Don't install nVidia's IDE drivers.

[blurp]

I get BSOD when I overclock (even very slightly) with 6.53 and 6.66 while transfering large files from my SATA drive to one of my IDE drives. Even thopugh, I locked PCI and lowered Hypertransport to 4x.

Can someone tell me how to remove efficiently the NVIDIA IDE drivers and go back to the MS default drivers ?

ASUS A8N-E
AMD A64 3500+
1024 MB OCZ Gold VX PC3200
eVGA 6800 GT PCIe

 

[imported_ShadowFlare]

Originally posted by: blurp
Can someone tell me how to remove efficiently the NVIDIA IDE drivers and go back to the MS default drivers ?

It's very easy; just go to Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs -> nVidia Drivers. From there, just tell it to remove the IDE drivers. After you do that, it will have you restart then the MS drivers will be used after that.

 

[Kalessian]

After reading this, I'm now using MS drivers.

What about "PCI Management System" drivers for the NF4? Are those a problem, too? I'm not sure what they do.

 

[walkure]

If anyone, don't use Nvidia Forceware / Nvidia Firewall!! The program (nsvcip.exe) is such a memory leaker it's unbelieveable. When I start the computer, it shows up as using less than 10MB of RAM. After a week of uptime, it creeps up to 100MB. And this is with the firewall DISABLED. I am currently using XP firewall, and have uninstalled nVidia firewall (Asus A8N-SLI mobo, etc, see sig).

No trouble with IDE drivers yet.

 

[blurp]

Originally posted by: ShadowFlare

Originally posted by: blurp
Can someone tell me how to remove efficiently the NVIDIA IDE drivers and go back to the MS default drivers ?

It's very easy; just go to Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs -> nVidia Drivers. From there, just tell it to remove the IDE drivers. After you do that, it will have you restart then the MS drivers will be used after that.

I tried that. Got a freeze when trying to restart the comp. I'll give it another shot. This time i'll uninstall (via software) the IDE drives.

Thanks for the reply. I appreciate.

 

[groebuck]

Okay here is one for you - chaintech nf4 ultra - everything has been grrrr ate - until I added two 250GB hitachi sata II drives in a raid 0 config on sata 3 and 4 (so 1 and 2 are not raided - 3 and 4 are and two dvd burners on IDE) -

now - the computer reboots every half hour - when it's doing nothing - if I try to bench the raid set - reboot....if I set the raid array as a temp drive in an app - reboot -

I'm about to chuck it out the window!! - power supply was my first thought but I have put a tagan 480 watt in there and it still happens ..guess I will try removing the ide drivers - only thing I have not tired - if anyone knows anything and can help I'd much appreciate it.

 

[Capt Caveman]

I'm using the 6.66 IDE drivers fine and I'm running IDE Opticals, IDE RAID 1 and SATA RAID 0. However, NAM and firewall cause a number of issues.

 

[Regulator07]

i installed the 6.66 and got bsods from them, went back to 6.53 and had no problems. then a few days later, cs:source started getting lag, like the screen would freeze for 10 secs then go back to the game. i thought it was a firewall problem because i couldnt even connect to the master server anymore to find new servers (i am on a campus lan so i thought they just blocked the game). i ended up clean installing video and chipset drivers again and reinstalling steam, still no go. today i ended up deleting the nvidia ide drivers because of this thread and others saying they got better performance and less errors without them and now cs:s works again. i dont think this was a fluke either and perhaps the ide drivers are even messing with the ethernet drivers somehow. either way, i agree now that removing the ide drivers is a good idea.

 

[Regulator07]

i just released now though that i lost the ability to saftly remove my hard drive, i know that with the ide drivers installed, i was able to hot swap my sata drive. do i not have the right ide drivers installed now, or any at all? is there anyway to fix this with out using the nvidia drivers?

edit: well i reinstalled the ide drivers from 6.53 and everything is working fine, so i dont know, sorry for the confusion, dont mind me

 

[groebuck]

Does anyone know about sata 150 and sata II on the NF4U? I posted before about the reboots I re-installed the 6.53 drivers except for ide, then manually updated the ide...now I no longer get reboots but XP sees my SataII drives as Sata150 ??

 

[luky]

It's not an IDE problem,but with Ethernet driver and NAM, I found out that some of packets arrived corrupted. So I reverse them back to 6.39 and it works fine now

 

[MadScientist]

Originally posted by: groebuck
Does anyone know about sata 150 and sata II on the NF4U? I posted before about the reboots I re-installed the 6.53 drivers except for ide, then manually updated the ide...now I no longer get reboots but XP sees my SataII drives as Sata150 ??

The info on this thread maybe helpful. Link

 

[glorygunk]

OK I uninstalled the nvidia IDE drivers on my NF4 ECS A754 because I have noticed strange unreadable disc probems with my IDE drives. Will have to report back about whether my issues are solved.

 

[almach1]

I have an nforce-3 chipset. Didn't install the nvidia ide driver and everything was fine.

Installed the IDE driver and my raptor started showing up as a removable disk in the system tray. My computer started rebooting for no reason, and it crashed twice.

uninstalled the IDE driver and everything went back to normal. no problems.!!

don't do it!!!

 

[mattburk]

I have a dfi nf3250 ut, I do not have the nvidia ide drivers installed, but my maxtor drive does not show up, I have it in the number 4 sata slot. Any clue?

 

[John]

I've built hundreds of systems using the nForce 2,3,4 chipsets and always install the NVIDIA SW IDE Driver. I have had a couple of them develop an issue when installing the IDE driver, and this was during a clean Windows XP installation. I'm sure that if there was a 'major' problem NVIDIA would have yanked them a long time ago.

I am not disputing the fact that some people have problems, but please understand that a large percentage of the system builder community does not. I've also had my fair share of Via 4-in-1 headaches.

 

[ugotd8]

I'd have to agree with the original subject of this thread: Don't install nVidia's IDE drivers.

I can affirm this for Windows XP 64-bit fo sho!

Here is the copied text from my thread on another forum :

Nforce4 IDE drivers from NVIDIA and HD performance on Windows XP 64-bit Pro

OK, so here was the problem:

Using DVD Shrink 3.2, I re-authored and then backed up a DVD Movie from a
Maxtor Maxline III 16MB cache 300G HD to a WD 36G Raptor. This process
took 3 minutes and 58 seconds and averaged 29.5KB/s
(that would be 29 Megabytes a second).

I thought, wow, these SATA drives are more or less the best you can buy short
of SCSI, why am I only getting 29MB/s ? So, I tried the same process on my Intel
rig (ASUS P5WD2/P4 640/955x chipset). The result? 1 minute 45 seconds elapsed
time and 47MB/s. That's more like it, but damn, what's wrong with the AMD rig?

Solution: remove the crap NVIDIA IDE 6.66 WHQL Drivers

Result: elapsed time 1 minute 20 seconds, a whopping 54MB/s

I suppose that the NVIDIA IDE drivers are CPU bound or just plain buggy.
In any case how could they have missed such a disparity in performance?

So I'm a happy camper running the standard issue MS XP64 IDE controller drivers.
__________________


Wasn't satisfied with just removing the Nvidia IDE drivers. Went searching some
other forums and found a suggestion to disable "Read disk Cache" on the Nvidia
SATA controller properties. Worked like a charm. No need to use the MS drivers
after all. Doh!

__________________


Update: last night with the Nvidia IDE drivers installed and the read cache disabled, computer was doing nothing but playing MP3s with Winamp 5.1, many many skips in playback. Today, went back to MS XP64 standard IDE driver on the drive with the MP3s, NO SKIPS.

Not looking good for Nvidia and their IDE driver.

__________________
AMD64 X2 3800+ @ 2.5Ghz / MSI Neo4 Ultra Plat. / 2x1G Crucial Ballistix PC4000 (Z503) 1:1 /
Big Typhoon (stock fan) / 36G Raptor / 300G Maxline III / GIGABYTE GV-NX66128DP Geforce 6600 /
CoolerMaster Stacker

 

[kravmaga]

I've only had a problem with them on an older generic Mb by Biostar I believe. The windows XP load screen would freeze up. I would expect to have the issue on my rebadged evga/jetway board since it's not really all that well known and supported but so far I haven't had any problems. I guess it all depends on which MB you're using.

 

[doc2345]

Originally posted by: John
I've built hundreds of systems using the nForce 2,3,4 chipsets and always install the NVIDIA SW IDE Driver. I have had a couple of them develop an issue when installing the IDE driver, and this was during a clean Windows XP installation. I'm sure that if there was a 'major' problem NVIDIA would have yanked them a long time ago.

I am not disputing the fact that some people have problems, but please understand that a large percentage of the system builder community does not. I've also had my fair share of Via 4-in-1 headaches.

I understand, I've also built hundreds of systems using the nForce 2,3,4 chipsets and the NVIDIA SW IDE Driver has screwed everyone one of them if I chose to install it. Of course, now I don't....

 

[First]

Originally posted by: doc2345

Originally posted by: John
I've built hundreds of systems using the nForce 2,3,4 chipsets and always install the NVIDIA SW IDE Driver. I have had a couple of them develop an issue when installing the IDE driver, and this was during a clean Windows XP installation. I'm sure that if there was a 'major' problem NVIDIA would have yanked them a long time ago.

I am not disputing the fact that some people have problems, but please understand that a large percentage of the system builder community does not. I've also had my fair share of Via 4-in-1 headaches.

I understand, I've also built hundreds of systems using the nForce 2,3,4 chipsets and the NVIDIA SW IDE Driver has screwed everyone one of them if I chose to install it. Of course, now I don't....

^ Not possible. Seriously.

 

[sxr7171]

Originally posted by: manno
I know this has been mentioned before, but it really needs to be mentioned again. If you have an nVidia based motherboard, and you're installing the nVidia Forceware drivers do yourself a favor, and click no when it asks if you want to install the nVidia IDE drivers.

You'll get fewer "Blue Screens", and fewer drive corruptions. I'm a sissy, and I've just stopped buying nVidia based mobo's after having this problem come up several times. I'm a slow learner, I know. VIA really makes some good chipsets. If you want SLi fine get an nForce 4, but save yourself a lot of trouble, and an almost guaranteed reinstall, and do not install the nVidia IDE drivers.

I'm sure some people will say "I've never had a problem with it", maybe they have, maybe haven't I don't know. I do know that every time I've installed it my hard drive eventually went corrupt. I've had every nForce chipset, except for the nForce 3, since nVidia released the original, and I can tell you that saving the original nForce(I never installed the IDE drivers on that system) every nForce system I've installed the IDE driver on has gone kaput within 6 months. I had ran an nForce 2 board for 2 years without a hitch without the IDE driver. I bought an nForce 4 board and installed the nVidia IDE driver, and that went to s#!t in less than 3 months. I reinstalled Windows and gave that to my brother and didn't install the IDE driver, and it seems to be purring along fine, the jury is still out on that though. I have read on these forums of other people that have had the same problem with these drivers on nForce 4's so I can only assume that I'm not the exception.

Bottom line is your computer is only as valuable as the information that's on it. So if your hard drive goes to s#!t what good is it? Does the 1% potential increase in HD performance outweigh the potential loss of data? Please mods save some AT'ers some time, and headaches and make this sticky.

see also:

Link 1

Link 2

-manno

I installed those stupid IDE drivers once and my system become weird with one of my drives not being recognize and other weird stuff. A reformat and no nVidia IDE driver later and everything is working fine. The other thing to not install is that stupid NV firewall.

 

[sxr7171]

Originally posted by: ShadowFlare
Based on some of the comments about the reliability of the nVidia driver, I decided to switch back to the MS driver. I decided to run a disk benchmarking program and was surprized with the results. I got about 10-20% better overall disk access speeds with the MS driver. Also, for buffered reads, the speed went up about 20-30 MB/s (depending on whether I was using my PATA or SATA drive).

Yeah I remember getting benches on my installation without the nVidia IDE driver. Why do they bother? As someone pointed out already I thought it was common knowledge in these parts to not install it.

 

[openwheelformula1]

When I had problems w/ these drivers, I benched 53mb using sisoft sandra and later it dropped to 13mb. It would also disappear on me from time to time.

Now w/o these drivers my WD1600JS gets 54mb and haven't dissapeared on me again.

 

[Zerohm]

Holy crap. After seeing this thread, I'm such a moron for going through 4 different XP installs. With the first three installs I kept getting more hilarious / tragic combinations of registry errors and blue screens. Things seem to be running fine now without IDE and FW drivers. (If you thought the IDE was bad, try the Firewall crap)

I found this thread looking for what difference not installing the drivers made. I'm happy to see I should actually experience an increase in performance. Nvidia / Epox, nice board, lose the IDE drivers.

 

[roscoofyore]

excellent thread. newbie here, very new. i just built my new system with the following specs:

cpu: AMD +3200 venice
mobo: ABIT kN8u
vid card: Asus x800xl
HD: Maxtor 80gb SATA

1gb of corsair, an antec case and kingwin psu

build process and XP install went smooth. installed Nforce 4 chipset drivers, everthing was okay. installed the Nvidia IDE 6.66, system halted and rebooted. surprise! surprise! 'no operating system found' :| oh well, time to reinstall OS.

rosco