[Mark D]

That should allow you to get the MB drivers intact without the Windows setup asking for additional drivers during installation. The video card is optional, but if it is present, then the MB video doesn't have its drivers if your main video card fails. By the way, what is a "physics" card?

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A physics card works the same way a video card works. It takes over certain processing duties from the cpu, in this case the physics related calculations such as more realistic fragmentation and collision of objects. Interestingly enough all the Nvidia video cards from a certain point forward to the present seem to be able to do the same functions while in SLI mode. Making me wonder if recent Nvidia video card drivers might cause conflicts in a system that has the older Ageia physics cards rather than a 2nd video card acting as a physics processor.

Regardless I seem to have figured out my odd little SCSI/RAID controller issue. I'd apparently uninstalled Daemon Tools Pro without disabling a virtual drive, which Windows just didn't like. Now I have to start the process of trying older video card drivers, because the chatter on the Nvidia forums seems to say that the latest drivers are causing all sorts of problems for people.

Thank you to all the people who have popped into this thread and to help me deal with issues I always seem to cause myself.

[Alex4147]

A physics card works the same way a video card works. It takes over certain processing duties from the cpu, in this case the physics related calculations such as more realistic fragmentation and collision of objects. Interestingly enough all the Nvidia video cards from a certain point forward to the present seem to be able to do the same functions while in SLI mode. Making me wonder if recent Nvidia video card drivers might cause conflicts in a system that has the older Ageia physics cards rather than a 2nd video card acting as a physics processor.

Regardless I seem to have figured out my odd little SCSI/RAID controller issue. I'd apparently uninstalled Daemon Tools Pro without disabling a virtual drive, which Windows just didn't like. Now I have to start the process of trying older video card drivers, because the chatter on the Nvidia forums seems to say that the latest drivers are causing all sorts of problems for people.

Thank you to all the people who have popped into this thread and to help me deal with issues I always seem to cause myself.

[Alex4147]

Yay...back to square one. Delayed write failure warning, and looking through my Event Viewer I have 133 "The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk0\D." errors in the log within the span of a single hour. I've got Speedfan running SMART short test at the moment, the Seatools for Windows diagnostic program straight from Seagate indicates my drive is failing a SMART test, doesn't give any details though. Kind of looks like I'm in the market for a new hard drive after all.

*Edits!*
And a friend was able to track down a thread online somewhere about SeaTools for Windows returning SMART failures while other diagnostic software says things are fine. Which SpeedFan seems to indicate, saying its not finding any issues with my hard drive, fitness and performance are both at 92% which sounds pretty good to me. Guess I'll yank out all the nonessential hardware, reformat and reinstall Windows and start installing hardware and drivers one at a time.

Edited by Alex4147, 08 July 2010 - 05:45 PM.

[Mark D]

Definitely take off that physics card when doing the Windows install. I often hit systems here where they have a video card that fails and the original assembler did not bother with the MB video drivers, (which means I have to dig out the MB drivers for the video system, GRRR). It does sound like you're on the right track. From researching the physics card, some sites say they aren't worth the trouble, but I don't have any 1st hand experience. If you see an improvement in performance, use it, but make sure all your MB drivers are up and ready 1st.

Good luck...

Edited by Mark D, 09 July 2010 - 07:05 AM.

[Alex4147]

Freshly reformatted and reinstalled windows. Took the longer route of yanking out all my extra hardware and installing each card and its drivers one at a time. Which now leaves me with another somewhat odd issue. Windows seems to be seeing an unknown PCI device in PCI slot 7 (PCI bus 2, device 0, function 0), which strikes me as really odd because I can count and identify all my PCI/PCIe devices that are installed. Physics card in slot 1, sound card in slot 2, video card in slot 4. Now my motherboard itself only has 5 PCI/PCIe slots, so what in the world could Windows be seeing in slot 7?

[Mark D]

I've had cases where even after all the manufacturer's MB drivers were installed, there was still an unknown device. If memory serves, it was a SMBUS which I was able to load by using a driver from Intel. Can't be sure about your case, but is your system stable? If so, perhaps just disable to unknown device. If you no longer get the BSOD, kernel errors, sit back and enjoy stability..

Edited by Mark D, 10 July 2010 - 12:48 AM.

[diabillic]

Freshly reformatted and reinstalled windows. Took the longer route of yanking out all my extra hardware and installing each card and its drivers one at a time. Which now leaves me with another somewhat odd issue. Windows seems to be seeing an unknown PCI device in PCI slot 7 (PCI bus 2, device 0, function 0), which strikes me as really odd because I can count and identify all my PCI/PCIe devices that are installed. Physics card in slot 1, sound card in slot 2, video card in slot 4. Now my motherboard itself only has 5 PCI/PCIe slots, so what in the world could Windows be seeing in slot 7?

Probably something onboard. Have you reinstalled the chipset drivers?