nForce 4 6.54 ForceWare killed my computer!!

[Momental]

I currently have an ASUS A8N-E nForce 4 Ultra board that came loaded with the 6.39 ForceWare. After replacing the rattling/dying Northbridge fan with a Zalman heatsink, I went ahead and updated the video drivers for my MSI 6800GT PCI-e. Inadvertantly, I removed ALL the nVidia drivers including the chipset ForceWare and that's when things started going downhill, fast.

I downloaded the latest 6.54 ForceWare from my roommate's machine (because the ethernet no longer worked on mine) and installed it on my machine. Since that time, my internet connection is painfully slow (downloads are anywhere from 3 to 40k/sec) and my NEC ND3520A DVD+/- RW no longer shows as a drive in Windows. It shows up in Device Manager, but with the little yellow "!" on it. No matter what I've tried, it will not appear as a valid device in my computer. I've tried updating the driver and get a message saying the installation can't be completed because bla bla bla. I literally have hit every button and tab there is to hit: "Troubleshooting", "Rolling back the Driver", "Uninstall", etc. No matter what I do or try, the DVD burner will simply not work.

Everything was going just fine until I removed the original nVidia ForceWare and was forced to install the 6.54 ForceWare. What I'm going to try is to run out and buy a "thumb drive", copy the "old" 6.39 ForceWare from the ASUS site that I downloaded onto my roommate's comp onto the thumb drive and try installing it on mine. I genuinely don't know what else to do. Part of me wants to say, "Screw this!", rip out this board and drop in a new one and start fresh. Desperate talk, I know.

I'm completely crippled as I can't download anything due to the horrible ethernet performance and can't load anything from a CD because the DVD doesn't show up as a device!!

 

[dfedders]

You sure you didn't f it up when taking the northbridge fan off and putting on the new heatsink?

 

[Momental]

Honestly, I might just have done that. And at this point, that's exactly what I'm thinking. I can get into Windows and such, but since things are just so screwy, I think I could've quite possibly damaged the Northbridge when I removed the ASUS fan and put on the Zalman heatsink. I cleaned off the chipset with 99.9% alcohol thoroughly, carefully applied the thermal grease that came with the Zalman heatsink, secured it and when I booted up, everything was going great.

When I tried to uninstall the video driver and mistakenly deleted the chipset (ForceWare) drivers and had to then update and install the new 6.54's, that's when everything took the bus to Sh!t'sville.

I must admit, however, that your suggestion that I damaged the chipset itself when removing the fan had crossed my mind and that may just be it. I'm just about to the point of admitting defeat and getting a new board completely. It's somewhat disheartening due to the fact that this machine is only about a month old and the ASUS fan began to rattle within about 24 hours of use.

 

[Bona Fide]

I think the best thing to do would be do reinstall your 6.39 drivers, and start from there. At least you know the 6.39 were stable.

 

[ChicagoPCGuy]

I think you mean the 6.53 drivers. 6.54 does not exist.

 

[intogamer]

temps?

 

[dahuang1]

Originally posted by: intogamer
temps?

I've been having issues with my board as well with the newer drivers (6.53) - my temps on the cpu run from 40-44 'C, and I think that for some reason the IDE HD is not waking / sleeping properly when the computer is going to standby, resulting in a hang. Are these teps too high?

 

[GadgetBuilder]

There is an on-going issue with the nVidia mobo drivers which randomly causes problems such as you have run into as well as many others. Often, the only way to recover is with a clean install of XP:
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=5146

Using the nVidia mobo drivers tends to make owners believers in imaging their system prior to fiddling with drivers -- an image is the other (easier) way to recover if nVidia driver installation goes awry.

It isn't the driver set you chose, it is something random about the installation which comes up when attempting to replace the existing nVidia drivers. Each driver set, 4.39/6.53/7.13 has users who run it successfully and others who run into serious problems in updating. I ran the 6.53 driver set amd am running the Intel 7.12 Beta set on an AMD based VNF4 -- the same "issues" occur with both driver sets but they are tolerable (3 times per second disk access by NAM is the most serious) -- i.e. what choice is there

The Intel 7.1* drivers have an installer which seems much better than the 6.53 installer. Before doing a clean XP install it is worthwhile trying this since it may succeed and I suspect you have little to lose at this point. Again, it is apparently random and any nVidia mobo driver set you try has some probability of success, where a clean install of XP followed immediately by the latest nVidia driver set has the highest known probability of success.

Here are more opinions on the nVidia drivers and my previous rant on the subject:
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=29&threadid=1633257&enterthread=y

Because of the random nature of the problem, there is always a counter-example from someone who is running the drivers successfully (i.e., you don't have the "Right Stuff"). nVidia seems to be able to ignore the problem because it only affects a small percent of systems so the successes outweigh the problems by enough that there is not a serious outcry from NF2/NF3/NF4 owners.