Need Help - updating / Installing a Driver.

Asus Laptop / G series -

Windows 7.


This belongs to my in-laws and I'm trying to help them out.

about a week ago, they were using it, just checking email online when it rebooted.
it tried to start up, but went into a booting loop.

Finally after 3 attempts, it stopped and they got the BSOD.

IRQL - Driver Not Less Or Equal.

Now upon googling this, I found it could be a number of things, hardware, driver etc. I've run the memory test, it's ok and narrowed this down to a driver issue.

At times it won't boot at all, if I leave it sit for a while, I can finally get it to boot using "last known good config".
once I'm there, I try to start updating drivers and it gives me the same BSOD and tries to reboot, but stops on the "windows has shut down to prevent damage...." then the Recovery screen - safe mode etc.

After trying this for a couple of days, I figured I would just re-install W7, I have the OS disc that came with the laptop. Great it re-installed and booted right up. Awesome, except that the "Driver" disc that came with the laptop wouldn't work. I got an I386 error, which I know can sometimes be as simple as cleaning the disc.
Tried that, but then it wouldn't boot again.

Day 3 - Got it to boot up, figured I'd go online and DL the drivers. So DL, AVG, Ccleaner and Glarys from a thumb drive and then connnect to the internet, update all those, run them, all clean ( as it should be), So I try to connect to the Asus website to check out drivers and when I google Asus, I get re-driected, any site I tried to go to I would get re-directed to another search page. so now there's that problem.

So, I pull up AVG, going to run a scan, it's not working.... says no componets are active, I immediately shut everything down, DL'd Malwarebytes, got it to scan, it's clean.

Day 4 - I got the laptop to boot up - put the driver disc in and it started to work, so I was sitting there letting it do its thing, when BSOD, shutdown. Again. arghhhhh.

I don't know what else to do. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

OH, I did DL windows updates, however wasn't sure about SP1, Do I need to do that too?

thanks and Happy Holidays.

reply to post by elevatedone


I have had something a little similar to that and it was caused by the c: partition being too full to be able to take the windows install properly or even boot so I could refomat it, so I had to hook the disk up to a second pc in an external case and delete everything off of it before I started to reinstall

Have you tried unplugging everything from the PC? i.e. printers, external drives etc etc etc

reply to post by davespanners


This one doesn't have a partician, when I re-installed W7, I didnt' partition it.

I have not opened up the case, I'm afraid to, I've never opened up a laptop before and it's not mine LoL.

reply to post by elevatedone


Well the c: disc if not partition.

I'm trying to think of what else it might be..... If your a bit nervous about opening it up it might be harder to diagnose hardware faults, it's understandable though when its not your laptop

reply to post by davespanners


This is going to sounds like a stupid question as I assume the answer is yes, but have you tried booting it in safe mode? I only ask because you didn't mention it in the OP

reply to post by davespanners


Yeah, before I re-installed W7, it wouldn't boot in any mode.

I did the re-install and it'll boot in the different modes, but after a while, I still get the BSOD and shutdown.


I just called the local repair shop. They said it actually could be a virus too.

$49 just for them to look at it. If it's a virus, $59-89 for them to clean it.

If it is a hardware issue, they would call me with a quote.

give this a try, i guess it can't hurt - also try to check into recommended bios settings for that laptop. tell us how it goes. good luck and may you and yours enjoy the yuletide season.

From one thing that you said I believe that there is a virus infected the machine.

You said that when you get it to run before BSOD that your google results get redirected. That is classic virus behavior.

Let me recommend Malwarebytes Anti malware

download site

That program is very good but doesnt catch everything.

Another program I use that has 100% effectiveness for me is GetSusp by McAfee.
I know Mcafee isnt the best but this little program will run a scan for you in about 10 minutes and give you a readout of all files as known, unknown, or suspicious along with the path to find each file.
Then you can go and manually delete each file. One thing it may not do is give you the prefetch file that fetches the malicious file, so you might have to do a little searching on your own, but the names will be similar

GetSusp download

reply to post by elevatedone


You need a pre boot virus scanner then that you can get to run from a cd, I will look one up

Edit to add

You could try the advice here it has a link to an iso of a bootable cd anti virus.
You will of course have to change the boot order in the BIOS to check the CD before the hard disc if it doesn't already

Sounds like you are more knowledgeable than I am but I recently rescued a friend's computer from a similar situation. Because doing anything online was impossibe, because the viruses had taken total control of his browsers, I booted in Safe Mode, ran the very old and outdated version of Malwarebytes he had.
Eventually got to a point where I was able to update the Malwarebytes and kept re-scanning with that and a new Avast until eventually I got the machine clean, reinstalled Windows, new IE and a new version of Firefox and some other stuff that had been damaged.
What I am thinking is that repeated scans with a freshly updated Malwarebytes each time did the trick.

Thanks for all the replies.

I'll try these tonight.


Happy Holidays.

reply to post by davespanners


Also if you have a virus after a fresh install then I presume that you are not formatting the drive during the install and just placing the new version of windows over the top.

Is there stuff on the laptop that needs to be saved? or can you just reformat

reply to post by elevatedone


You too my friend.

Best wishes for you and yours and good luck with the machine.
If you have a problem with the downloads, I have the programs, U2U me and i can send them to you.

Happy Holidays

reply to post by elevatedone


Happy Christmas

Combofix?

Originally posted by davespanners
reply to post by davespanners

 

Also if you have a virus after a fresh install then I presume that you are not formatting the drive during the install and just placing the new version of windows over the top.

Is there stuff on the laptop that needs to be saved? or can you just reformat

You are correct.... thats exactly what I did.

I can re-install again, but I don't know how to format a drive. LoL.

I'll google it.

reply to post by yeahright


I thought about that... will probably try this too.

reply to post by elevatedone


When you are installing windows 7 one of the options somewhere will be to format first, i think it's in "drive tools" you WILL lose everything on the drive though

reply to post by davespanners


There's nothing on the HD that needs to be saved... Thank goodness.

I'll be working on this tonight, I'll report back here.

Thanks again everyone.

If all else fails, do a complete wipe boot and nuke and re-install from a new (or known clean) Windows recovery disk.

If that fails, talk them into trying a Linux distro (Mint 9 or Ubuntu 10.10) for brand new Windows converts.

Good luck!