HP Pavilion G6 running Windows 8.1 - troubleshooting issues

My HP Pavilion g6 running Windows 7 Home Premium was working perfectly fine. Eventually, things just got too messy to fix, so I decided it was time for a clean OS reinstall. That’s when the headache started. For some reason, I can't get any graphics drivers—neither the Intel HD nor the Radeon 7xxx M series—to install on any version of Windows 7. It's like the hardware doesn't even exist. But then I try Windows 8.1 and everything works flawlessly. Then, things went from bad to worse. I downloaded Avast Free from their official site, and after the reboot, everything broke. The installed software seems to run, but the Control Panel, Personalization, and basically everything else? Dead. Every time I click anything, the whole system freezes up. Shutting down doesn't work, restarting does nothing, and System Restore is a total bust. To top it off, I can't even get into the Control Panel to uninstall Avast.
Anyone have a clue? Could it be a driver issue with the switchable graphics? Or... honestly, I have no idea.

You might want to check the health of your hard drive—since you just installed a fresh version of Windows and it's already starting to freeze up, there's a chance the drive itself is failing. I'd suggest downloading CrystalDiskInfo just to see what the status looks like.

Thnx. I'll give it a shot, even if it feels a little weird... If Windows had been installed over bad sectors, it would have been a total disaster from the get-go. But after three days, it's holding up... Still, I could try booting into Safe Mode with Windows 8.1. Msm F8 just isn't responding during startup. I've seen plenty of people running into similar issues on US forums

So, what's that supposed to mean?

It looks like you've got some bad sectors on that drive, which is definitely nothing to be happy about... Honestly, every hard drive eventually gives up the ghost—it’s just part of the cycle. I'd suggest keeping a close eye on things with a monitoring tool; if those numbers start climbing rapidly, you might want to start looking for a replacement sooner rather than later..

p.s. Have you thought about trying to install Windows 10? It might actually run a bit smoother for you than Windows 7 did..

I ran into a similar headache with my Dell—it was a bit of a weird quirk. Basically, if I had the dual graphics enabled in the BIOS, everything would start stuttering and acting up the second the drivers were installed. Maybe try playing around with those settings and see if that clears it up for you.

I’ve been chewing on this. But... the BIOS is a newer version now, and apparently, the devs decided those options were unnecessary. The switch between fixed and dynamic? Yeah, that's out. Unless I downgrade the BIOS, which I really don't want to do. Had some bad experiences with that before. Another thought was changing the Windows installation path, but since it's all on one single partition, I'm pretty much stuck.

I ran an HDD test from the BIOS and everything looks fine there 🙂

Since editing isn't working here:
I installed Windows 8.1 Enterprise from a different DVD
Grabbed an Intel driver, but it was an older version. Tried getting the latest one from HP support, but no luck
Same deal with AMD—tried their site since HP support is useless
Turns out HP support is just there for show
Everything installed without any issues and everything is running fine on the DVD for now

The disc info still shows some bad sectors, but according to the BIOS, everything looks okay🙂

As for HP support, they either give you drivers that say the computer doesn't meet the minimum system requirements (like for the card reader or Intel HD graphics), or they just can't find the hardware at all (AMD). Maybe I'm wrong, but... trust yourself, not support.