To reiterate:
I have a computer with an AMD A8-3850 APU processor running mostly up to date Windows 10 x64 in a Gigabyte GA-A75-UD4H mobo with 16 gigs of Vengeance memory. I've checked the memory, there are no failures in the chips.
Starting a few months ago, whenever I attempted to upgrade my AMD video driver to AMD's latest. the system would crash once it tried to boot up Windows again & cycle through automatic repair etc. until arriving at the Windows alternate boot menu, where I discovered it necessary to roll back the machine to the build prior to the video driver update. On asking for help & advice, I was told that I should stop attempting to update with AMD's promoted drivers - a problem with the graphics function of my APU - & henceforth let Windows update automatically update the driver for me. Which I did.
Leading to my now much bigger problem: the Windows upgrade of the video driver has the exact same effect. Only now the only way I can quickly get my computer running again is also to roll it back to the previous video driver...
... which also eliminates the other Windows updates, so now I can't update Windows in its entirety.
As near as I've been able to figure, either the problem is the interaction with the APU or something has gone sour in the system. It seems to me there are only a few ways to solve this:
1) Replace the video card. Except the problem doesn't seem to be the video card.
2) Replace the processor, which would likely entail replacing the mobo as well, running into some real money.
3) Find a way around the problem.
Is there any way to tell Windows update to leave the video driver alone while updating anything else? I can't find reference to such a thing in the Update menu or in Windows Help.
Alternately, is there any way to shut down the graphics functions of my CPU & make them "invisible" to the system, while keeping the rest of the system functioning? Or would that not help in any case?
Would it be worth trying a Windows repair, or, failing success with that, reinstalling Windows? (Needless to say, I'd rather avoid the latter if at all humanly possible.) Or would the APU just cause the problem to recur?
I could really use some help with this, thanks. Being unable to keep Windows up to date is making me kind of edgy...
