I think I corrupted/broke my windows somehow..... reinstall?

[Brandoren]

As the title states I think I broke or corrupted my windows (windows 7 home premium) as I've noticed through many different venues. 

For one, when I open my Device Manager nothing populates on the list. Nothing, no graphics card or anything, its just blank. 

Another thing is that certain games that require my graphics card to be updated won't run, and I can't update my graphics card, even though I've downloaded the driver

(Graphics card is an amd hd radeon 7770) and the program AMD Gaming Evolved made by amd won't recognize that my computer has a graphics card at all, although it still seems to be working as I can play some of my higher work load games smoothly.

 

Did I break windows somehow?

Can I fix this, or is it better to just re-install windows?

How do I re-install windows?

 

If it helps I think this problem started quite some time ago when I accidentally defraged my ssd instead of my hard drive. I heard somewhere you're not supposed to defrag an ssd. Could this have started the problem??

 

Any help is great, sorry for wall of text. THANK YOU!!!

[AnUnQuietMind]

1.you can try to see if fixing the registry would solve the problem.

2.flash your motherboard bios with the latest update.

3. check and try un install all old video drivers to se if that fixes it.

4. dont backup your computer but copy needed files to an external device and do a clean windows install.

 

Id go with both option 2. and 4.

[SirSquid]

windows 7 won't let you defrag a sdd but will trim it instead.

[Gikero]

Have you tried a system restore to before you were having issues?

[Altecice]

open up a command prompt as admin and type in 'SFC /SCANNOW'. See if it reports any violations and it will fix them (you may need to run it more than once). That should hopefully fix your issues.

[Brandoren]

Okay so I'll try Altecice's solution as it sounds easiest and see what happens. If I still have probs Ill try options 1/2/4 from floydkid85. Also @floydkid85 how do I go about doing those three things? My biggest issue is how bad I am at dealing with software issues.... hardware I can handle, but navigating some of this crap is difficult for me >_<

[Brandoren]

First things first. Just going to save anything important on my computer to a usb stick

[AnUnQuietMind]

There are registry checking tools built into windows, im more likely to believe altcice method would have the most benefit, as far as flashing your motherboard, it depends on what board you have. look up the modle number and brand and check youtube for a step by step guide (and dont do it on a day your power might go out!!) as far as a clean install incert your microsoft install CD tell your bios to boot from the cd drive and go through the windows install steps that the disk prompts you too.

[Brandoren]

Havent had time to go through these steps to fix my com. been very busy. hopefully going to get this done tomorrow. Wish me luck! and thanks for all the great help!

[simson0606]

you can use display driver uninstaller and then reinstall the amd driver. has saved me many times when i had my r9 290's

[Brandoren]

you can use display driver uninstaller and then reinstall the amd driver. has saved me many times when i had my r9 290's

That might work, but i've gone so far as to manually remove my graphics card drivers to install the new one and nothing works. one big issue for me is still that my divice manager page still wont populate with anything. literally nothing... which means i cant even see my graphics card's existence......

[Brandoren]

hmm so I want to try to re-install windows but im not sure how to do it. originally bought my computer at best buy, so I dont have like a "windows" disk. all I have is these recovery disks.... Do i open my bios and try to run from this disk? or is this not what im looking for??