New Nforce drivers(2.41)

[foofoo]

just another heads up,
these drivers also lunched the w2k installation on my soltek 75FRN2-L, xp2400 rig.
there is definitely something about my installs that it doesnt like. all of my stuff is up to date in patches (bigfix) and my install is pretty average. it blue screens even while trying to get into safe mode. norton was off as were all other extraneous processes. this is a weird one. fortunately i made a ghost image before i tried this install so i can get back where i was)
fwiw... ghost before you install this one.
good luck

 

[MikeMike]

so install right after xp? i am building a system for a friend. do these do alot other than fvck up installs?

 

[foofoo]

hi,
i've only had problems with 2k installs. i havent tried xp yet. the order that i'd install is...

os
os service pack(s)
nforce drivers
other board drivers
apps and updates.

this usually works well.
good luck

 

[MichaelD]

Originally posted by: foofoo
hi,
i've only had problems with 2k installs. i havent tried xp yet. the order that i'd install is...

os
os service pack(s)
nforce drivers
other board drivers
apps and updates.

this usually works well.
good luck

The above is the order that I use as well. I have not tried these drivers, nor do I plan on it for the forseeable future. I'm using the 2.03s. I had no probs w/them in the past and I'm not having any now.

Running W2KSP3 with all the hotfixes/bugfixes from Liveupdate. *shrug* I dunno...maybe you guys' rigs are way too overclocked? (You're NOT installing chipset drivers with the rig overclocked, I hope?)

 

[MikeMike]

its xp pro coprorate with sp1.

only on 26.4k dial-up so not dowloading any sp's all the rest will stay stock.

MIKE

 

[foofoo]

(You're NOT installing chipset drivers with the rig overclocked, I hope?)

nope, all cpus at stock settings for this install.
i thought that i'd done everything right for this, but it didnt go to well for me.

 

[GTaudiophile]

Did these drivers totally hose anyone's system?

A friend of mine installed them on his Epox 8RDA+/ATi Radeon 9500 PRO/AMD AthlonXP 2500+ system (not OCed). He thinks it's the IDE drivers that did it. He's got an IBM 60GB/7200rpm/ATA66 drive. After installing the drivers, BF1942 quit working and he lost the ability to boot into WinXP PRO SP1. He was forced to format.

 

[Markfw]

foofoo: I just downloaded 2.41 for W2K after I was corrected that there IS a version for it, and then installed it. It has fixed ALL of my problems ! Here are some interesting notes about the version. Quote from Nvidia:

"Windows 2K users must install Service Pack 3 prior to attempting to install this package if they wish to install the enhanced IDE driver.
USB 2.0 is not supported in this package. Contact your product manufacturer for Microsoft Pre-SP4 drivers to enable this feature.
Audio drivers will not install on the following nForce2 products: Chaintech 7NJS. Please use the drivers that come with these products to enable audio functionality."

I have An ASUS A7N8X Deluxe mobo. I wonder if your problem is related to the comment about the 7NJS or SP3 ???

 

[McCarthy]

Dang, was getting all excited about getting my IDE running decent again for the first time since I retired my KT133A, but halfway down you guys bummed me out.

 

[foofoo]

Did these drivers totally hose anyone's system?

gtaudiophile,
yes, these drivers hosed 2 of my systems one is an abit nf7-s v2.0 with xp2500+ barton
the other is a soltek 75FRN2-L, xp2400
both were w2k with win2k sp3 installed and all updates.

I wonder if your problem is related to the comment about the 7NJS or SP3 ???

markfw900,
nope. i have the motherboards and processors listed above and sp3 was on both machines as well as all updates. i'm a bit confused as to why this happened. i've got a significant software install base but still, it shouldnt hose the whole system....

i hope other people have better luck with these as i rebuild.

 

[Chobits]

Audio drivers will not install on the following nForce2 products: Chaintech 7NJS. Please use the drivers that come with these products to enable audio functionality.

Does this mean I can use Nvidia's drivers on my A7N8X without having the get Asus's version that they released since they had made some tweaks themselves?

 

[John]

Originally posted by: Chobits

Audio drivers will not install on the following nForce2 products: Chaintech 7NJS. Please use the drivers that come with these products to enable audio functionality.

Does this mean I can use Nvidia's drivers on my A7N8X without having the get Asus's version that they released since they had made some tweaks themselves?

Yes.

 

[Markfw]

Chobits, See my results on that MOBO (the deluxe version) above. I was VERY happy. The 2.03 sound drivers introduced a bug in the sound on some games, and the 2.41 fixed it.

 

[Chobits]

Thanks guys though I'm dispirited I need SP3 (I'm using SP2) because that is a lot of stuff to download.... How big is the SP3 fix anyway and is there a site where I can queue it up in download accelerator or something rather than run that Microsoft program so I can download it as a I sleep?

But I'm happy that I don't have to rely on Asus anymore for the drivers mainly because I know they will move on making other stuff while Nvidia will still release fixes and whatnot.

 

[GTaudiophile]

Sorry, but this fantATIc has to ask: I thought nVidia's drivers were always flawless?

 

[Dug]

Originally posted by: GTaudiophile
Sorry, but this fantATIc has to ask: I thought nVidia's drivers were always flawless?

Ha ha, name one piece of hardware that won't break and one piece of software that doesn't have bugs.

 

[Blooz1]

I dunno, I installed them on my 8RDA+ with Win98SE, and all is goodness here. Ran some memory benches, and picked up some in AIDA32, also +200 points in PCMark.

 

[Megatomic]

I tried the new drivers on a fresh install of WinXP Pro and I didn't like the SW IDE drivers at all. They seemed faster but they parked my hard drive heads when Windows was exiting/shutting down and each drive was spun up individually on boot up. Both of these events prolonged the start-up and shutdown which isn't a good step forward. Plus, the parking of the drives can't be good for them in the long run.

Needless to say, I did ANOTHER fresh install of WinXP and bypassed the install of the SW IDE drivers the second time.

 

[squidman]

Goddamn, ASUS drivers are soooooooooooooo gay.

 

[mechBgon]

WOW! :Q I just installed the 2.41's on my A7N266-VM (nForce classic) and played some UT2003 Demo.

:Q

Definitely some major EAX audio improvements in there! Nice!

 

[AngelOfDeath]

Wooops stupid Q I added. So for your conviniens I deleted it

Regards

AoD

 

[Confused]

Saw these last night as i was downloading drivers for my new install of XP.


Didn't install the IDE drivers, as there's only a CDRW and a DVD drive running from them, my HDDs are on a Silicon Image ATA133 RAID controller anyway Am also using a SB Audigy on my 8RDA+ (i need the line in as well as surround sound) so won't be able to see any improvments from the audio drivers.

Other than that, no problems


Confused

 

[Jeff7]

Drivers installed; only bug I notice involves Directsound and headphones. I used to have it set to 4 speakers and Rear Speaker Phase Shift enabled. I could use headphones or speakers, and it would sound fine. Now, if I have 4 Speakers set, and regardless of other settings used, I have an echo in the sound, about 1/10th of a second behind the sound itself, but only if Directsound is used. I tried to record it using Sound Recorder, set to record from the Stereo Mix, but the echo is not present in the recorded file.
I have to manually set it to 2 Speaker/Headphone now if I want to use the headphone. I'll have to see how the games sound though with this setting; others have reported improved sound.

Also, I have a third hard drive attached to a Promise Ultra133 TX2 PCI controller - now it can't play a 12Mbit/sec MPEG2 file without pausing every second to get more data; seems the hard drive can't provide it fast enough anymore. I reinstalled the drivers for it; no effect.
So what is this, nVidia can make good videocards, video drivers, and chipsets, but they just haven't figured out the chipset drivers yet? How long will it be now until the new bugs of 2.41 are fixed?

Motherboard Monitor can no longer read the hard drive temps with the new nForce drivers either.


Ok, that's it, I'm going to try to uninstall these and go back to the old ones. I just tried Quake III with my 4-speaker system, with the nVidia controls set to 4 speakers (which gave the noticable echo with the headphones), and it sounds like I'm stuck in a sewer pipe. All the reverbs are down to 0% in the nForce control panel, and there are no effects enabled.

I uninstalled the drivers, which left almost every PCI device in the system undetected; Windows tried to connect me to the Internet to get the drivers it needed, but the NIC wasn't detectable. Luckily, I had created a System Restore point before installing these demon drivers; restored, and I seem to be back to normal now.
nVidia, try again.

 

[pelikan]

They worked for me. Reduced sound crackling problem. I installed the nvidia IDE as well. Subjectively, gaming seems the same. PCMark shows 10% drop in memory score. But Sandra shows memory score about the same as before. Strange.

Before I installed these I enabled System Restore just in case (I usually keep it disabled), because some people are having bad luck with these drivers.

 

[CraigRT]

can you update just some of the components, and not all?

it's one bundled EXE file.. how do i update select parts that I want to change?

these NForce2 boards are worse than VIA and their service packs! :Q