Good day to you all,
For the past weeks I have been trying to dig up the cause of my Metro start screen freezing randomly after restart and login. This led me to reformat my PC and reinstall Windows 8.1 Pro.
After installing some drivers the freeze welcomed itself back again. Doing some googling about the drivers that I installed beforehand made me notice something:
I always install drivers from my manufacturer's website, one of them being the Intel Rapid Storage Driver found here: ASRock > Z77 Pro4
As shown, the version of that driver on that website is 12.8.0.1016 which is pretty outdated.
After looking on the Intel website (here) for a newer version, I found the following: Intel® Matrix Storage Technology (Don't mind the very old link name, Intel forgot to change it)
What caught my eye in that version is the following resovled issue:
Now, I don't have this SRT (Smart Response Technology) on my PC so I'm not sure how applicable this fix is to my scenario but this really made me think that this outdated Rapid Storage driver I have on my PC might be the culprit of my freezing problem.
Now I REALLY want to install this updated version but the thing that's worrying me is that it's not uploaded by my own manufacturer on their website. I have read that your manufacturer usually modify drivers to make them 100% compatible with your PC component. That's why I'm scared to install it from Intel and take the risk of getting BSOD's or even my PC not booting up.
Is there a moderator or any user around here who can confirm that Asrock doesn't modify the Rapid Storage driver (specifically for my mobo: Asrock Z77 Pro4)? Is it safe to install an updated version from Intel? If so, WHICH Rapid Storage driver from the Intel site is 100% compatible with my Asrock Z77 Pro4 motherboard?? (I reall can't seem to figure this out)
I'm using a single harddisk in AHCI mode (not SSD)
Specs:
Windows 8.1 x64 with Media Center
Asrock Z77 Pro4 motherboard
Hitachi harddisk in AHCI mode, 1 TB
i5-3570K CPU