Reinstalling Windows

[Ibrahim Pasha]

I used a program called "Driver Booster" which caused weird issues with my drives and lowered stability of my system.

I want to get rid of all drivers I updated with that, there is no roll back point so I need to reinstall windows again.

But I dont want to lose my programs and files, what options do I have?

[Guest]

I always had the idea those "Driver boosters" were viruses. Use your virus scanner or defender to remove the driver booster, and ANY unwanted programs. Then go into task manager and look what is clogging up your resources, if it looks suspicious or has a weird name, google it and see if it should be deleted.(And how)

Next, reinstall all your drivers manually, most things will be automatically updated, so you only need a GPU driver.

 

I hope that does the trick.

 

If it doesn't, backup any files you want onto an external HDD or USB drive, and reinstall windows. If there are programs you want to keep, note their names and reinstall them later.

[Ibrahim Pasha]

1 minute ago, timl132 said:

I always had the idea those "Driver boosters" were viruses. Use your virus scanner or defender to remove the driver booster, and ANY unwanted programs. Then go into task manager and look what is clogging up your resources, if it looks suspicious or has a weird name, google it and see if it should be deleted.(And how)

Next, reinstall all your drivers manually, most things will be automatically updated, so you only need a GPU driver.

 

I hope that does the trick.

 

If it doesn't, backup any files you want onto an external HDD or USB drive, and reinstall windows. If there are programs you want to keep, note their names and reinstall them later.

How do I reinstall all my drives manually?

[Zmax]

Installation of drivers is fairly simple.

 

GPU -- Make sure to have the model number of you card, go to maker web site look up the model go to download or drivers, or support. download driver and install.

 

CPU  -- do the same

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, Ibrahim Pasha said:

How do I reinstall all my drives manually?

*drivers. Go to the site of your hardware/vendor e.g. HP or Gigabyte, and download the drivers from there. If you post which GPU you have I can google it for you.

[Zmax]

By the way, is you system form a store, or did someone build it for you

 

If it's a brand name you may need a restore disk, from the company.

[Ibrahim Pasha]

1 minute ago, timl132 said:

*drivers. Go to the site of your hardware/vendor e.g. HP or Gigabyte, and download the drivers from there. If you post which GPU you have I can google it for you.

MSI GTX 1080

i7 8700

 

But driver booster messed up with my other drives like;

Intel(R) PCI Express Root Port #4 - A293

Intel(R) PCI Express Root Port #1 - A290

Intel(R) 300 Series Chipset Family LPC Controller (Z370) - A2C9

Intel(R) Management Engine Interface

Intel(R) Xeon(R) E3 - 1200/1500 v5/6th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) Gaussian Mixture Model - 1911

 

[Ibrahim Pasha]

8 minutes ago, Zmax said:

By the way, is you system form a store, or did someone build it for you

 

If it's a brand name you may need a restore disk, from the company.

I built it myself

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Ibrahim Pasha said:

MSI GTX 1080

i7 8700

 

But driver booster messed up with my other drives like;

Intel(R) PCI Express Root Port #4 - A293

Intel(R) PCI Express Root Port #1 - A290

Intel(R) 300 Series Chipset Family LPC Controller (Z370) - A2C9

Intel(R) Management Engine Interface

Intel(R) Xeon(R) E3 - 1200/1500 v5/6th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) Gaussian Mixture Model - 1911

 

GPU: https://www.nvidia.com/Download/driverResults.aspx/138697/en-us

for the others, go into device manager and do right click, then update and have it manually detect updates. See if that increases any performance.

[Ibrahim Pasha]

4 minutes ago, timl132 said:

GPU: https://www.nvidia.com/Download/driverResults.aspx/138697/en-us

for the others, go into device manager and do right click, then update and have it manually detect updates. See if that increases any performance.

It says "The best drivers for your device is already installed"

But I don't trust Driver Booster, will anything irreversible happen if I uninstall driver and try to install it again?

[Guest]

Just now, Ibrahim Pasha said:

It says "The best drivers for your device is already installed"

But I don't trust Driver Booster, will anything irreversible happen if I uninstall driver and try to install it again?

Reinstalling the GPu driver is no issue.

For other devices, it depends. Nothing will get damaged. I'd just try it, but if you remove something critical, your PC might crash. But you can't destroy anything.

Worst case scenario, your PC crashes and needs to reboot.

[WihGlah]

1) Get a Thumb drive of at least 16gb. Go to you GPU manufacturers website and download the latest driver install package. Save it to the drive. Do the same for your Motherboard manufacturer.
2) Backup your data. Savegames. Photos. Videos (?) anything you want to keep. Write the files to an external source and make sure they are secure. Mine go to my NAS but a secondary drive will suffice. If you have more than 1 hard drive, identify which one it is by size and name.
3) Go to the microsoft Windows download  page. This is where I got mine from: https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10 but there are a few sources. Google it - it's easy. Figure out what your Windows key is. It will be on your original packaging.
4) follow the instructions.
5) Install the drive to a USB 3.1a port and reboot. Go into your BIOS to make your PC boot from the thumb drive. (this enables a total nuke of your hard drive.)
6) Save and exit. You PC will Boot from the thumb drive.
7) Follow the instructions to "setup" and "install" windows.
Delete every partition from your OS install drive.
9) Choose your install drive and create a "new" valid drive. Windows might create several partitions to manage the drive. Pay attention to the size of any partitions. You will be installing on the biggest one.
10 Carry on following the instructions.

Now at this point Windows will do it's thing. So far this will have taken about 5 minutes. Depending on your Drive speed it can take from 8 minutes to over an hour. Kick back and watch a TV show.
When you get back:

11) Finalise the installation with your details and Windows 10 will reboot a few times. Then boot to the desktop. It is likely all your drivers will be up to date excepting your GPU driver. 
12) Open the thumb drive, copy the drivers to your dektop and run them.

Now you have a virgin Windows Install. Enjoy the 20 second boot time and all your freed up Ram.

Depending on your proclivaties you might also want to disable Windows firewall, defender, UAC and the telemetry as well. But there are many sources for the best ways to do that. 

[Ibrahim Pasha]

18 minutes ago, WihGlah said:

1) Get a Thumb drive of at least 16gb. Go to you GPU manufacturers website and download the latest driver install package. Save it to the drive. Do the same for your Motherboard manufacturer.

Why I do the same for motherboard, my motherboard BIOS is updated does it roll back when I reinstall windows?

[WihGlah]

52 minutes ago, Ibrahim Pasha said:

Why I do the same for motherboard, my motherboard BIOS is updated does it roll back when I reinstall windows?

Your motherboard requires drivers. They will be listed at your motherboard manufacturers website.  Windows is unlikely to get everything right.

 

Chipset & LANport etc,

 

Do it beforehand, as you will need them to re-enable your Ethernet ports (and get back on the internet)

 

Your BIOS will not be effected.