I'm new to these forums. While I've helped solve many technical problems online and normally fix my own issues, this one has got me stumped. Hope you can help.
I've built a PC with some old parts for my kids to use. I don't have exact part numbers on me right now but it's a gigabyte mobo with 4gb of ddr2-667 memory, dual core amd CPU and a 5xxx radeon gpu.
I've installed windows 10 and everything seems to work fine until I installed a PCI wifi card. Every time I click in the password box to enter the wifi password the whole screen freezes. Mouse pointer doesn't move, keyboard doesn't work. Only way to restart is to hard restart via the power button. After that windows will freeze at the loading screen and I have to restart several more times before getting back into windows.
This is all old hardware and the disc that came with it won't run the driver installer in windows 10. Not sure if I can find the driver online using an Ethernet connection, I'll try but is it normal for a complete OS hang to result from a driver issue? I've never experienced this before.
I'll double check the part numbers for both when I get home, but I figured for something like that the fact that they're both PCI (not express) would be enough to verify they're compatabile.
UPDATE: Found the driver online and was able to install it using compatibility mode. After the installation Windows froze again though.Restarted, if I try to open the adapter Wireless Configuration Manager or do anything with the adapter settings it freezes again.
UPDATE 2: Reinstalled just the driver and not the configuration utility. Fingers crossed, it appears to be working now. No freezing. X.X
UPDATE 3: It seemed to be working but after another restart it's gone back to freezing randomly any time I'm using the card. Still confused. Also, I don't think the card is faulted because I returned the original one and this is the 2nd one I'm having this issue with.
UPDATE 4: Uninstalled and reinstalled all motherboard drivers and the wifi card drivers and it appears to be working again. I suspect I'm talking to myself now >.>
One, you're not talking to only yourself. Two, the driver is for xp, vista, and 7 so I have my doubts that it will play nice although you have a chance because of 7 support.
Good to know, I've put 500 posts into the Linus Tech Tips forum and can barely get a response. Maybe people here are a little easier to talk to. So far so good, I made sure to run all the drivers in compatibility mode to Windows 7 and it seems to be working. Still really weird, I've never had driver failure freeze Windows like that.