Benamin

As a side note, this is not a new build. I am trying to do this without having to reinstall xp and all programs/profiles etc. Too much work! although I'll probably end up doing it when it's time to upgrade to Vista. Thanks, Benamin

I have done that before with no succes but I will try again tonight. Is the Nvidia install suppose to remove the default windows storage drivers? because it hasn't in past attempts. I havn't tried this version so maybe it will work better. Thanks, Benamin

Are you sure you have all 4 power supply plugs into the mother board? I had similar issues until I realized there were some less noticeable places to plug power into the motherboard. On mine I didn't notice the 4 pin molex plug or the 3 pin floppy power(below the Processor socket). This gave me the same symptoms as you. Any stress and all kinds of bad things happened. Plugged in the extra power and all was good. Your board is different than my Ultra-d but you never know. Benamin

I have seen linux drivers on the nvida site if that helps. They are right above the Bet driver choice.

I bought Acronis and cloned the old drive got the new one up and running. Had a little trouble. It turned out Acronis wouldn't clone my hd when working from windows, I had to to boot from recovery cd so nothing (even OS ) was running. Then all went fine. I am waiting a few days to put my old drive back in as a spare backup drive, we'll see how that goes. Now I have to replace those darn winxp storage drivers and try and get those NF4 storage drivers to stick. Thanks for you advice with Acronis guys! Benamin

I installed a new hard drive last night and everything seems to working fine. So here's the thing. My next project is to (again) try and get the nforce chipset drivers updated. My Sata 2 hardrive is being driven by the Winxp drivers and the nvidia network drivers are from early 2005. I want to try and replace window drivers and get the current NF4 storage drivers in and update the rest. I havn't had any luck with this in the past so any clue, specifically on ditching the ms storage drivers in favour of the NF4 sata drivers, would be helpful. The NF4 sata drivers just never seem to show up, even though it says install complete. What am I missing? Thanks, Benamin

Thanks Praz Love your sig by the way!

I have ordered a Seagate 320gb sata2/NCQ to replace my current drive. I have one computer with a profile for all five family members so I do not want to go through the process of reinstalling all the software and setting up all profiles and try and restore everyones emails etc. I have been looking at purchasing either Acronis true image 9.0 or Norton Ghost 10.0 to make an exact copy of my drive to place on the upgrade. Does anyone have experience or recomendations with this? choice of software? Thanks in advance! Benamin

I removed the Nvidia drivers from add/remove. didn't want to remove the network access manager. Went ahead with installing new drivers (not the sw-ide) everything seemed fine except. I can't remove or reinstall or even turn off NVIDIA firewall. But although everything else seems fine I don't see Nvidia sata controllers under Device manager ide ata/atapi controllers. When i look at the device manager/disk drives and select my hardrive/driver it is again a microsoft driver. How can I tell if installing the 6.70 drivers worked (it said it completed) and shouldn't it be NVIDIA Sata controllers running my hard drive? PLEASE HELP! this is the second attempt to do a simple driver update and it is driving me crazy! Benamin

Hey AnotherJason, does that cooler sit any taller than stock as I have Zero space for a taller cooler with my 7900? And did you have to mod anything to fit mobo pin holes? Thanks, Benamin

Thanks for the advice Mack27, Updating the chipset drivers is the one thing I have stayed away from since the one failed attempt. Gonna try again this weekend. Is it your thought then that the drivers actually may have been troubling my OC? Benamin

My 2 cents. I removed my chipset cooler an applied as5 ( scraped off that yellow garbage the factory uses). This reduced my chipset temps substantially. The I used a stock 80mm cpu fan I had lying around and installed it aiming between the chipset and the pmwic area which lowered temps of both again substantially. My chipset now peaks 43c with chipset fan never exceeding about 4800rpm (so much quieter, it's a noisy little bugger at full rpm ) Benamin

Just to clarify what ISSA2000 is saying, Some of the factory overclocked cards are having this problem because they are clocked too aggressively as the Vertex clock runs 50 mhz higher than you clock the card. The manufacturers are taking rma's and replacing with better tested cards. This is why your refernce card runs fine. Lowering clock does solve the problem but you paid for a factory overclock and shouldn't have to settle for reference (apparently the manufacturers are being responsive to the situation) The lockup problem you are having though is odd. I really don't think it's related to the cideo card. If I were to guess, seems your cpu overclock is a little high for stock voltage and maybe you are not 100% stable. Try bumping the vcore a little to stabilize. JMHO Benamin

In additon to the volt mod you completed there are 2 other things to do for stability and should remove the issues you are having. I did all at once and am very stable so I can't tell which made the most difference. 1. The 7900's apparently respond well to an increase in pci-e frequency. Mine is set to 105mhz, others use 110mhz. 2. VERY IMPORTANT, for stability and removing snowing issues there is a pencil trick mod to do. Resistor 91C sets the power switching frequency. this resistor is currently 80ohms. Using pencil, shade to 45 ohms which increases frequency. Follow the link bellow and on post #2 read the part where it explains the resistor he has labeled as 'K' ( which is 91C ). http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=94177 PS. Your volt mod only increased draw by 20 watts to about 85 watts. Unless you were already having stability issues with your power supply, I doubt this is your issue. also read this article http://sg.vr-zone.com/?i=3437&s=1 Hope this helps, Benamin

If you used the volt mod we discussed earlier, and did the 1.4v mod then the chip was not really overvolted to cause damage. but, I have heard of this when removing the mod. You have to get a magnifying glass and make sure that all traces were removed and not smudged between contacts. All traces must be removed. Although FEAR does not like the ALT+Tab function. It may be you were overclocked a little high for your GPU. The key thing to remember (which you never see) is that in the 7900 gt + gtx the Vertex clock runs 50 mhz higher so you have to leave a little clock room for it. If you OC'd to 650 then your vertex clock is running at 700mhz which you gpu may not have handled. ( which is why it was probably speed binned to GT instead of a GTX.) But make sure all traces of the cunductive material you used is remmoved. Benamin P.S. so far I still don't have any problem with mine but my memory clocks were not as high.