*FIXED* SLI HELP - Just installed a 2nd ASUS GTX570 DCII and Nvidia CP is crashing!

[GprophetB]

Hello there! Hopefully someone can lend an idea since ive tried everything i can think of.

SPECS:

P8P67-Pro (with latest bios
i7 2600k
OCZ 1000 watt ZX PSU
ASUS ENGTX 570 DCII
ASUS ENGTX 570 DCII
8GB Corsair XMS 1600
Windows 7 ultimate
Drivers 280.26 also tried 275.33

PROBLEM:

Windows recognizes BOTH cards no problem in hardware manager and within Nvidia control panel. Upon opening Nvidia control panel and enabling SLI (leaving everything else the same no other changes). Once i enable SLI, nvidia control panel crashes, windows reverts to 800x600 and both the cards are disabled in hardware manager with the hardware code 38, which i believe is driver related.

WHAT I'VE TRIED :

-I've tried each card individually in both slots, works fine
-Motherboard bios is up to date
-Tried both slots on the mobo individually
-Tried re installing both sets of nvidia drivers
-ALL necessary power connectors are plugged in (1x8pin and 1x6 pin in EACH card)
-SLI bridge tried on both slots and i even tried a different bridge

All this with NO luck. Any ideas? Please? lol


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~FIXED~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After trying about 20 different things simply reinstalling windows 7 ultimate fixed the issue. Upon boot into the new install and using drivers 275.33 i was able to enable SLI without a problem.

Dang, lol... thanks to everyone who offered suggestions.

I'm off to run some 3dMark 11 and then Deus Ex HR - and obviously more Starcraft 2

 

[blackened23]

Hello there! Hopefully someone can lend an idea since ive tried everything i can think of.

SPECS:

P8P67-Pro (with latest bios
i7 2600k
OCZ 1000 watt ZX PSU
ASUS ENGTX 570 DCII
ASUS ENGTX 570 DCII
8GB Corsair XMS 1600
Windows 7 ultimate
Drivers 280.26 also tried 275.33

PROBLEM:

Windows recognizes BOTH cards no problem in hardware manager and within Nvidia control panel. Upon opening Nvidia control panel and enabling SLI (leaving everything else the same no other changes). Once i enable SLI, nvidia control panel crashes, windows reverts to 800x600 and both the cards are disabled in hardware manager with the hardware code 38, which i believe is driver related.

WHAT I'VE TRIED :

-I've tried each card individually in both slots, works fine
-Motherboard bios is up to date
-Tried both slots on the mobo individually
-Tried re installing both sets of nvidia drivers
-ALL necessary power connectors are plugged in (1x8pin and 1x6 pin in EACH card)
-SLI bridge tried on both slots and i even tried a different bridge

All this with NO luck. Any ideas? Please? lol

Short of trying a new windows install, the only thing I can think of use driver sweeper to remove the drivers completely and then re-install? Both nvidia and AMD drivers leave registry/config traces after uninstalling through the control panel.

 

[Doougin]

i agree with blackened. if driver sweeper doesnt work only thing left is to try reinstalling windows.

 

[notty22]

You may have to try the new card solo, to make sure it's not a defective card.
This will also allow for re-seating everything.
You want to have your solo monitor plugged in to the top card.
Try re-installing drivers but don't install any sound/hdmi driver or the 3dvision driver options.
Are you using motherboard sound ? I and many others disable the on-board sound on the card in device manager if not using them.

 

[GprophetB]

Can someone link to the "best" newest driver cleaner... all the ones i find are on sketchy sites and old versions etc... someone link one they've used and trust please?

Thanks!

@Notty22 i have tried both cards in both slots solo and switched in every configuration, both cards are good. I even gamed on the 2nd one solo for a while just to be sure.

 

[spinejam]

Did you do a "clean install" on the drivers? Not sure if that will help but it sure beats a full win7 reinstall.

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showforum=207

 

[blackened23]

http://phyxion.net/item/driver-sweeper.html

Been a while since I used it, but it was all the rage about a year ago.

And yes, definitely check out the user community forums at nvidias website. Should be some helpful stuff there, moreso than here

 

[Seero]

I don't know if this will help, but I had somehow mentioned to have the cards running at different driver version. I had to manually update the driver via CP/system to make SLI operate correctly. After that, the 2 cards always update to the new driver.

 

[notty22]

I'm using the newest beta driver released for BF3. 285.38

Before that I used. 285.27 .
So maybe try the 285.27 .


http://www.nvidia.com/Download/Find.aspx?lang=en-usGeForce 285.27 Driver BETA

GeForce 285.38 Driver BETA

 

[GprophetB]

Notty ill try that now, anyone have a link to a "good" driver sweeper? I dont like using these randoms i find on google... wheres the official link?

 

[notty22]

http://www.guru3d.com/category/driversweeper/

believe they are involved with distribution/creation.

 

[GprophetB]

VIA the download page on that link notty
http://downloads.guru3d.com/Guru3D---Driver-Sweeper-(Setup)_d1655.html#download

Attention - Guru3D Driver Sweeper has been discontinued as such you will not find any download links here any longer.

 

[notty22]

I have version 2.1 on my drive. Checked details. Phyxion.net created it.
http://phyxion.net/item/driver-sweeper.html

 

[GprophetB]

Notty you've been a big help, thank you... I will try to use the cleaner, then install the beta 285.38 and post back in a while.

 

[ZeroRift]

This is kind of a shot in the dark, but have you tried running NCP as administrator / disabling UAC? Sometimes apps like NCP don't know when to ask for privilege escalation....

 

[GprophetB]

Here is an image of the crash which happens right after i click "enable SLI"

This is the same crash, even after driver sweeping everyhing and installing the new beta

http://i.imgur.com/ELvVh.jpg

 

[GprophetB]

RIGHT after the crash i go into hardware manager, the 570s are reporting "Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems. (Code 43)"

wtf?

 

[notty22]

I was taking a look at your motherboard over at newegg, these notes are there regarding pci-e lane configurations under certain conditions.

2 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (single at x16 or dual at x8/x8 mode)
1 x PCIe 2.0 x16* [Black] (max. at x4 mode, compatible with PCIe x1 and x4 devices)
*The PCIe x16_3 slot shares bandwidth with PCIe x1_1 slot, PCIe x1_2 slot, USB3_34 and ESATA12. The PCIe x16_3 runs at x1 mode by default for system resource optimization.(PCIe x1_2 will be disabled.)

You want to have your cards in the blue and white pcie slot.
Also do you have any expansion cards in the other pcie16 x4 black slot at the lowest slot on your m/b or anything in the x1 slot ?
Or esata. USB3
If you do, that might change your ability to have 8x 8x in the 2 pci-e x16 slots.
Which would cause trouble with the Nvidia driver , I believe.

 

[GprophetB]

The cards are in the proper slots and are running at 8x each (I know this because in nvidia control panels additional info it shows those details)

I have no other expansion cards of any sort.

 

[GprophetB]

It kinda does feel like a mobo BIOS problem but i looked through the entire BIOS and couldn't find anything helpful.

But yes the 8x 8x thing was the first thing i looked into after reading about other peoples similar builds.

 

[blackened23]

It kinda does feel like a mobo BIOS problem but i looked through the entire BIOS and couldn't find anything helpful.

But yes the 8x 8x thing was the first thing i looked into after reading about other peoples similar builds.

Are you overclocking the bclk? If you are, try setting that back to 100 and see what happens. Also what I would do is start from scratch and disable all non essential onboard items - such as the marvell controller and what not, and try running stock clocks and see if you still get crashes. Just to rule out everything as a possible cause.

Sometimes SLI/xfire is way pickier about such things. I had a similar issue with crossfire, I had artifacts/crashes when I went up to 103 bclk (which I used to do) but didn't have such problems with a single card

 

[GprophetB]

I have the multiplier at 44, but its on turbo mode so it only pushes the 2600k to 4.4ghz when its "needed"

I'll try turning that off though that's a pretty good idea.

 

[notty22]

It's a silly thing, and I don't know how to have this event occur again. But the first time after installing a 2nd card, I had a current Nvidia driver installed. When windows started, a balloon notification in the lower right hand corner, said something like this computer is capable of sli.
There is a flag triggered in your registry that the board is certified for sli and that also allows the magic to happen. Which order these things occur I'm not sure. The fact , you could see the check box to activate full performance/sli, sounds like that part 'worked'.

 

[spinejam]

Longshot -- try a system restore to an earlier date (before you installed the 2nd card) -- this actually cleared up a xfire issue that I had once before.

 

[tweakboy]

This is called driver entanglement. No need to use driver sweeper or those programs to uninstall because the new nVidia installer does that for you.

Launch the latest driver exe and choose express install. But first uninstall all from control panel and reboot. Or do a clean driver install, which doesnt bring back your nvpanel settings..Use latest WHQL driver from nvidia. gl