Three hours wasted on a driver issue that should have taken 10 minutes

Had a client bring in an older HP laptop last week that kept blue screening. I ran all the usual tests, swapped RAM, checked the hard drive, even replaced thermal paste. Finally dug through the event logs and found a corrupt display driver from a Windows update three months ago. Booted into safe mode, rolled it back, and it ran fine. Took me three hours to find a fix that took maybe two clicks. Anyone else feel stupid when the answer is that simple after tearing half the machine apart?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_olivia1mo ago

I had an old printer do the same thing, just a loose cable after an hour of driver reinstalls.

wilson.emma1mo ago

Wait, did you try wiggling the cable on both ends? @the_olivia I had the same thing happen with my old HP printer last year, spent a whole afternoon uninstalling and reinstalling drivers. Once I just pushed the USB cable in a little tighter on the computer side, it worked right away. So annoying when it's something that simple.