nForce4 AMD Edition (6.66)

[John]

<a target=_blank class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_nf4_winxp32_amd_6.66.html">nForce4 AMD Edition (6.66) - Windows XP/2000 (32-Bit)
</a>

nForce4 AMD Edition (6.66) - Windows XP Professional x64

nForce4 AMD Edition (6.66) - Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition

 

[ss284]

Anyone wanna test these?

Not it...

 

[rise]

i dunno, the drivers with the sign of the devil makes me a bit nervous

 

[CQuinn]

I'll be trying them as soon as I get home.

They may have fixed the bugs in their IDE driver finally.

 

[Insomniak]

Worked fine for me so far.

 

[BroadbandGamer]

Originally posted by: Insomniak
Worked fine for me so far.

Did you just install them over 6.53 or did you uninstall first?

Thanks,

 

[JJK80]

How I can succesfully update my current nForce4 driver kit (v6.53) to this new one (v6.66)?

Do I have to unistall all drivers (nForce4 & NAM, ForceWare, Audigy 2 ZS...) first and make "clean install"?

 

[Capt Caveman]

Installed them over the current drivers and now my system is FUBAR!!!! Ugh!!!! The system kept on crashing after windows started-up. So, I booted up in safe-mode and did a system restore to the prior day. Now, I have a system file corrupt and trying to do a windows repair.

 

[rise]

yeah, people at dfi.street are not sure which is best, removing the old or just installing right over. both ways have yielded some people results similar to capt.

 

[John]

Last week I removed my old 6.53's thru add/remove programs and was going to revert to the previous version to test a few things out. I then booted to safe mode and ran driver cleaner (used all of the nvidia selections), and when I rebooted I received a pretty error about some missing or corrupt "nvflt" file. I could not longer get back into safe mode and last known good was not working. I decided to run a chkdsk /r thru the recovery console, but unfortunately it didn't remedy the problem. I then did a repair install which yielded similar results. I had to perform a clean install and needless to say I was pissed.

I'm not going to upgrade nForce drivers anytime soon.

 

[sonoma1993]

be nice of nvidia gave us nforce 3 users some love. last driver updates we had was back in 2004. Im running xp64 and im having problems getting the nvidia firewall to work.

 

[Capt Caveman]

Okay, I'm back. What a pain in the arse!

Looks like somewhere along the line, the pci.sys file was deleted from the windows\system32\drivers folder. To make a long story short, luckily I also have a laptop.

My sata raid drivers were also hosed, so I had to download them from Nvidia and copy those files and the pci.sys file from the laptop onto a flop. After doing all of that and then reinstaling the 6.53 drivers, I'm back to square one which I am very happy to stay at.

 

[Megatomic]

Originally posted by: sonoma1993
be nice of nvidia gave us nforce 3 users some love. last driver updates we had was back in 2004. Im running xp64 and im having problems getting the nvidia firewall to work.

I've been using the NF4 drivers on my NF3 board all along with no problems. I'm gonna give these a shot if there is anything significantly different from my remix. I'm at work right now so I can't check until later.

Oh and this no NF3 udates in many many moons thing is one of the primary reasons why I'm gonna give the ULi 1695 a shot when I go s939. NV is starting to tick me off.

 

[CQuinn]

Sorry to hear about your problems Capt Caveman.

I installed straight over 6.53, and installed the IDE drivers along with the rest. And I'm not running RAID.

Note, I had also rolled back from the IDE driver in 6.53 to the XPSP2 default, because I noticed that my
file transfers were degraded in speed under 6.53.

So far, wow. I have not done any benchmarking, but I see a noticeable difference in performance.
So far, these appear even faster on disk access and file transfer than the default Windows drivers.
That is only based on doing a couple of large file copies, and running thru a large (3gig) database in BNR3.
(a newsreader program)

There is a difference in thie time it seems to be taking to transfer files, and a welcome speed increase in
database accesses. Again I have not benchmarked this to test. And only time will tell if file integrity is
being kept well.

Based on past performance and comments by others, I would recommend backing up your important data,
and evne doing an image backup if you have the capability, before applying this update. But otherwise
I'd say it has been good to me so far (fingers crossed).

 

[Aldoria]

Hiya CQuinn,

I did exactly what you did, but have you ever went back into add/remove programs and checked to see what you can and cannot remove with the NVidia uninstaller? For some reason, IDE Driver was not one of the option for uninstall even though I "reinstalled" it with the 6.66 drivers (just to test). I figure that some file didn't get updated when I reinstalled the IDE Driver from the newest 6.66 chipset and since I had it removed previously.

Ald

 

[Averox]

Originally posted by: Capt Caveman
Installed them over the current drivers and now my system is FUBAR!!!! Ugh!!!! The system kept on crashing after windows started-up. So, I booted up in safe-mode and did a system restore to the prior day. Now, I have a system file corrupt and trying to do a windows repair.

Posting over at HardOCP. So far, you're the third case (along with me) that I've read of. Let me guess, after installation you got a 1155 prompt box with an ok button.

 

[Capt Caveman]

Originally posted by: Averox

Originally posted by: Capt Caveman
Installed them over the current drivers and now my system is FUBAR!!!! Ugh!!!! The system kept on crashing after windows started-up. So, I booted up in safe-mode and did a system restore to the prior day. Now, I have a system file corrupt and trying to do a windows repair.

Posting over at HardOCP. So far, you're the third case (along with me) that I've read of. Let me guess, after installation you got a 1155 prompt box with an ok button.

Yes. I read over at the comments on the driver release on the anandtech homepage that this is probably due to installing the nvidia audio drivers.

Dumb question. I use the Nvidia audio drivers instead of the Realtek for my onboard realtek audio(read somewhere that you could do this). Is this not right? You would think if it was compatible the installer wouldn't install the drivers. What are the audio drivers for?

 

[CQuinn]

Originally posted by: Aldoria
Hiya CQuinn,

I did exactly what you did, but have you ever went back into add/remove programs and checked to see what you can and cannot remove with the NVidia uninstaller? For some reason, IDE Driver was not one of the option for uninstall even though I "reinstalled" it with the 6.66 drivers (just to test). I figure that some file didn't get updated when I reinstalled the IDE Driver from the newest 6.66 chipset and since I had it removed previously.

Ald

In Add/Remove Programs, I have an entry for Nvidia drivers, and one for Nvidia Nforce Drivers.
Clicking on "Nvidia Nforce Drivers" doesn't have any effect, but Nvidia drivers does list the IDE driver for me.

Previously, I just went thru Device Manager, and rolled back the drivers to the Windows defaults. You might check how
your setup looks there.

-----
A side note... Last night I left my system running a large download when I went to bed. This morning I woke to find the download
had timed out, but for once my system was not acting like a punch drunk boxer as a result.
So something in these new drivers may have also fixed a problem I was having with hard drives stalling or not coming back from
standby.

 

[Bona Fide]

Can't nVidia do anything the simple way?

 

[MadScientist]

Uninstalled all nvidia drivers first, v6.37, including display, installed v6.66, except audio driver, using Realtek driver, and rebooted, CRASH, rebooted, CRASH. Booted back into Safe Mode, tried to uninstall v6.66, gave a missing uninstall file error. Booted back up into Safe Mode and did a system restore. Back to v6.37 and that's where I'm stayin'.

I suspect it's NAM again, at least I was able to boot up with v6.53, but that version of NAM wiped my N-E-T-W-O-R-K.

 

[Bozo Galora]

Can anyone here who is running MS default install XP SP2 IDE drivers (instead of NV) check in Dev Man and tell me exactly which drivers are noted in IDE and/or SATA controller.
I am running SP1, and am a bit curious.
I have both NF3 and NF4 and see no reason to install any nforce drivers (I use Intel NIC and Audigy Sound) other than IDE or IDE/ SATA RAID, and only when they finally get them working with all system configs.

 

[Capt Caveman]

I think naming this version 666 was a bad omen.

 

[solofly]

This is how I do it...

1 Uninstall Nvidia video driver and reboot
2 Uninstall chipset drivers and reboot
3 Install new chipset drivers and reboot
4 Install Nvidia video driver and reboot one last time

This method always worked for me (knock on wood) and hopefully this time won't be any different.

 

[Averox]

I unchecked the audio because well, I've got an Audigy 2 Value and poof, BSOD after booting into Windows.

 

[wetcoastguy]

I had a look at the Nvidia page yesterday. I could swear that they recommend uninstalling first before installing the new drivers.

Why wouldn't someone take their advice?