Computer Question

[Drache]

Trying to help fix a friends computer which randomly freezes for no reason. I currently helped him clean his computer and now Im helping him update whatever drivers such as audio, video, etc.

I had gotten him to run a program that would list all the drivers that are currently out of date. I noticed that two of the drivers that it says are "obsolete" are:

Intel(R) 8280 1EB Ultra ATA Storage Controllers - 24D1
Intel(R) 8280 1EB Ultra ATA Storage Controllers - 24DB

Now someone had mentioned that those shouldn't be coming up as obsolete unless they were inproperly installed when the Motherboard was. They also mentioned that there is no way of updating these properly unless the entire computer is rewiped (this freezing started happening after taking his computer in for work (new motherboard). He took it back in telling them of the problems but they said they ran it for 3 days without problems and left it at that).

This freezing/crashing usually happens when he's listening to music, watching movies, or playing games on his computer. His graphics card driver is reading that it's the most recent although his soundcard driver is reading that it's not (even though I got him to install the newest driver from the soundblaster website and its still reading as an "old" driver).

So should he worry about the ATA controller drivers and any other ideas what the problem could be? Another thought I have is maybe a bad soundcard and/or RAM.... 

[sunfire69]

Ok it's just me but I wouldn't worry about the ATA drivers just now...but update the audio and video drivers from the mfg. web site...I fixed a lot of boxes with this same problem by doing that....

[Drache]

Ok it's just me but I wouldn't worry about the ATA drivers just now...but update the audio and video drivers from the mfg. web site...I fixed a lot of boxes with this same problem by doing that....

Both audio and video drivers and fine and updated to the newest long before this problem started. Just to make sure I had got the guy to reinstall the newest drivers incase they became corrupted.

The only drivers now that are not the newest are the ATA drivers. Problem still hasn't been resolved.

[charger Downunder]

Go to display settings colour quality change it to 16 bit and try it and see if that fixes it.

[ChgrSteve67]

The only way to rule out that you have a hardware problem is to run hardware diagnostic software testing each componet of the system. Processor, memory, video, audio, ect....

most manufacturers have burn in software you can download and run to check and recertify the system.

If this is a system that was built from pieces and parts you will have to buy diagnostic software.

Any combination of DLLs and system files or registry problems can cause a system to freese or lock up.
If you hardware checks out I would back up your data then wipe and reload the system.
You will spend less time working on it in the long run.