Building box. problems in device manager

[marcplante]

I'm building a box that is running, but that has some issues among the device drivers

Box:
MSI K8N NEO4 MB Soc 939 with Athlon 64 3000+ proc
1G Kensington RAM IN 2 512 sticks plugged into slots 1 and 2
160 GB Seagate HD
MSI 6600GT Vid CARD
NEC 3840 DVD reader/burner
Windows XP Pro SP2

Orinoco 802.11B card

Issues
I re-installed the OS to get the proper key on the box (grabbed the wrong disc off of our office shelf) When re-building the OS. Windows XP did NOT like the MSI video card driver that came with the card. Installation seemed to go OK after I installed XP and went back with the MSI disk to install
I get a link light from onboard ethernet port, but it seems non responsive at system level.
Internet access through wireless card is fine

Other Devices without drivers:
- Multimedia audio controller (only have onboard audio)
- Other PCI bridge device
- PCI memory controller - (The computer seems to see all 1G of RAM fine.)
- SM Bus Controller (?)

I'm not sure what these devices are (yeah, relative newbie that knows enough to be dangerous.

Are these failures indicative of something broken on the motherboard? I'm wondering why the OS sees a multimedia audio controller that it can't attach drivers to (The onboard audio on the MB?

 

[mechBgon]

Try this order of installation, if it isn't what you're already doing:

1) WinXP installation

2) Service Pack 2 installation (if it is not already built into your WinXP CD) and a reboot.

3) nVidia motherboard driver package from here: nVidia 6.66 mobo driver package before the video card's drivers and after Service Pack 2 (important). Reboot after installing this package (duh).

4) video card drivers, might as well use the latest & greatest nVidia 78.01's.


The order can be important, so give that a try. It's like building a building, you don't lay the foundation and then start working on the fourth floor right away

 

[marcplante]

Duh!

Solved all of my problems by digging out the utilities disc that came with the MB. Looking at the label, it looked like pure shovelware, and I assumed that all drivers would be available through XP pro or it's supporting Internet-based driver database. WRONG!

All device manager issues are resolved by installing the utilities (including the sound utilities) from the MSI MB disc.

Only other learning lesson is that windows doesn't like installing the advanced video card drivers during its setup. If you're re-installing Windows (like I was) skip trying to apply the aftermarket video drivers until the Windows installation is complete. I'm documenting my patch list for subsequent rebuilds.

Sorry about the WOB.

Marc Plante