Please advise a newb who has stumbled into instability

[rureadingme]

Hi, I apologize for the long story but I find my self learning all kinds of things I never thought I would have to know just to keep my laptop alive. I got this HP 2000 Notebook PC in 2015 and it had windows 8.1 on it. It came to me used but with a clean install on it. Worked like new and I was very happy it helped me to finish school. Now we use it to drive our entertainment center for TV viewing only. We do not game on this device. We watch Netflix, Hulu, etc. and other normal home use. Any how; I avoided the Windows 10 free upgrade as long as I could and my device was deemed Windows 10 ready by the tools provided at the time. So I upgraded to windows 10 Home in 2016 and things went good until sometime after the Anniversary update snuck onto my machine before I even realized it was there. I do recall being prompted to get new drivers for my Machine from AMD which I installed myself shortly after upgrading to Win 10. I remember using their auto tool to find and install my drivers. 1st mistake. I have since learned I should have removed my old drivers first and manually installed the correct APU driver for my device which has an AMD E1-2100 APU with AMD Radeon HD 8210. For the last several months I have been having issues with Windows 10 updates failing. I would have to check and make sure that it was working on a regular basis especially for Micro Softs monthly updates. I struggled with this as a frustrated user with just enough knowledge to know something is wrong that I can't find. Eventually I discovered that when the Anniversary build was released my device was not on the list of tested devices and Suddenly my warranty is expired, and my drivers are out of date. What I didn't know was that I was just supposed to do what I had already done erringly which was DL the Drivers from AMD. My problems I have found after many failed attempts from Microsoft Techs poking in my machine giving me an in-place update, was that my AMD drivers were installed incorrectly to begin with. This only came to light because my Radeon Settings would not update to the current drivers. A micrsoft tech did try to help me to uninstall the AMD drivers and install the proper ones, but they made another mistake which has made my system even more unstable. They accidentally did a total uninstall instead of a custom, and then they used the wrong file to download my drivers. Instead of the normal APU I should have installed they installed another auto tool of the minimum drivers. I thought every thing worked perfect for one week, and then my AMSD4 device failed and Windows will not recognize it nor will windows find a driver for it. I sent a Ticket to AMD and they suggested running DDU and doing a clean install. Before just following blind instructions I combed your forum and found the tip about a possible infinite boot error, and that the people that had problems with DDU had systems that were unstable to begin with. I am not going to be one of those that jumps on here after bricking my machine crying foul when it would obviously be my fault for not knowing what the hell I am doing. So there are 3 things that have me concerned.

1) System Restore just recently failed to return me to a state before the driver failed with an error. I have no confidence in my System Restore capabilities.
2) I do not have a recovery disk, and my inbuilt recovery partition is suspect. If I get stuck in the infinite boot mode How would I get out of it then?
3) Should I even be attempting to save Windows 10? MS will gladly return me to any previous build I want, and I could try from there. I could even go back to 8.1 and get what I need from HP instead of AMD.

Please help, I can't just buy a new machine, and I can't let this one slowly die forever.

[Wagnard]

Hi, I apologize for the long story but I find my self learning all kinds of things I never thought I would have to know just to keep my laptop alive. I got this HP 2000 Notebook PC in 2015 and it had windows 8.1 on it. It came to me used but with a clean install on it. Worked like new and I was very happy it helped me to finish school. Now we use it to drive our entertainment center for TV viewing only. We do not game on this device. We watch Netflix, Hulu, etc. and other normal home use. Any how; I avoided the Windows 10 free upgrade as long as I could and my device was deemed Windows 10 ready by the tools provided at the time. So I upgraded to windows 10 Home in 2016 and things went good until sometime after the Anniversary update snuck onto my machine before I even realized it was there. I do recall being prompted to get new drivers for my Machine from AMD which I installed myself shortly after upgrading to Win 10. I remember using their auto tool to find and install my drivers. 1st mistake. I have since learned I should have removed my old drivers first and manually installed the correct APU driver for my device which has an AMD E1-2100 APU with AMD Radeon HD 8210. For the last several months I have been having issues with Windows 10 updates failing. I would have to check and make sure that it was working on a regular basis especially for Micro Softs monthly updates. I struggled with this as a frustrated user with just enough knowledge to know something is wrong that I can't find. Eventually I discovered that when the Anniversary build was released my device was not on the list of tested devices and Suddenly my warranty is expired, and my drivers are out of date. What I didn't know was that I was just supposed to do what I had already done erringly which was DL the Drivers from AMD. My problems I have found after many failed attempts from Microsoft Techs poking in my machine giving me an in-place update, was that my AMD drivers were installed incorrectly to begin with. This only came to light because my Radeon Settings would not update to the current drivers. A micrsoft tech did try to help me to uninstall the AMD drivers and install the proper ones, but they made another mistake which has made my system even more unstable. They accidentally did a total uninstall instead of a custom, and then they used the wrong file to download my drivers. Instead of the normal APU I should have installed they installed another auto tool of the minimum drivers. I thought every thing worked perfect for one week, and then my AMSD4 device failed and Windows will not recognize it nor will windows find a driver for it. I sent a Ticket to AMD and they suggested running DDU and doing a clean install. Before just following blind instructions I combed your forum and found the tip about a possible infinite boot error, and that the people that had problems with DDU had systems that were unstable to begin with. I am not going to be one of those that jumps on here after bricking my machine crying foul when it would obviously be my fault for not knowing what the hell I am doing. So there are 3 things that have me concerned.

1) System Restore just recently failed to return me to a state before the driver failed with an error. I have no confidence in my System Restore capabilities.
2) I do not have a recovery disk, and my inbuilt recovery partition is suspect. If I get stuck in the infinite boot mode How would I get out of it then?
3) Should I even be attempting to save Windows 10? MS will gladly return me to any previous build I want, and I could try from there. I could even go back to 8.1 and get what I need from HP instead of AMD.

Please help, I can't just buy a new machine, and I can't let this one slowly die forever.

Hi and welcome,
I'm not currently at home so I'll be simple
If you want to avoid the infinite boot error, manually go into safe mode. The problem is if you let DDU do it for you.
If you can't find how to get into safe mode, you can run DDU in normal mode.
If you do so, you run it 1 time and then reboot.
When the computer finished rebooting, run DDU again and reboot
After that install your drivers.


If you manage to run it in safe mode, only a single pass is OK.

[rureadingme]

... "I am not going to be one of those that jumps on here after bricking my machine crying foul when it would obviously be my fault for not knowing what the hell I am doing. So there are 3 things that have me concerned.

1) System Restore just recently failed to return me to a state before the driver failed with an error. I have no confidence in my System Restore capabilities.
2) I do not have a recovery disk, and my inbuilt recovery partition is suspect. If I get stuck in the infinite boot mode How would I get out of it then?
3) Should I even be attempting to save Windows 10? MS will gladly return me to any previous build I want, and I could try from there. I could even go back to 8.1 and get what I need from HP instead of AMD.

Please help, I can't just buy a new machine, and I can't let this one slowly die forever."

Hi and welcome,
I'm not currently at home so I'll be simple
If you want to avoid the infinite boot error, manually go into safe mode. The problem is if you let DDU do it for you.
If you can't find how to get into safe mode, you can run DDU in normal mode.
If you do so, you run it 1 time and then reboot.
When the computer finished rebooting, run DDU again and reboot
After that install your drivers.

Thank you for your swift reply.

Quick question that occurred to me. I believe that my system restore problem may be related to recent install of AVAST Antivirus. Avast may also be causing other issues so was thinking of dumping it. It may be over kill but I was thinking of uninstalling it first, and making sure system restore functions before proceeding. Or should I not risk further alterations before repairing drivers, and simply disable AVAST while running DDU? Also is it necessary to disable windows firewall?

Thank you in advance for your time and patients.

[Wagnard]

... "I am not going to be one of those that jumps on here after bricking my machine crying foul when it would obviously be my fault for not knowing what the hell I am doing. So there are 3 things that have me concerned.

1) System Restore just recently failed to return me to a state before the driver failed with an error. I have no confidence in my System Restore capabilities.
2) I do not have a recovery disk, and my inbuilt recovery partition is suspect. If I get stuck in the infinite boot mode How would I get out of it then?
3) Should I even be attempting to save Windows 10? MS will gladly return me to any previous build I want, and I could try from there. I could even go back to 8.1 and get what I need from HP instead of AMD.

Please help, I can't just buy a new machine, and I can't let this one slowly die forever."

Hi and welcome,
I'm not currently at home so I'll be simple
If you want to avoid the infinite boot error, manually go into safe mode. The problem is if you let DDU do it for you.
If you can't find how to get into safe mode, you can run DDU in normal mode.
If you do so, you run it 1 time and then reboot.
When the computer finished rebooting, run DDU again and reboot
After that install your drivers.

Thank you for your swift reply.

Quick question that occurred to me. I believe that my system restore problem may be related to recent install of AVAST Antivirus. Avast may also be causing other issues so was thinking of dumping it. It may be over kill but I was thinking of uninstalling it first, and making sure system restore functions before proceeding. Or should I not risk further alterations before repairing drivers, and simply disable AVAST while running DDU? Also is it necessary to disable windows firewall?

Thank you in advance for your time and patients.

No need to disable the firewall, but I strongly recommend that you should have at least a system restore point or a backup before running DDU.
And yes, avast can cause some weird issues with windows sometimes, I do had problem myself when I tried it in the past.

[rureadingme]

Thank you, I will uninstall Avast first and attempt to create a restore point afterwards.

[rureadingme]

Results: It worked , but it didn't fix what I hoped it would fix .

I uninstalled Avast, ran sfc /scannow, no corruptions, made a restore point, booted into safe mode, ran DDU, it booted me back to normal startup, , and I installed 17.4.3 no snags. However the amds4 device remains unknown and uninstalled. However I did get my Radeon settings back.

I did not opt to install relive. I don't game on this device so I didn't see the point. Could that have anything to do with it?

I submitted another ticket to AMD, but I am hesitant to try to deal with the Microsoft techs that refuse to deviate from their Troubleshooting scripts. The first thing they want to do is use Device manager to try to uninstall the driver and let windows reinstall it which is what I read on AMD forums not to do. Argggh.

Any advice on how to fix this unknown device driver would be great.

[rureadingme]

in fact I think this would have been much easier to fix had MS not uninstalled the device after the driver died.

[Wagnard]

Results: It worked , but it didn't fix what I hoped it would fix .

I uninstalled Avast, ran sfc /scannow, no corruptions, made a restore point, booted into safe mode, ran DDU, it booted me back to normal startup, , and I installed 17.4.3 no snags. However the amds4 device remains unknown and uninstalled. However I did get my Radeon settings back.

I did not opt to install relive. I don't game on this device so I didn't see the point. Could that have anything to do with it?

I submitted another ticket to AMD, but I am hesitant to try to deal with the Microsoft techs that refuse to deviate from their Troubleshooting scripts. The first thing they want to do is use Device manager to try to uninstall the driver and let windows reinstall it which is what I read on AMD forums not to do. Argggh.

Any advice on how to fix this unknown device driver would be great.

Nice to see you made progress.
For your device, from the same place you took the Screenshot, go to details and tell me the 'hardware device id'

[rureadingme]

Nice to see you made progress.
For your device, from the same place you took the Screenshot, go to details and tell me the 'hardware device id'

As requested:

ACPI\ASD0001\2&DABA3FF&3

[Wagnard]

Nice to see you made progress.
For your device, from the same place you took the Screenshot, go to details and tell me the 'hardware device id'

As requested:

ACPI\ASD0001\2&DABA3FF&3

Is your system still able to run correctly without this device?
it seems to be the Amdas4 device . Is it really useful?
Maybe its not compatible with win10 creator update.