Hard Disk Sentinel Says Everything's Fine But...

Just got a BSOD.

System thread exception not handled, something to do with athwbx.sys

Should I be worried?

 

How?

 

Driver Booster

 

OK, just did that, but got a message saying, "The best driver software for your device is already installed. Windows has determined that the driver software for your device is up to date."

 

Thanks but it seems an outdated driver isn't the issue. Seems I already have the latest driver.

 

By right-clicking and selecting Uninstall, right?

 

Thanks but that conflicts with what TimW said. He said delete the adapter, then reboot, then let it reinstall. But that link you just posted says uninstall the adapter, then reinstall it, then reboot. Surely the order has to be important. So which order should I follow?

 

Windows has an extensive library of device drivers built in. Where that is the case TimW's method will work fine and is always worth trying first. When it doesn't work you have to fall back on finding and installing the driver yourself.

 

OK, thanks. I'll try uninstalling and then rebooting and see what happens then.

 

Tried that. "Warning: You are about to uninstall this device from your system." Fine. But instead of just an OK and a Cancel button, there's also a check box. "Delete the driver software for this device." I assume I should leave that unchecked but I don't know. Which?

 

Leave unchecked

 

Thanks.

 

OK, I uninstalled the adapter, shut down the computer and then restarted it. If the adapter was supposed to automatically reinstall on restart, it doesn't seem to have done so. The network icon in my taskbar is still greyed out. What should I do?

 

Still having huge problems. Cannot reconnect. Scanned for hardware changes in Device Manager. That reinstalled the Qualcomm Atheros adapter which reappeared in the Network Adapters dropdown. So then I restarted the computer, but the network icon was still greyed out. So then I clicked the link at the bottom of the link you provided to get instructions on how to restart the Windows Networking service. I ran the command prompt as administrator and typed out and entered the exact commands given. Then I restarted again. The network icon is STILL greyed out.

 

I wouldn't know about that but I'm back on now, anyway. I double-clicked the network icon in my taskbar, selected my regular network from the list, had to type in my password again, then it gave me the option of looking for devices on this network and asked if I wanted to automatically connect to things like printers and TVs. It recommended I click Yes but then the option disappeared. I guess I must have left it too long without clicking anything. I'm still connected but there's a Windows Security Alert on my screen now. It says, "Windows Firewall has blocked some features of Dropbox on all public and private networks." Well obviously I want to allow Dropbox so I assume it's OK to check the box that says, "Private networks, such as my home or work network", leave the other box unchecked and click Allow access, right?

 

Great, thanks.