Solved Lost all my drivers!

[jpolacko]

Hey guy's. Here's the issue I had today. For some reason after I went back to Windows 7 Home Premium from Windows 8.1 OEM Builder due to license agreement violation (GRRRRR) I installed all my programs and did all my updates. But after I did my Windows updates for Microsoft Office and rebooted I lost all my drivers! But Windows reinstalled them automatically like they were just installed and Win was booted up with new drivers. I was wondering if anyone ran into this before and what caused it?

 

[gregrocker]

What makes you think this happened? :huh:

 

[jpolacko]

What makes you think this happened? :huh:

When Windows rebooted I lost all my drivers and Windows loaded basic drivers.. Such as Graphics card.. Wireless Card.. and Realtec PCI Bus drivers etc etc.

 

[gregrocker]

What I am trying to find out is how you discovered this. What exactly told you that you lost all drivers which is not possible? What were you doing exactly when this happened? You'd have to run SysPrep to generalize the install to remove all drivers, which is an involved process.

Windows is supposed to provide the drivers anyway.

 

[derekimo]

Just out of curiosity, was this a black screen with white text scrolling?

You also mention this was after a bunch of updates, which to me just sounds like windows was re-configuring after installing the updates.

 

[jpolacko]

What I am trying to find out is how you discovered this. What exactly told you that you lost all drivers which is not possible? What were you doing exactly when this happened? You'd have to run SysPrep to generalize the install to remove all drivers, which is an involved process.

Windows is supposed to provide the drivers anyway.

When I logged in I had Windows is installing drivers thing on the taskbar and when I clicked it I saw Windows installing all my system drivers. I wish I would of taken a screen shot when I could.

 

[jpolacko]

Just out of curiosity, was this a black screen with white text scrolling?

You also mention this was after a bunch of updates, which to me just sounds like windows was re-configuring after installing the updates.

I was like 54 Important updates for Microsoft Office Professional 2013.

 

[jpolacko]

What were you doing exactly when this happened?

Windows is supposed to provide the drivers anyway.

I was installing Microsoft Office updates and it happened after reboot. Sorry I missed that part of the question

 

[gregrocker]

When I logged in I had Windows is installing drivers thing on the taskbar and when I clicked it I saw Windows installing all my system drivers. I wish I would of taken a screen shot when I could.

This is something we see sometimes when Automatically deliver drivers via Windows Update (Step 3) is enabled, which I believe was recently reset by default to enabled by a Window Update. Is it possible you had significant numbers of devices in the Device Manager that needed drivers, or that were outdated?

 

[jpolacko]

When I logged in I had Windows is installing drivers thing on the taskbar and when I clicked it I saw Windows installing all my system drivers. I wish I would of taken a screen shot when I could.

This is something we see sometimes when Automatically deliver drivers via Windows Update (Step 3) is enabled, which I believe was recently reset by default to enabled by a Window Update. Is it possible you had significant numbers of devices in the Device Manager that needed drivers, or that were outdated?

I had already updated my drivers. This was a fresh reinstall using HP Recovery and I updated my drivers using HP Support. Thinking about it now.. I believe I did install some optional drivers using Windows Update after I had updated them using HP Support

 

[gregrocker]

The HP factory install is the worst possible install of Win7 one can have, larded with more bloatware than any other maker, which interferes with better versions of utilties built into Win7.

Besides weird issues you'll never even experience Win7's native perfect performance until you do a http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/219487-clean-reinstall-factory-oem-windows-7-a.html#post1839164.

Read the SPecial Note to HP Owners at the end as Performing an HP System Recovery (Windows 7) | HP® Support has on some models a Minimal Recovery which is nearly the same as a Clean Reinstall but includes the drivers and activation. You'd only need to uninstall the HP Wireless manager which adds 30 seconds to boot time, use the superior wireless manager built into Win7.

 

[jpolacko]

The HP factory install is the worst possible install of Win7 one can have, larded with more bloatware than any other maker, which interferes with better versions of utilties built into Win7.

Besides weird issues you'll never even experience Win7's native perfect performance until you do a http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/219487-clean-reinstall-factory-oem-windows-7-a.html#post1839164.

Read the SPecial Note to HP Owners at the end as Performing an HP System Recovery (Windows 7) | HP® Support has on some models a Minimal Recovery which is nearly the same as a Clean Reinstall but includes the drivers and activation. You'd only need to uninstall the HP Wireless manager which adds 30 seconds to boot time, use the superior wireless manager built into Win7.

Great advice! I did do a min install. I just don't really know what I did wrong but now all is well and I reinstalled the drivers that were affected using System Recovery application.