Guess what? I was stunned
Last August, the NVidia update for XP, "hosed" my entire PC (the W7 update worked OK).
I couldn't boot any Windows OS on my PC, because no boot menu appeared (dreaded black screen with flashing prompt).
See, now you should already know that a video driver can not affect the Windows boot menu. The driver loads much, much later into the booting process. That is basic knowledge.
Guess what? I was stunned. :shock:
I said to myself,
"That's impossible. What has a video driver got to do with the boot process?"
My machine sat there with a black screen and flashing prompt mocking me.
The fact remains that I installed the NVidia driver, it said to reboot, I rebooted and the machine did not reboot!
If it somehow damaged the boot folder files on the XP partition (the ones added by W7) I'm guessing that the machine won't boot.
"Bit Rot" on the XP partition?
Good for you.
I have not only seen it, I've experienced it.
So you've "experienced" it but I'm not sure you've understood what "it" was, to be honest. I've fixed countless machines with this issue that had a particular Norton/Symantec product on it.
Which issue are you referring to?
Broken zip files, no boot or screen resolution cycling?
The fact that the previous NVidia driver worked correctly and the subsequent updates NVidia driver worked correctly, indicates a problem with the driver that didn't work properly.
OS + Hardware + "NVidia driver A" = Working system
OS + Hardware + "NVidia driver B" = Broken system (restoring "NVidia driver A" fixes the problem).
OS + Hardware + "NVidia driver C" = Working system
The logical conclusion is that "NVidia driver B" is defective.
One of the standard fault finding techniques is, to replace a suspect component with a known good one.
If the system performs normally, then there is a high probability (not 100%) that the suspect component was faulty.
Subsequent testing will determine if that conclusion was correct.
There are people who swear by Norton/Symantec products and state that they have never had any problems.
I don't use Norton/Symantec products.
There are people who claim FF crashes constantly (I haven't noticed this).
I suspect that weird interactions between several pieces of software and the OS are responsible for most of these reports.
I don't want to get in a "slanging match" with you.
However I totally disagree with the premise, there has never been a faulty driver or MS update, ever, throughout the history of personal computing (1.3 billion Google results would indicate that there is at least 1 or 2 people who would agree with that).
It's not just a Windows problem (Linux and Mac users also experience update problems).
I appreciate that you tried to help me with my sound problem.
Kudos to you for trying to help all the other people here too.