Vista... aargh!

I'm trying to set up a PC in work for a customer. He wants Windows Vista on the following spec:

Athlon 64 X2 6000+
Asus M2N SLI Deluxe (nForce 570 SLI)
4GB DDR2-800 RAM
Two 8600GT cards in SLI

I'm using the x64 version of Home Premium because if I use the x86 version then the available RAM drops to 3.25GB. First of all I ran into the problem where Vista won't boot on 4GB of RAM if the ATA driver is a SCSI miniport. Fine, I removed 2GB of RAM, installed the OS, patched it and put the RAM back.

But now I have another problem. Upon testing the system, at any time at all, the graphics cards lock up and I'm presented with either a tray message specifying that "Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding, but has succesfully recovered." Or rarely I'll get a BSOD of error code 0x00000117 - " the display driver failed to respond in a timely fashion" This sounds like the old "driver got stuck in an infinite loop" problem in XP but I know it used a different error code - the symptoms look identical though.

It used to happen when attempting to play a DVD but when I installed the virtual address space hotfix (940105) it reduced the frequency of them. But it still happens and there's no way I'll send the PC out unless I know it's working.

Does anyone have any advice for me? I'm in work tomorrow and don't normally do technical work on a Saturday but I just want to get this one out the door working so I'd say I'll be looking at it. Before this I disliked Vista, now I absolutely despise it.

mathias

Im presuming your using the latest 64 bit drivers from www.nvidia.com , release notes for 64 bit Vista drivers list SLI as having a lot of problems with that card , thats whats wrong, dodgy 64bit nvidia drivers , you'll have to wait for Nvidia to fix it , 64 bit Vista or XP OS are problematic for drivers , always have been.

http://uk.download.nvidia.com/Windows/163.75/163.75_WinVista_Forceware_Release_Notes.pdf

Check out open 64 bit SLI issues from page 20 onwards , there are lots and lots !

dazftw

Theres a bunch of hot fixes for vista aswell on the nividia website

mathias

mathias wrote: »

Nvidia.com , release notes for 64 bit Vista drivers list SLI as a problem with that card , thats your problem , dodgy 64bit nvidia drivers , you'll have to wait for Nvidia to fix it , 64 bit Vista or XP OS are problematic for drivers , always have been.

http://uk.download.nvidia.com/Windows/163.75/163.75_WinVista_Forceware_Release_Notes.pdf

Thanks for that. I suppose I'll just have to use 32-bit so.

dazftw wrote: »

Theres a bunch of hot fixes for vista aswell on the nividia website

I've already tried them, no luck unfortunately.

PogMoThoin

I've tried both 32bit & 64bit Vista & find way less probs with 64bit than 32bit. Was other way round with Xp. Just my 2cents.

I used 32-bit and everything went without a hitch.

So 64-bit tends to have either no drivers or buggy ones? Not a good sign is it?

astrofool

I'm using Vista 64bit here on a core 2 quad + 4gb RAM, at work on a Pentium 4 650 and in the parents on a A64 2800+, all without any problems at all.

At a guess, i'd say it's the SLI causing the problems, nVidia have really f*cked it up in Vista now they have to design it properly using Windows Presentation Framework (the nVidia XP driver was the highest cause of crashes in XP).

I've been getting this nvlddmkm error for a week now and I've tried everything to get rid of it but no luck. I'm running a single 8800GTX with Vista Home Premium.

Stephen

What version of the nVidia drivers are you using? I read somewhere recently that about 30% of all errors reporting using vista's error reporting system have been caused by nvidia drivers :eek:

Stephen

Stephen wrote: »

What version of the nVidia drivers are you using? I read somewhere recently that about 30% of all errors reporting using vista's error reporting system have been caused by nvidia drivers :eek:

Using 169.25 at the minute on a fresh install of Vista, tried 163.71 too, getting the error with both versions of drivers.

astrofool

Have you tried reinstalling directx, are you using sp1? What specs are your machine? (inc. motherboard model) Any add in cards?

It could be a general instability in the machine hardware, rather than software.

astrofool

astrofool wrote: »

Have you tried reinstalling directx, are you using sp1? What specs are your machine? (inc. motherboard model) Any add in cards?

It could be a general instability in the machine hardware, rather than software.

Tried everything, with & without SP1 installed too.
My PC:
Dell Dimension 9200 (with latest Bios)
Intel Core2 Quad CPU @ 2.40GHz
4GB Ram @ 667
768MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX

Have been on to Dell today about it, they done a live connect check on it for 40mins and no error came up so they say it's fine. Tried to explain to them that it starts to happen after an hour or so of the PC running and when it does start it just does it every few minutes.

Capt'n Midnight

to rule out hardware try running the diagnostics overnight on continuous tests

astrofool

"After an hour" screams heat problem to me, have you dusted the machine, what temp is the cpu/gfx running at?

astrofool

astrofool wrote: »

"After an hour" screams heat problem to me, have you dusted the machine, what temp is the cpu/gfx running at?

PC is well ventilated, dusted and air blown out every month. Gfx temp sits round the 40 - 50C mark but straight after the error occurs it's up on 75C and up, and this happens even when the PC just has the desktop showing and no apps running.