Vista x86 on NF2 Motherboard

[TomH]

Hey guys, got a bit of a problem..

I've got an Abit NF7-S v2.0 that Vista cannot find NIC or SoundStorm (on-board sound) drivers for. As you may (or may not) know, Nvidia have officially dropped support for the chipset. So they're no help. /starts petition.

Obviously Microsoft have included a lot of drivers in their new operating system, but they don't seem to have excluded anything (even compatible drivers) for the NF2.

Back in the beta days, I heard of mixed response about the NF2 chipset; some said things worked, others said it was broken. I tried anyway, as there was very little that I could find on Google.

Is there any beta-bod out there with an Nforce 2 chipset, whom has had more luck?

I'd like the fully test the operating system out -- everything runs pretty-damn smoothly (performance rating of 4), and it would be a shame to have to ditch it because of a silly thing like a NIC/Sound driver.

Any help much appreciated (but I'd rather not hear "It's old, upgrade!" .. Money is the answer )

[Gravemind123]

Nope, had no luck with the chipset in beta, among other driver problems I had this one.

[bubsterboo]

Originally Posted by Tom Hill

Any help much appreciated (but I'd rather not hear "It's old, upgrade!" .. Money is the answer )

Get a conroe!

Thats what everyone is saying on this forum.

[TomH]

Originally Posted by bubsterboo

Get a conroe!

Thats what everyone is saying on this forum.

And even after I said not to bother.. As if I don't know what I should have..

The worst thing is my lowest score (in the Vista self-test benchmark) is a 4.0, which is my CPU -- but that's over 3.3 and supposedly fine to run Vista (according to the help file that popped up).

My GPU and HDD reach 5.9, which I was aware was the highest? It's not as if my system's under-powered. 2GB of RAM would be nice, but 1GB is fine to run the OS.

The problem is drivers for the chipset, nothing else.

EDIT: I've since realised Vista was trying to install my Netgear FA311, and that my Nvidia on-board NIC was disabled. I enabled the Nvidia NIC, and Vista installed it perfectly.

I've since connected to Windows Update and it updated almost all my Nvidia drivers, so a restart and a BSOD later -- I now have a working NIC, and working sound!

Some things don't work on the sound, like the mic, but at least I can listen to some tunes now..

The Netgear FA311 still doesn't work.

Furthermore, I've now noticed that Vista won't boot unless the bootable DVD attempts to boot first. Eg. If I try to boot with nothing in the optical drive, I receive the message 'BOOTMGR not found, press CTRL + ALT + DELETE to restart'.

The only way I can boot, is to have the Vista DVD in the drive, wait for it to ask 'Press any key to boot from CD/DVD...' and let it run out. It then boots from the S-ATA controller and we're into Vista.

Really, really bemused as to how Vista has supposedly not installed a Bootloader.

Gravemind: Thank you, at least someone had some appropriate input.

[shroom]

Originally Posted by Tom Hill

And even after I said not to bother.. As if I don't know what I should have..

The worst thing is my lowest score (in the Vista self-test benchmark) is a 4.0, which is my CPU -- but that's over 3.3 and supposedly fine to run Vista (according to the help file that popped up).

My GPU and HDD reach 5.9, which I was aware was the highest? It's not as if my system's under-powered. 2GB of RAM would be nice, but 1GB is fine to run the OS.

The problem is drivers for the chipset, nothing else.

EDIT: I've since realised Vista was trying to install my Netgear FA311, and that my Nvidia on-board NIC was disabled. I enabled the Nvidia NIC, and Vista installed it perfectly.

I've since connected to Windows Update and it updated almost all my Nvidia drivers, so a restart and a BSOD later -- I now have a working NIC, and working sound!

Some things don't work on the sound, like the mic, but at least I can listen to some tunes now..

The Netgear FA311 still doesn't work.

Furthermore, I've now noticed that Vista won't boot unless the bootable DVD attempts to boot first. Eg. If I try to boot with nothing in the optical drive, I receive the message 'BOOTMGR not found, press CTRL + ALT + DELETE to restart'.

The only way I can boot, is to have the Vista DVD in the drive, wait for it to ask 'Press any key to boot from CD/DVD...' and let it run out. It then boots from the S-ATA controller and we're into Vista.

Really, really bemused as to how Vista has supposedly not installed a Bootloader.

Gravemind: Thank you, at least someone had some appropriate input.

I had that same problem with the bootmanager, The issue is that they completely revamped the boot manager, and it isn't compatible with the old one.

If you burned a vista disk image, its best to load it with daemon tools and install it from there. Basically as long as its installed from within xp, there are no issues. Even with a burned dvd.

[DougEdey]

nVidia have confirmed that NF2 and NF3 are to be left out in the cold. Do your XP drivers work in forced compatibility mode?

[TomH]

Originally Posted by shroom

I had that same problem with the bootmanager, The issue is that they completely revamped the boot manager, and it isn't compatible with the old one.

Heh, I did actually work out what it did with the bootmanager.

I had an IDE drive plugged in, which contained all of my backed-up work, music etc. (only an old 40GB IDE drive). The Vista installer obviously saw this without requiring seperate drivers for the S-ATA fakeraid.

Anyway, of course I wanted to use the fakeraid array as my install drive, so I installed the Windows driver for it (via USB pen -- nifty improvement over XP) and selected it as the drive I wished to install Vista onto.

The 40GB IDE drive received the bootloader though. I couldn't work out why Vista would actually, stupidly think that I would want my bootloader on a the drive that wasn't my install drive and thus didn't contain any former operating system.

But thinking about it now.. That drive has had XP installed on it in the past, and must've had a copy of NTLDR installed in the MBR.

What I don't like is how Vista, even on a custom installation, hid any choice about my MBR and also didn't even give me the option to review partitions. If you ask me, the installer is way below grade when compared with the XP version. Easier or not, it lacks features -- important features that will be sorely missed on the Business edition (what I was actually using).

Originally Posted by DougEdey

nVidia have confirmed that NF2 and NF3 are to be left out in the cold. Do your XP drivers work in forced compatibility mode?

It must be that, or similar.

I had a quick look at the signing for the Nvidia chipset/sound drivers that Vista's Windows Update installed; they were supposedly made by Nvidia, and not Microsoft.

So I'm pretty sure they must be XP drivers. Either that or Nvidia's not telling us something

[DougEdey]

I'm still having minor probs with my onboard NIC. But I'm not sure if it's actually a problem with my NIC or my NAS Software (they are beta)

Transfer rates are around 1.2MB to it...

[TomH]

Originally Posted by DougEdey

I'm still having minor probs with my onboard NIC. But I'm not sure if it's actually a problem with my NIC or my NAS Software (they are beta)

Transfer rates are around 1.2MB to it...

Vista shipped with an on-board NIC driver for the board. Just installed it as Nvidia Ethernet Controller I believe.. It didn't ship with any driver for my Netgear FA311 (and none exists), so I wasn't able to use that.

Sounds almost like your card's being limited to 10Mbit. Have a look in the properties of the card, and make sure the speed isn't being inadvertantly limited (select 100Mbit) if possible.

Which driver are you using for the Nvidia NIC?