This post is more “note to self” than anything else. I spent several hours last week recovering from a nasty driver installation that wouldn’t allow me to boot my desktop computer (running 64–bit Vista).

A couple of months ago I let Windows Update install the latest drivers for my NVidia video card. Despite what you might have read on Slashdot, Windows doesn’t need to be restarted all the time – I keep mine on for months.

Ever since I installed that video driver I had issues, I just didn’t connect them with the driver update. Video playback became visibly blocky, as if no interpolation of any kind was done.

A couple of days ago I let Windows Update install the latest driver for my Attansic onboard network chip. It did not ask for a reboot, so I didn’t.

Then, as a desperate move, I decided to resolve the video blockiness by manually installing the latest drivers from NVidia site. This time I had to reboot and… machine froze in the middle of the startup.

Tried again. Then again. OK, safe mode with networking – nope. Hmm. I assumed all along that it was my latest installation of video drivers that caused the problem, but obviously it was the network drivers – I could boot just fine in safe mode without the network.

Here’s where things become strange. Uninstalling the driver and reinstalling the one from the manufacturer’s site (Asus) didn’t work at all – same problem, startup freezes the computer. I let it “frozen” like this and 15 minutes (!) later it actually boots fine, except that the network doesn’t work. Bizarre.

I give up and use the source, err, Google. I find not one, but at least five people describing exactly the same situation. The problem is that the faulty network drivers ruin even the firmware on the mainboard, so uninstall does nothing. You have to unplug your computer from the wall (!), let it like that for at least 15 minutes (I tried first with just a couple of minutes, wasn’t enough), then install the driver.

Needless to day I will never let Windows Update install any drivers on any of my machines.