All Kinds of Fail - nVidia 750i Chipset

[EXCellR8]

I was browsing the internets earlier and my computer decided to freeze on me. The sound cut out, followed by the video not long after. I heard the fan on the video card spin up to 100% and the screen went to NO SIGNAL. Now I had just opened CCC approx. 2 min before this happened and the core was running at 39c... what gives?

After the computer booted up again, after a hard reset, I took a look in the Event Viewer > System window and was greeted with a slew of errors caused by nvgts.sys and, of course, ati2mtag.sys was in there as well. Most of the nvgts.sys errors were exactly the same, something about parity errors and pending interrupts. I do have the latest nVidia storage drivers installed, which are about as stable as a house of cards in a wind tunnel, but I don't have RAID or anything enabled so I don't know why they are causing these errors. I have two SATA drives in my system, an HDD and an optical which both work fine.

Is there any way to install more generic storage drivers for my machine? I have the latest nVidia ones installed (MediaShield) for my board; all the drivers for the 700 series chipsets are the same. What should I do?

 

[Tmagic650]

"What should I do?"...
Format the hard drive and reload the operating system

 

[EXCellR8]

"What should I do?"...
Format the hard drive and reload the operating system

I'm working off a 1-week fresh format and xp reinstall, but thanks. The problem is with the storage drivers that are installed with the rest of the chipset drivers. I have uninstalled media shield and disabled the two SATA ports that i am not using. I haven't got any BSODs and the errors haven't appeared again but it's probably just a matter of time. Like I said I don't use a RAID array and I'm using the latest driver for the NVIDIA nForce Serial ATA Controller.

 

[seanc]

I'm working off a 1-week fresh format and xp reinstall, but thanks. The problem is with the storage drivers that are installed with the rest of the chipset drivers. I have uninstalled media shield and disabled the two SATA ports that i am not using. I haven't got any BSODs and the errors haven't appeared again but it's probably just a matter of time. Like I said I don't use a RAID array and I'm using the latest driver for the NVIDIA nForce Serial ATA Controller.

You should be fine if you were to 'update' your controller drivers to 'Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller', then you can see if that gets rid of the nvgts.sys issues. I can't think of reason why changing the driver to this would cause an issues, but please make sure you have an up to date backup.

 

[Tmagic650]

Well EXCellR8,
good luck, and you know there is no need to quote a message that is right under yours. I just pick part of the previous post, like I did here to reply to. It makes for a much cleaner thread, don't you think?

 

[EXCellR8]

^does it really matter?

Anyways, after that all happened yesterday the system ran fine; there were no further discrepancies in the Event Viewer. However, after I turned on my computer today, it ran for maybe an hour and the same thing happened. The system froze up completely for about 10 secs and then the video cut out again. After I restarted, I noticed that it was the usual culprit, nvgts.sys, again. I plan to wipe the nVidia drivers off my hard disk once again, and do away with media shield altogether, but I don't know if there are any standard drivers for the SATA controller on my board. Here is what I have installed...

All of the devices in that category are attached to Microsoft drivers except for the NVIDIA nForce Serial ATA Controller, which is causing the errors. I think this is going to be the last board I buy with an nVidia chipset. I've had nothing but unsolvable problems and annoying lock-ups and crashes. If I'm lucky, I'll be able to install a JMicron driver for the device but I'm not sure that will work. I might just have to go out and buy a SATA PCI card just so this will work.

 

[seanc]

As I mentioned earlier, changing it to Standard Dual PCI IDE Controllers should work fine. This is how all machines running XP come off the line at my work, because when you're imaging PCs & laptops, you need a totally generic driver.

 

[EXCellR8]

Thanks, I think I have all generic drivers for each device installed now. I had uninstalled the device from Device Manager but it automatically reinstalled the nVidia driver upon restart. So, after that happened I chose Update Driver and I chose the driver to install myself. There were only two options: NVIDIA nForce Serial ATA Controller and Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller. I just selected the standard one and it installed the Microsoft driver, which is from 2001.

Now, the entries look a bit different but there are no conflicts or anything. I guess I'll just have to wait and see what happens again. When I expand the category it looks like this:

Primary IDE Channel
Primary IDE Channel
Secondary IDE Channel
Secondary IDE Channel
Standard Dual PCI IDE Controller
Standard Dual PCI IDE Controller

 

[seanc]

Sounds right to me. Hopefully you'll have less issues now.

I like to stick to boards with Intel based chipsets and stay away from SIS, nVidia and VIA - they always seem to cause issues - needing special drivers and configuration.

 

[EXCellR8]

^Couldn't agree with you more... ever since nForce2 platform I've had nothing but problems! Thanks again.

 

[Tmagic650]

Yes, I agree too. SIS was good 10 years ago, VIA and Nvidia tried hard to compete with Intel, but they both fell short. SIS never improved from their start