Operating System Windows 7 nightmare... No idea where else to turn for help (1 Viewer)

[kkozma]

So, I've just spent the last 3 hours returning my HTPC back to normal. At least ONE good thing about there not being a good upgrade path for XP to Win7 is that if Win7 goes wrong, it's not *that* hard to get your XP install back.

So anyways, I'm turning to help from you guys in the hopes that someone here has a near identical hardware setup as me and can tell me what I did wrong.

The machine is an Athlon X2 64 2.5ghz, ECS mobo, 2 gigs ram, 2.5TB storage, and a Saphire Radeon 4550 fanless with naitive HDMI.

The install went pretty smoothly. I thought to myself it can't be this easy. It wasn't.

It immediately told me there were updates available to download when it was finished installing. I noticed on the screen that it was downloading an updated Microsoft ATI Driver for the 4550. As soon as I clicked download and install updates it crashed. WTF. This machine never ever crashed with XP. Not even once. Figuring on a fluke I rebooted the machine. Everything seemed normal except that I had no sound. I downloaded the lastes CCC from ATI and installed it. It installed the graphics and hdmi audio driver. Rebooted. No sound.

So then I tried to install the realtek HDMI audio driver. Crashed. Rebooted it and tried to configure the HDMI audio device. Crashed again.

So I said screw this and recovered my XP installation.

What did I do wrong?

 

[geov]

Did you do a fresh install of Windows7, or upgrade XP? If you upgraded, which its sounds like you did....then I would say thats your problem. There is almost always an incompatible driver or software lurking somewhere. Rather do a fresh, dual-boot install of Windows7 and test it to make sure everything is working...then just delete XP when you are happy.

Its very easy to partition your drive directly from the windows7 installation DVD, which is what I've done... I'm still testing Windows7, but know that if something doesn't work I can just boot into my previous installation. This way I'm also guaranteed that Windows7 will install all the correct drivers, and will not clash with anything I've already got installed.

 

[seco]

I wouldn't install any drivers from Windows Update unless there's no any other way..

 

[kkozma]

Did you do a fresh install of Windows7, or upgrade XP? If you upgraded, which its sounds like you did....then I would say thats your problem. There is almost always an incompatible driver or software lurking somewhere. Rather do a fresh, dual-boot install of Windows7 and test it to make sure everything is working...then just delete XP when you are happy.

Its very easy to partition your drive directly from the windows7 installation DVD, which is what I've done... I'm still testing Windows7, but know that if something doesn't work I can just boot into my previous installation. This way I'm also guaranteed that Windows7 will install all the correct drivers, and will not clash with anything I've already got installed.

It's technically called an upgrade from XP, but in reality it's a clean install... What it does is move your old windows installation (bootup stuff, windows directory, program files, and documents & settings) inside a windows.old folder and then installs a nice clean fresh copy of Win7. The only true upgrade is if you go from Vista to Win7.

At any rate, I think the error of my ways was to let in install that microsoft ati driver. I'm going to try again (after cloning my drive to a backup first) and turn off automatic updates. I wish I could say I was 100% certain that would solve my problem, but I don't have a good feeling about it. A few minutes searching for "windows 7 no hdmi sound", lends to a TON of hits on google.

 

[geov]

Strange about the ATI driver.... I also allowed Windows7 to download all the updates, including the driver for my ATI card and I had no problem. Cloning would work...I still prefer the dual-boot option as I can quickly switch back if something goes wrong..

Let us know how it goes...

 

[kkozma]

Ok, success! But it wasn't easy...

Reinstalled with auto updates turned off. INstalled CCC 9.10 and the realtek HDMI audio driver 2.35. No crashing at all, but I still had no sound.

So I connected the PC straight to my TV and the sound worked. So what we have here is an EDID override problem. After all of these driver updates, I cannot believe that these drivers cannot correctly determine EDID information... *BAGHEAD*