as easy and always more effective to tackle to issue at hand directly, rather than cover it up. Like I said above, there are always other ways. Driver's can be rolled back or removed. Apps can be removed in safe mode, or forceable removed. Malware can be removed, thanks to some nice, free tools. If the system isn't booting, a repair install does the trick. It's honestly to the point I haven't even tried a system restore in the last 6 months or so, because the time I wasting trying system restore, can be better spent fixing the actual problem.
A repair install cannot be done if the System isn't booting.
Repair Install
Startup Repair
You're combining two separate issues. If the system doesn't boot, you can run a startup repair, which happens to work very well. If the system is booting, but is experiencing odd issues, such as one might after a malware infestation, you can repair it. Windows 7 handles these differently than previous OSes, as in they are two separate processes, but either one can be used.
stormy - I let the Windows Update install the driver for the video card the first time, and when it fragged the system (it was obviously the update since that was the first thing I did after the install) I haven't touched it since. I've been getting drivers straight from Nvidia, or from 3dguru (I think) who apparently gets nvidia drivers before they post to Nvidia's site. My system just doesn't like those later drivers I guess...
And, back to sys restore, I can think of ONE time it worked, when I installed some video drivers and the video was fragged after the reboot. I couldn't roll back the drivers manually, so I went to SR and it did roll back the drivers, so yeah it worked. Didn't fix the fragged video though, so had to reinstall anyway...
It can even SysRestore when the OS won't boot, using the Repair CD or DVD Repair console. SysRestore is built into Startup Repair, but can also be run separately from the Recovery Tools list.
I had a heap of problems too. I hired a good tech guy. Some of things he did was disable UAC and DEP, then remove Roboform off the 64 bit version of IE 8, and set me up with the 32 bit version with same. He worked at lightning speed and had all my blue screens, freezups and crashes cured within an hour, including installing the correct drivers for my printers etc., that didn't work. To say have you tried reinstalling windows is a really dumb place to start I'm sorry to say. That would be as foolish as ripping out your engine because your signal light doesn't work.
Quote