Code 43 error after upgrade: Restart and fix?

I’ve run into a bit of a headache with my Nvidia GeForce 8600 GT ever since I upgraded to Windows 10. Every so often, Windows just decides to kill the graphics card, throwing up that dreaded Code 43 error. I’ve tried cycling through various drivers, doing full uninstalls and clean reinstalls, even toggling the device from disabled to enabled in Device Manager... but it’s all temporary. The little yellow warning triangle pops up, stays for maybe two days at most, and then the whole cycle repeats itself. To make matters worse, since moving to Windows 10, the restart function on my PC has completely broken. Whether I trigger the restart manually or the system tries to do it automatically after an app installation, the screen just displays "restarting" and then goes black. The tower stays powered on, but nothing happens—it just sits there, unresponsive. I’ve considered flashing the BIOS, but honestly, I'm hesitant to pull the trigger on that given how unstable the system is acting during restarts. This is becoming incredibly frustrating... any advice would be appreciated.

I honestly don't get why everyone is so obsessed with getting their hands on Windows 10. People who actually use it end up dealing with a mountain of headaches. Even Windows 8 never really felt like it worked the way it was supposed to. I’d bet anything that if you just stuck with Windows 7, you wouldn't be running into half of these issues we're seeing now.

Honestly, when I upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10, I ran into a few annoying little bugs myself—but once I just downloaded a fresh ISO directly from Microsoft, wiped my hard drive, and did a clean install of Windows 10, everything worked perfectly. If you don't have any critical files hanging onto, my best advice would be to just format the drive and start fresh.

shadowlynx102 said:I don't see why everyone is so obsessed with Windows 10. People run into endless issues with it. Even Windows 8 doesn't perform quite right. Honestly, if you just stuck with Windows 7, you probably wouldn't be dealing with any of this nonsense...

It’s not that I have a mountain of issues; it’s just this specific one, while everything else runs smoothly. I was actually using Windows 7 until about a month ago, but Windows 10 feels much more advanced and I prefer the interface. I'd much rather find a fix for this headache than deal with the idea of rolling back to Windows 7...

Larry Ortiz5 said:Even when I upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10, I ran into a few minor bugs. However, once I downloaded a fresh ISO directly from Microsoft, wiped my hard drive, and performed a clean install of Windows 10, all those issues vanished. If you don't have any critical data hanging on by a thread, my advice is to just format the drive...

Actually, I did a fresh installation of Windows 7 just a couple of days before I attempted the upgrade, so there shouldn't be much unnecessary junk cluttering up the system. If I can't find a workaround for this in the next day or two, I suppose I'll have to go the route of a clean install. For now, though, I’m still holding out hope that someone might actually be able to help me resolve this issue...

Walter Wilson56 said:I actually did a fresh install of Windows 7 just a few days before I upgraded, so my PC isn't cluttered with any unnecessary junk or anything. If I can't figure this out in the next day or two, I guess I'll just have to bite the bullet and go for a full clean install. But for right now, I'm really hoping someone can help me crack this problem once and for all.

A clean installation of Windows 10 is going to be key here...

Honestly, the issue is almost certainly the drivers, so why don't you try rolling back to some older versions first? Let's start there and see if we can get somewhere.

Roger Gray8 said:you really need a clean install of Windows 10...

The issue lies with the drivers. Try rolling back to some older versions; let's start there...

I actually started with the drivers, as I mentioned in my opening post. I've cycled through at least 15 different driver versions by now. That means I haven't just stuck to Windows 10; I've tested drivers from both Windows 7 and Windows 8 as well. I even went as far as uninstalling GeForce Experience entirely to make sure its automatic updates weren't causing a conflict, then manually hunted down and installed everything myself. Still, nothing works...

How exactly do you think someone is supposed to help you? They suggest going back to Windows, where you didn't have any issues—you wouldn't do that. They tell you to perform a clean reinstall—you wouldn't do that either. They say the problem lies with the drivers—you claim you've swapped them all out and that it's definitely not a driver issue...

🤷

I don't even know anymore...

The whole point of a clean reinstall is for when you're stuck in a mess of conflicting driver versions because you probably didn't fully uninstall the old ones before installing the new ones. Even if you did, there’s usually some leftover junk lingering around that causes exactly this kind of headache...

It looks like we might have actually cracked it. I haven't run into any issues for two full days now. After running the 3D Guru utility to install the latest drivers and flashing the BIOS, everything seems to be holding up perfectly fine for 5🎉
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