Unable to install Windows 8.1 on system with H61M-HVS

[John Schroedl]

Hi all,

Has anyone been able to update to Windows 8.1 on a system with a H61M-HVS MoBo?

My install proceeds to nearly the end but fails with a BSOD and error: BUGCODE_NDIS_DRIVER and reverts to Windows 8. I have ensured that all the drivers I can find are up-to-date and have also tried an install with the RealTek ethernet disabled. I am left assuming that it's a fundamental BIOS or other ASRock driver issue.

Do we know if ASRock are working on drivers for 8.1 for these older Motherboards? I only see one ASRock mobo certified on the 8.1 certificaton page so far.

My info:

Model: H61M-HVS
BIOS V: P2.50
BIOS Date: 2012/09/18

Any suggestions?
John

[parsec]

Re: Unable to install Windows 8.1 on system with H61M-HVS

I just changed from Windows 8 64bit to Windows 8.1 64bit on an ASRock Z77 board, which worked fine, no problems at all. That board does not have any Windows 8.1 drivers available on its download page.

First understand that most if not all drivers provided by ASRock or any/all mother board manufacture are actually provided by the company that makes the various hardware components used on the board.

AMD and Intel provide the main chipset and SATA drivers. Realtek provides the drivers for their network chips, like the one used on your board. Same thing for Realtek and VIA audio chips, Broadcom and Intel network chips, the list goes on and on.

Sometimes mobo manufactures add things to drivers they get from those companies, but they are usually just additions to the driver's installation program, not the driver itself.

Windows has built in drivers that they either get from someone else (Intel for example) or write their own drivers.

All the drivers listed for your board for Windows 8 are provided by either Intel, Realtek, or VIA. I can get 90% of my ASRock Z87 board's Windows 8 or 8.1 drivers directly from Intel's download site.

BTW, what CPU are you using and are you using 32 or 64bit Windows 8.1?

I looked up an Intel made H61 (same as your ASRock board) chipset board (DH61ZE) to see what drivers they had for Windows 8 and 8.1. You can see the entire list in this link:

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Sea...72&FamilyId=36

Note the Select an Operating System box, you can filter the driver list by OS version. There are 21 drivers for Windows 8. There are two drivers for Windows 8.1. Both of those drivers are for hardware that is not used on your board.

So Intel only has one Windows 8.1 driver for an H61 board, and that is for an Intel network chip not used by your board. If Intel doesn't have any other 8.1 drivers for their own H61 boards, neither does ASRock, at least for the Intel hardware.

In most cases, you can use the Windows 8 drivers with 8.1, or let Windows install its own drivers for your board's hardware, if it has one that is compatible.

Your BSOD problem seems to be network related, as you know. Do you know if Windows 8 has a built in driver for your Realtek network chip? I assume you are using the Realtek LAN driver for Windows 8 from your board's download page?

I also assume you are updating to Windows 8.1 with the download from the "Windows Store" 8.1 download?

Here's a link to a Realtek Windows 8 and 8.1 driver download for your Realtek RTL8105E LAN chip:

Realtek

You can also try changing your network driver to a Windows driver manually with Windows Device Manager. First open up your Realtek LAN entry in Device Manager, and click on the Driver tab. Click on the Update Driver button. You can try either the automatic search option, or "Browse my computer..." for a manual update from Windows 8. If automatic fails, click the "Browse" option, and then "Let me pick from a list..." button. If there is at least one entry for a driver, or any that are labeled as Microsoft, select it and continue by following the prompts.

Not sure why you are getting that BSOD, but trying that Realtek driver or one from Microsoft/Win 8 hopefully will help.

[John Schroedl]

Re: Unable to install Windows 8.1 on system with H61M-HVS

Thanks for the detailed response parsec! I love this forum!

I didn't realized the relationship between the drivers and ASRock, it makes sense now that you've spelled it out for me, especially the Intel-supplied pieces. Thanks for that awesome level of detail. I have the x64 Intel processor FWIW.

I was able to successfully install Windows 8.1 Pro (x64) last night. Woo! These two threads from answers.microsoft.com supplied the answer:
Error when updating to Windows 8.1 from Windowns 8 64-bit (Code - Microsoft Community

0x4000D Error - Suggestions - Microsoft Community

Disabling the non-Microsoft services in MSCONFIG.exe before attempting the install allowed everything to work and the install finished fine.

My faith in ASRock mobos is restored and I'm very happy to have joined this forum. Thanks again parsec!

John

[parsec]

Re: Unable to install Windows 8.1 on system with H61M-HVS

Thank you for that!

So it was the Startup services of non-MS programs that caused that error? Interesting, I just happened to have all of them disabled in my Windows 8 installation, with no idea this issue existed.

That problem still seems strange to me, I wonder if it is a bug in the 8.1 installation program. A "clean" of fresh installation of Windows won't have any non-MS program entries in Startup. So with 8.1 being an update, that won't be true if the Windows 8 installation was anything more than a new installation with nothing else installed, which is not how most people will do the update to 8.1.

I wonder if it is one specific program in Startup that is causing this problem, or one type of program. That is, a program that tries to do something with the network or Internet.

I bet we will be hearing more about this issue in the near future, like a Windows update to Win 8 that is applied before the update to 8.1. One update like that already exists, but just allows you to update to 8.1 via the Windows store.

[John Schroedl]

Re: Unable to install Windows 8.1 on system with H61M-HVS

Thank you for that!

That problem still seems strange to me, I wonder if it is a bug in the 8.1 installation program. A "clean" of fresh installation of Windows won't have any non-MS program entries in Startup. So with 8.1 being an update, that won't be true if the Windows 8 installation was anything more than a new installation with nothing else installed, which is not how most people will do the update to 8.1.

I wonder if it is one specific program in Startup that is causing this problem, or one type of program. That is, a program that tries to do something with the network or Internet.

I'm not quite convinced that it's a bug in the Win installer since there are many things out of their control. It's not clear that they should disable a particular service. Since these were services and not Boot applications there is a danger of being unable to recover the system if they were to disable the wrong one.

Here are the services I disabled so one of these is the culprit but I have not needed any of these since updating to 8.1. The AsusSE was particularly annoying as I now realize it was responsible for briefly showing an ugly dialog box for every use that logs in.

AMD External Events Utility
VIA Karaoke digital mixer Service
ArcSoft Exchange service
Adobe Acrobat Update Service
AsusSE
Intel Capability Licensing Service
Intuit Update Service v4
Intel Management and Security Application and Local Management Service
Intel Management and Security User Notification Service
Steam Client Service

Almost all of these are for updates to various applications (AMD, ArcSoft, Adobe, Intel, Intuit, Steam). It's quite possible that Microsoft could determine the offending service from this list and the Watson crashdumps send in and possibly supply a patch to disable the bad one before the update proceeds. Perhaps it belongs in a Windows 8.1 Upgrade Advisor application.

I'm sure I'll re-enable Steam but probably no others.
John