Against all good judgement

[Krazy K]

I've been having major issue with my graphics on my other computer. So like any paying customer I told MSI what the deal was and they told me to try another card to see if it was the card or the mobo. Well my second card, an ATI 2400 crashed as often as my 8600 so off to Asus' website I went.

Much to my amazement a level 3 tech responds and says to uninstall the nvidia drivers. Like the guy that pee'd off the power line that thought that was a good idea, I sat for a moment and thought....should I do this, this probably isn't a good idea? This isn't going to work...oh what the heck, live and learn. Poof, uninstalled they were and like everyone know, a restart was required. When Windows was still loading for the second full minute I knew this would not turn out well, and boy was I right. Now there are no graphics in Windows, I can't use F8 to access safe mode since Asus decided their boot mode was more important of an option for the F8 key.

What should I do know? I can't get it into safe mode unless I do the hard off during loading and then I don't have any control over a PS/2 mouse or keyboard in safe mode. What am I missing, how can get back to yesterday?

 

[Merlin]

Can you use the OS install disk to repair, back to basic video drivers?

Merlin

 

[madmat]

You can too use the F8 key, just wait until after the RAID message pops up to start hitting it or if you're going from the boot loader screen, hit F8 as soon as you hit enter after designating the boot drive. You'll be able to access the OS options screen after that then go into safe mode or possibly VGA mode.

 

[Krazy K]

Can you use the OS install disk to repair, back to basic video drivers?

Merlin

It isn't showing any Windows installations, probably because of the RAID. Yup, it's not treating my array as drive 0, it's trying to repair my 750.

You can too use the F8 key, just wait until after the RAID message pops up to start hitting it or if you're going from the boot loader screen, hit F8 as soon as you hit enter after designating the boot drive. You'll be able to access the OS options screen after that then go into safe mode or possibly VGA mode.

Madmat

I can get into safe mode, but I can't tab over to the user or move the mouse cursor. Tried USB and PS/2.

 

[Rob Williams]

I can get into safe mode, but I can't tab over to the user or move the mouse cursor. Tried USB and PS/2.

You can't use the TAB button to switch between functions on the screen? So in general, the keyboard is not working at ALL under safe mode? Did you try a different USB port than the one it's always been plugged into?

It almost sounds like it's a motherboard problem.

 

[Krazy K]

It almost sounds like it's a motherboard problem.

I tend to agree with you Rob, and in this case I would hedge my bet that it is the mainboard AGAIN. So this is the second M2N-SLI Deluxe for me.

Madmat are you having any better luck with yours (ASUS), what GPU/config are you running as well?

I purchased Vista 64 home premium so I'll have another fresh install with a new OS trying to nail this down.

 

[Rob Williams]

That sucks, hopefully you can get it figured out soon. The motherboard is one of the worst things to go in a PC... once it's on the way out, there's rarely any recovering possibilty :-/

Let us know if you figure anything out.

 

[Krazy K]

Home Premium 64 and raid 5 goes in tonight. Any thing I should watch out for?

 

[Rob Williams]

Jealous Techgage forum posters? Can't think of much!

Not sure if I mentioned it, but you should see if there is an updated BIOS available for that board. That should be the first thing you take care of.

 

[Krazy K]

Well it's in. Raid 5 gives the same as 0, or 66% of the capacity of the drives. I'll start with everything tomorrow since I have to work extra to pay the extra $300 I have in drives.

Spoke too soon. BOOTMGR is missing, CTRL+ALT+DEL to Restart. Goodnite.

Who's still jealous?

 

[madmat]

I tend to agree with you Rob, and in this case I would hedge my bet that it is the mainboard AGAIN. So this is the second M2N-SLI Deluxe for me.

Madmat are you having any better luck with yours (ASUS), what GPU/config are you running as well?

I purchased Vista 64 home premium so I'll have another fresh install with a new OS trying to nail this down.

Sorry I missed this man. Yeah I'm having great luck with my ASUS. It's stable, overclocks like a demon and never gives me a second's trouble. Of course mine's the M2N32-SLI with the 590 chipset, I dunno if that makes the slightest difference though.

As to my GPU selection, I'm running a pair of 7950GT's in SLI. It has the occasional glitch in some games but it's nothing that changing SLI modes in those games won't fix.

 

[Krazy K]

Now I'm getting the winload.exe is missing from the windows folder. How can I be so lucky as to learn all of the problems of Vista before I learn how to use Vista?

 

[Krazy K]

Install #3: Once I make my selection from the start-up options. I immediately get a BSOD and it crashes.
Anyone want to buy a copy of Vista? Has never been activated and only cursed at...once.

The disc recovery actually worked this time, however it wiped the registry clean so it might as well been a fresh install. It also screwed up all the users, so now I'm carl.bob-XC and I'm really getting upset. I haven't got 6 hours out of an install as of yet.

I'm not the only one either.

edit:

Spoke too soon again, that repair only lasted one restart.

 

[madmat]

Are you absolutely certain that your ram isn't having issues? I've seen bad ram do exactly what you're describing.

 

[Kougar]

Krazy, that is not a software issue. It's a hardware issue and something somewhere is not stable or is corrupting the install.

As much grief as I have endured with Vista, none of those are problems I've run into. Everything I know about computers tells me it's a hardware or BIOS setting issue.

 

[Rob Williams]

I agree with Matt and Kougar, it's a hardware issue without question. I'm the first to jump all over Vista's faults, but I haven't had a single issue like that during all of the times I've installed it.

Could be a RAM issue, or an overclocking issue. Could even be the DVD-Rom.

 

[Krazy K]

I agree with Matt and Kougar, it's a hardware issue without question. I'm the first to jump all over Vista's faults, but I haven't had a single issue like that during all of the times I've installed it.

Could be a RAM issue, or an overclocking issue. Could even be the DVD-Rom.

I just never installed the WU for nVidia 590/570/550 and it's been running for about 5 days. RAID5 isn't proving to be much of an improvement over the 2 discs striping. With a hard copy back-up that I usually keep there's not much reason to build an array to combat hardware failure.
I'm bargaining with ASUS tying to get the M2A32-MVP Deluxe on trade since that one doesn't offer the nVidia chipset rather the AMD 790FX. Since that involves another good chunk of change I have to wait until I get the COSMOS and a Silencer 750 to actually have a place to put it all.

Software; was the issue in this case, don't use anything newer than driver version 5.10.2600.822 for nVidia SATA
RAID5; it would be nice if hardware failed more often then Windows.
ASUS; might be my go-to company for Mobos in the future.
Life; I'm running out of a place to put all the empties.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sobriquet/437071697/

 

[Krazy K]

Well they finally did it. They shoved that driver update down my throat and ruined a perfectly good vista install. To hell with nVidia and Windows!