Graphics drivers not recognized- hard drive or mobo failure?

[redfish]

Hey guys, it's been a while since I've been on here- I've had no time recently- but I find myself again in need of assistance, in the midst of a tech crisis with my PC.

My sig needs to be updated, as I have made some changes to my hardware since I was last here. To make a long story short, some chemicals were spilled through the top fan of my HAF case, my graphics card fried, and there was a short across the terminals in the PCI-E slot in my motherboard, melting the plastic of the slot. I bought a new GPU, an HD 6830, and a new motherboard. My new motherboard's specifications escape me- I think it has an AMD 990FX chipset, or something like that- but I know it's got UEFI BIOS and an AM3+ socket.

Anyways, I started having problems with my new graphics card a week or two ago. An update was available for the drivers, so I went ahead and downloaded it, but when my system rebooted, it had reverted to windows basic as if there were no drivers installed. Then I got a notification telling me that Hydravision is uninstalling itself because there are no AMD video drivers installed. I thought that maybe the computer had crashed while installing the updates, so I went to the AMD site and re-installed the drivers. Still no luck, so I did it again, but this time I reinstalled the old version of the drivers, that had worked fine before. Didn't do anything. I went to hardware manager to check the driver, and Windows had no problem recognizing the drivers. It seems that the drivers just don't recognize themselves, which is really weird. Whatever the case, they weren't working, so I uninstalled the drivers from the hardware manager. Restart, re-install the drivers from the site, and they're still not working.

...But that was just the beginning. I remembered that I had overclocked my video card, so I decided to see if I could go into the BIOS and revert the card to factory settings. I restated my computer, held the Delete key, and... nothing happened. I just saw a black screen with the white blinking line in the upper left corner. I kept holding DEL, and after a few seconds I heard a clicking noise from somewhere in my computer- I don't know if it was coming from my hard drive or from the piezo. I kept holding DEL for about ten seconds, with the clicking noise, and eventually a message popped up on the screen, "DISK READ ERROR" or something like that. I restarted it and re-tried a few more times, and got the same result every time. I don't know if the UEFI uses the hard disk, and the hard disk is fried, or if the mobo is just fried, or something else, but I've tried everything I can think of, and it's not working. I suppose I could boot it back up and run SFC and CHKDSK... in fact, I'll go do that now, but this problem seems a little deeper than that.

Any help? Thanks in advance. (and sorry for the lengthy explanation...)

 

[-RockMan-]

Hey guys, it's been a while since I've been on here- I've had no time recently- but I find myself again in need of assistance, in the midst of a tech crisis with my PC.

My sig needs to be updated, as I have made some changes to my hardware since I was last here. To make a long story short, some chemicals were spilled through the top fan of my HAF case, my graphics card fried, and there was a short across the terminals in the PCI-E slot in my motherboard, melting the plastic of the slot. I bought a new GPU, an HD 6830, and a new motherboard. My new motherboard's specifications escape me- I think it has an AMD 990FX chipset, or something like that- but I know it's got UEFI BIOS and an AM3+ socket.

Anyways, I started having problems with my new graphics card a week or two ago. An update was available for the drivers, so I went ahead and downloaded it, but when my system rebooted, it had reverted to windows basic as if there were no drivers installed. Then I got a notification telling me that Hydravision is uninstalling itself because there are no AMD video drivers installed. I thought that maybe the computer had crashed while installing the updates, so I went to the AMD site and re-installed the drivers. Still no luck, so I did it again, but this time I reinstalled the old version of the drivers, that had worked fine before. Didn't do anything. I went to hardware manager to check the driver, and Windows had no problem recognizing the drivers. It seems that the drivers just don't recognize themselves, which is really weird. Whatever the case, they weren't working, so I uninstalled the drivers from the hardware manager. Restart, re-install the drivers from the site, and they're still not working.

...But that was just the beginning. I remembered that I had overclocked my video card, so I decided to see if I could go into the BIOS and revert the card to factory settings. I restated my computer, held the Delete key, and... nothing happened. I just saw a black screen with the white blinking line in the upper left corner. I kept holding DEL, and after a few seconds I heard a clicking noise from somewhere in my computer- I don't know if it was coming from my hard drive or from the piezo. I kept holding DEL for about ten seconds, with the clicking noise, and eventually a message popped up on the screen, "DISK READ ERROR" or something like that. I restarted it and re-tried a few more times, and got the same result every time. I don't know if the UEFI uses the hard disk, and the hard disk is fried, or if the mobo is just fried, or something else, but I've tried everything I can think of, and it's not working. I suppose I could boot it back up and run SFC and CHKDSK... in fact, I'll go do that now, but this problem seems a little deeper than that.

Any help? Thanks in advance. (and sorry for the lengthy explanation...)

Yeah that white blinking line at the beginning of post for AMD's uefi means it maybe having a hard time trying to reset itself back to a configuration that was stable.

Go back into bios, and check and see if your drives are posting up and has the correct sizes.
If you have a hdd in bios with no size and bios has a hard time reading it or not at all, that maybe a issue right there.
Also, your video card can be reset safely in bios, I don't know the steps right now, but I'll follow up with you at lunch time.

https://www.google.com/#hl=en&gs_nf...or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=738b4b0732b36883

That should point you in the right direction for now.

 

[redfish]

Is there a way I can bypass the UEFI and access the BIOS? If not, like I said, I can't get into BIOS.

 

[MindoverMaster]

UEFI is your BIOS. What do you mean you can't get into it? You can't change any settings? Go into the advanced section.

 

[-RockMan-]

Is there a way I can bypass the UEFI and access the BIOS? If not, like I said, I can't get into BIOS.

Hmm, turn off your machine, take out gpu, start out with 1 stick of ram and 1 hdd.
Turn it on again with a PS2 keyboard, and see what happens, if it lets you in great.
If not reset the cmos jumper on the motherboard, give it about 1 minute to clear after removing the jumper.
Put it back and see if it comes on, if I don't respond for half the day, mind or someone else will take up lead and help you.

 

[redfish]

Oh boy. I've had school all week so I haven't had any time to work on this. My other computer just had the same problem (this other computer has integrated NB graphics), but after I tried re-installing the drivers, I tried uninstalling them using the installation disk and when I rebooted the computer the drivers were restored. I am at a loss at this point. I tried this with my main computer and it froze halfway into the uninstall, but when I rebooted it appeared to have worked, until I tried logging in and the signal went blank. Then I tried going into bios again, and was able to, until I tried navigating to the boot section and it froze. I'm on my phone but I'll post a more detailed explanation later when I can type.

 

[redfish]

Well then. I think I've fixed the problem, although I don't know how or why, nor even what the problem was in the first place. I rebooted and got past the log in, and noticed that there clearly was an ATI driver installed because the visual theme was back to normal. But when I went to look for the catalyst software, it was not installed. I then tried to finish the uninstall but discovered that the uninstall had been complete and no ATI software remained on my system... why the graphics were working, I have no clue. Then I re-installed it and it seems to be working now.

UEFI is your BIOS. What do you mean you can't get into it? You can't change any settings? Go into the advanced section.

No, I meant that I couldn't get into BIOS. When I tried to get into bios, i.e. held down the delete key upon booting, an error message about my hard disk showed up, and I couldn't get into BIOS. I eventually did, though, after uninstalling graphics drivers, but I can't navigate to or beyond the "BOOT" tab in UEFI without it freezing.

Hmm, turn off your machine, take out gpu, start out with 1 stick of ram and 1 hdd.
Turn it on again with a PS2 keyboard, and see what happens, if it lets you in great.
If not reset the cmos jumper on the motherboard, give it about 1 minute to clear after removing the jumper.
Put it back and see if it comes on, if I don't respond for half the day, mind or someone else will take up lead and help you.

I didn't end up having to do this, but how could I see what I'd be doing if I unplugged the graphics card? This motherboard does not have integrated graphics, unlike my old one, so problems like this may be more difficult to diagnose and deal with.

I wonder what the problem was? Uninstalling the drivers seemed to be the solution, yet somehow, when the install manager could not detect any drivers installed, there clearly were still drivers installed. My guess is that there were too many residual drivers that somehow got buried in the system, and conflicted with each other. Any thoughts? This might have been the root of all my early computer problems as well. If so, what could I do to fix it? I tried using driver sweeper, but the version I was directed to wouldn't run on my system.

 

[-RockMan-]

I didn't end up having to do this, but how could I see what I'd be doing if I unplugged the graphics card? This motherboard does not have integrated graphics, unlike my old one, so problems like this may be more difficult to diagnose and deal with.

I wonder what the problem was? Uninstalling the drivers seemed to be the solution, yet somehow, when the install manager could not detect any drivers installed, there clearly were still drivers installed. My guess is that there were too many residual drivers that somehow got buried in the system, and conflicted with each other. Any thoughts? This might have been the root of all my early computer problems as well. If so, what could I do to fix it? I tried using driver sweeper, but the version I was directed to wouldn't run on my system.

Heh, I must have read the mobo model wrong, there was 2 versions of this mobo, go figure.
After you dsecribed what was going on, it sounded like either the catalyst suite updated itself with a newer one like nvidia does lately, or windows 7, decided it finally hates you and it will try to fix itself without your permission.

Bit of sarcasm at the end, but thw windows 7 os will try to help itself like ms program it to do, sometimes I rather let windows let me handle the system then to be too helpfull at times. +_+
One way to find is look at your windows update instll log and see if it noted any new changes, if it did, you'll know right away.