Richard Urban said:
The Nvidia Ethernet connection is installed along with the operating
system. Upon the first boot to the desktop Windows Update runs. This pulls
in the sound drivers from the Microsoft web site.
Make sure you have your Ethernet cable plugged into the correct slot. It
is the high slot on the rear panel. The low slot is for the 3COM Ethernet
port. This must be installed from a separate download.
Thanks Richard. I know this is at least a bit off topic but there's no way I
can get the ethernet drivers to load - I don't however have a physical
ethernet device attached to the port - just an empty port.
Do you have actually have a *stable* Vista install working on the nforce2
motherboard?
Since a clean reinstall (the third) I haven't experienced the chkdsk
problems but, currently lacking internet access, I haven't touched any of
the Vista DVD install drivers and I have no sound. This is the first almost
stable install of Vista on A7N8X I've had - I'm lacking the SMSBus driver
but it doesn't seem to be impacting things. But as I say many of the
potentially problematic drivers are missing including the sound drivers.
The chkdsk problems were a big problem though and I have a feeling they will
return. Oddly Vista chkdsk was unable to fix them - something about there
not being enough disk space to fix the mbr. XP chkdsk was able to fix them.
That's something I don't understand.
I've also noticed, in a dual boot 2 drive system with XP on the master
drive, some unwanted writing to the Vista slave disk from XP. I installed
new ATI Catylst drivers which, it turned out required Net framework >=2. I
Net framework 3 after the drivers and noticed that without any prompting the
MS Net framework installation wrote some files to the slave drive - without
asking for permission or prompting. When I deleted those files from the
Vista slave drive - they had no business as far as I was concerned being
there - I was greeted with the familiar "could not load file or assembly
'MOM.Implementation" message on XP startup.
I think the Vista dual boot loader makes changes to XP that go beyond a mere
selection screen and I wonder if the combination of nforce2 and Vista on a
slave drive (as opposed to the master driver) is causing problems. The Vista
file disk management system has been fubar on at least 2 occasions as a
result, I think, of installing legacy drivers.
And yet when I do witness some stability I'm struck by how nicely Vista runs
on the A7N8X - it's a very elegant OS and one that the A7N8X with a decent
amount of memory and a basic graphics card can handle easily. It's a great
shame that Nvidia no longer has the staff capable of writing legacy drivers.
In the meantime I'm waiting for a new USB adapter to arrive so that I can
use Windows Update with Vista.
Could someone tell me which Vista log file will provide me with chkdsk
failure information?
Gareth.
