WARNING. Recommended Windows Update network driver kills Vista.

[Poppy]

Here is a warning to those with Attansic L1 Gigabit network controller chips
on their motherboard, such as ASUS P5N-E.

Do NOT, repeat NOT, install the recommended network adapter driver from
Microsoft Update. The recommended hardware driver appears with a different
manufacturer name, not Attansic. (sorry I can't remember).

If you download and install the recommended hardware driver, Vista will no
longer boot normally. It hangs while the scrolling bar is on screen. Because
other things were downloaded at the same time onto my PC, it took much time
and fiddling to figure out the cause. Vista would boot into Safe Mode OK.
Control panel revealed nothing amiss. The clue was the failed attempt to
boot into Safe Mode with Networking. This suggested that the updated network
chip driver was the cause.

Removing the driver while in Safe Mode did NOT solve the problem for me
because Vista seemed to reload the wrong driver ?from backup, upon attempted
normal reboot. Because of the mess I had made to identify the problem, I
needed to do a clean install to recover. Downloading and permitting an
install of hardware driver from MS Update reproduced the same noboot
problem. This time it was possible to recover to a last known good state
because I had a very recent good state to go back to.

I suggest hiding this particular update if it is recommended for your PC.

 

[PvdG42]

Here is a warning to those with Attansic L1 Gigabit network controller
chips on their motherboard, such as ASUS P5N-E.

Do NOT, repeat NOT, install the recommended network adapter driver from
Microsoft Update. The recommended hardware driver appears with a different
manufacturer name, not Attansic. (sorry I can't remember).

If you download and install the recommended hardware driver, Vista will no
longer boot normally. It hangs while the scrolling bar is on screen.
Because other things were downloaded at the same time onto my PC, it took
much time and fiddling to figure out the cause. Vista would boot into Safe
Mode OK. Control panel revealed nothing amiss. The clue was the failed
attempt to boot into Safe Mode with Networking. This suggested that the
updated network chip driver was the cause.

Removing the driver while in Safe Mode did NOT solve the problem for me
because Vista seemed to reload the wrong driver ?from backup, upon
attempted normal reboot. Because of the mess I had made to identify the
problem, I needed to do a clean install to recover. Downloading and
permitting an install of hardware driver from MS Update reproduced the
same noboot problem. This time it was possible to recover to a last known
good state because I had a very recent good state to go back to.

I suggest hiding this particular update if it is recommended for your PC.

Thanks very much for the report, as I have a PC for which that driver update
is recommended.
I have adopted a policy of *never* updating *any* drivers through WU, and
your experience leads me to recommend my "policy" to others

 

[GTS]

As a general rule, it is a bad idea to update drivers through Windows
update. It's always best to go to the manufacturers site.

 

[Guest]

You are dead right, man!
Those WU hardware updates do really a mess.
Started hating them with the RAID drivers for NForce4 chipsets.
I second to you in your policy.
Carlos

 

[Craig Brown]

Hi,

I have an ASUS P5K-SE with the Attsanic L1 network controller and the driver
from Windows Update worked great for me. It was newer than any driver
available from anywhere else and have been running it for a few weeks
without problem.

Craig

 

[Poppy]

Oops. The model number for the board in question is Asus P5B-E not P5N-E.
Sorry everyone. Anyway...

This board (with Vista Home Pre) is now back with the customer, hence my
memory failure with board ID. And unfortunately I cannot check bad driver
details. That's my unshakeable excuse for all you nit-picking sceptics out
there.

Graig, your experience is very interesting. This difference in behaviour
requires explanation. Here are some thoughts.

According to your experience, it seems that the P5K-SE board has an Attansic
L1 chip which may well not be identical to that on the P5B-E board even
though they appear to be the same to the OS. I note too that Attansic has
been bought out recently which probably accounts for the change of driver
name from Attansic to Atheros.

Since my original post yesterday, I also discovered that the Asus website
added, on 8th October 2007, a beta driver for Atheros L1 controller for the
P5B-E mobo. It may well be that this is the same deadly driver that MS has
on its Update server.

I concur with others that the moral of the story is be careful when
installing hardware drivers. Or as is my foolish motto... do as I say, not
what I do

Poppy.

 

[peter.e.simonsen]

Oops. The model number for the board in question isAsusP5B-E not P5N-E.
Sorry everyone. Anyway...

This board (withVistaHome Pre) is now back with the customer, hence my
memory failure with board ID. And unfortunately I cannot check bad driver
details. That's my unshakeable excuse for all you nit-picking sceptics out
there.

Graig, your experience is very interesting. This difference in behaviour
requires explanation. Here are some thoughts.

According to your experience, it seems that theP5K-SE board has an Attansic
L1 chip which may well not be identical to that on the P5B-E board even
though they appear to be the same to the OS. I note too that Attansic has
been bought out recently which probably accounts for the change of driver
name from Attansic to Atheros.

Since my original post yesterday, I also discovered that theAsuswebsite
added, on 8th October 2007, a beta driver for Atheros L1 controller for the
P5B-E mobo. It may well be that this is the same deadly driver that MS has
on its Update server.

I concur with others that the moral of the story is be careful when
installing hardwaredrivers. Or as is my foolish motto... do as I say, not
what I do

Poppy.

I wanted to add my experience:
A couple of days ago I bought
- Asus P5K
- 2x1GB Kingston PC6400
- Albatron 8800GTS
My old setup completely died. So I had to reinstall, and this time I
wanted a XP & Vista dual boot.
I start out installing XP Pro, then install ALL drivers from the asus
driver CD, then install video driver.
All is fine so far. I then install Vista as dual boot. Then install
ALL drivers from cd as before. However
I notice here, that some of the drivers already are installed, and
that the versioning scheme seems
different, and it looks like some of the drivers on the cd are older
than in Vista?! The cancel
button didn't work, so everything was installed (I'm not impressed by
asus' "automatic" driver install).
Anyway I then do a windows update, I see the new LAN driver. I
install this and the windows hangs.
Cannot boot - same as you guys describe.
After a lot of hassle, I finally delete my two partitions with xp &
vista, and start over. And here's the weird
part: I'm now unable to install the LAN utility from the CD. If I do
Windows hangs. I can install the driver
only from device manager. But if I use the CD to install drivers it
will hang.
And this is really strange, because I'm nowhere near the windows
update driver - I'm not even connected
to the LAN (since there's no driver installed). I have to reason,
that the driver somehow affected my motherboard!
I've now managed to install both XP and Vista with LAN driver only,
and it seems to work.

/Best regards

 

[Guest]

I have a dual boot pc with a asus mainboard p5k-se and XP + Vista.
All work for month but today I installed the new network driver from windows
vista Update. After rebooting vista DIED!
It's impossible to start as the machine go so slow that seems to be freezed!
The only way to boot is to start vista in same mode and DISABLE all the
network adapter. Vista will start again but iven if you install the old
driver again, VISTA will stop to work. But the incredible thing is that also
XP doesn't start!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, I think the wrong driver should crash the mainboard network controller
untill you turn off the machine.

Infact after a long period off inactivity my pc boot again, I reinstall the
old driver and now I'm using my pc normally but...I can see the windows
update that says that there is a facolutative update: AAAAAARG!!!!!