New major Win10 update messed up drivers, can't reinstall, can't connect to internet

Did a major system update today for Windows 10, and after it was done a few things were not working anymore, like the fingerprint reader, and no internet.

I tried uninstalling the realtek Ethernet controller driver and reinstalling the stock one that came with my computer. Installation seemed to get stuck.

So through my crappy windows phone, I looked for updated drivers, downloaded them, passed them on my computer, still the installation didn't seem to be working.

Booted in safe mode, tried again, same problem. But this time I let the installation window open, which seemed to be stuck, and after a long time, I get this message:

"The Realtek Network Controller was not found. If deep Sleep Mode is enabled Please Plug the Cable."

I'm not sure what it is talking about. But I don't know how to advance from here. I'm trying to Google the problem but my phone makes browsing really difficult.

Any suggestions?

 

Major update? from which OS? It would help if you give us details that actually matter.

If you updated from Windows 10 Build 10240 to the latest Build 10586, then even though it looks like a regular Windows update, it's not, it's actually a full OS installation. To prove that, check your C: partition and you will see a Windows.old folder if you enable hidden files which means that was your old Windows and now you have a completely new Windows with messed up drivers. Same way the Windows 8 to 8.1 crippled a lot of systems because the Windows 8 drivers were not the same as Windows 8.1 Drivers.

Now for Windows 10 the drivers are the same, but you need to uninstall everything and install the latest drivers. Heck, you didn't even mention what laptop you have so we can't help you much.

Good luck

 

Hi, thanks for your reply, and sorry about the missing information.

I already had Win10, not sure what build it was but the current one is version 1511 / build 10586.0. And yes I do see a Windows.old folder, which is 20 GB! O_O
I wonder if that's just going to stay there like that forever or the system will get rid of it at some point?

I have a Clevo P771ZM. I guess full specs are not relevant in this case but if needed I can provide them.

About the drivers, I did think of reinstalling them in order, but doing it through my phone it's very complicated. I updated the chipset drivers so far (didn't know how to uninstall old ones so just installed new ones, hope that's fine), and of course I tried with the Ethernet drivers but it's not working.

 

Okay, so it's working now, somehow. The only thing that I did different in between the last unsuccessful driver installation and the successful one was to uninstall/delete over 200 entries of something that I can show you in an older photo I took (I didn't take one this time, but it's pretty much the same), in a previous thread I made before: http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...ot-working-after-computer-crash.777291/page-2

It's those entries listed under Network Adapters in Device Manager. I had gotten rid of them in the past, but now that I went back to check there, more than 200 were created again. I still have no idea what those are for.
200+ of them were just named "Tap-Win32 Adapter OAS", while about 40 more had a "#XX" at the end, like "Tap-Win32 Adapter OAS #35", for example. What are these virtual adapters? Why and how do they keep on getting created?

I uninstalled them all (as it was suggested to me last time in that thread in the link), also uninstalled the Realtek Controller from Device Manager, which was still there, then rebooted and tried again with the new driver installation, this time worked.

So this problem is fixed for now. I'll go through updating all of the other drivers too now.

But what's gonna happen to that Windows.old folder? Is it going to stay there? I kinda need those 20GB of space...

Anyways, thanks for the help!
I'll come back again if there's more troubles (there always are, lol)

 

since you have a Windows.old folder, this was like a whole new OS installation leaving your old OS in the Windows.old folder.

I highly suggest you format your laptop and install a fresh copy of windows 10 using the latest ISO

You now have a messed up OS/registry to be honest I'd never use my system like that but that's just me

Also, in the future if you wanted to update the intel chipset drivers, you need to run command prompt as admin then navigate to the folder where the chipset drivers are then run setup with the following switch

setup.exe -overall


if you don't do the -overall switch, then not all the drivers/components are properly updated

you won't find the old ones in the programs and features to uninstall since this is an INF driver thing not a real program that does anything like the IRST or Intel Management Engine Interface for example

I would now download all the latest drivers for your laptop model and keep them handy, if you download them from SAGER's site, they would already have a number preceding each driver to indicate to you which order they need to be installed in.

if you need more help, let me know brah

 

BTW those virtual adapters can either be for a VPN you have installed or for any virtualization software

 

The old folder might be worth leaving on for a little while, in case you want to easily roll back to the previous version of Windows you had before the upgrade to 10.

If you go to disk clean up, I believe you should be able to select it in there to remove it. Maybe wait until the 30 day window has passed before you do that though, just in case you want to roll back.

 

Hey guys, thanks for all the info.

I finally finished updating all drivers and related programs.

Actually, I did have further problems with that lan driver when I decided to uninstall the one I had just installed last time (after it finally worked), to install a slightly newer one. I had the same problem with the same message again, although, despite the error message, it seemed that the driver was actually installing fine, and it was working. So I couldn't perform an installation without getting that error message "The Realtek Network Controller was not found. If deep Sleep Mode is enabled Please Plug the Cable." at the end, but everything seems to work normally with the wired connection, so I moved on from this problem.

Fingerprint reader is also working again now.
The newer softer for the keyboard lights seems to not work as well as the old one, but no big deal.

The only other things I'm not sure if it's a change in the new build of Windows 10 or if I have some visual artifacts, is that some components of programs or menu elements have solid colors now, as opposed to... hmm.. well, I don't remember how they looked before, maybe they were transparent, but I'm 100% sure it wasn't a solid color like this. For example, right clicking on programs pinned to the taskbar didn't show a solid black background before:



Is that just how Windows 10 makes things look like now, or something's messed up on my end?


---------------------------------
To update on that strange phenomena about those virtual network entries, I realized that a new one is created every time the computer is booted (but I can't exclude that new ones are also created after the comptuer is already running).

Even though I delete/uninstall them, they keep coming back.
I'd like to get rid of them since I don't use VPN nor (to my often limited knowledge) any virtualization software (not really sure what those are).

Here's how it looks at the moment:



I'm going to investigate this further, I might make a separate thread about this, but still any reply on this same thread are welcome.

Thanks for the help as always guys!

 

bro, seriously, save your time the hassle and format. an upgrade is always so messy it would take you more time to fix things than an actual full format

 

I can't format. I wouldn't have anywhere to put my hundreds of GB of data for backup, to begin with. And I wouldn't have enough time to do the whole procedure and go back to the state the computer was at before the formatting, with all the programs and settings and everything. And I need the computer for work, I totally can't format at this stage. But thanks for the suggestion anyway!

 

I understand, let's hope you can figure it out then.

Good luck man

 

You don't have to format the machine, Windows has a built in clean install feature since 8.1 that saves your documents but removes third party programs so you would just have to install your programs again (it even conveniently leaves a list of the programs in a file on your desktop). You're going to have a lot more issues than just this if you don't reset the install.

Follow the reset PC instructions

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/windows-10-recovery-options