Windows 7 NVIDIA drivers stopped working

[fatz2fly]

System is an Asus a8n-sli deluxe w/amd 3700, geforce 6600gt, 4mb ram, 550w pwr sply - W7 home premium 64. W7 has been installed for almost a year but this problem is recent. The pc is my wife's and is used for web surfing, photo viewing and video playback. It is not a gaming machine. The geforce 6600gt card is no longer able to use the nvidia drivers. In device manager it displays the yellow exclamation point and the message is that windows stopped the driver because it had problems. The display seems to be fine. If I select the Windows wddm version of the nvidia driver, the warning/alert goes away.
At first I thought it was a card problem. The card was old so I bought a new evga geforce 9600gso to replace the 6600gt. When I install the 9600gso, I get no display at all. If I put the 6600gt back in, I get a display and have no issues as long as the windows display driver is selected. If I attempt to reinstall the nvidia driver, I get a problem alert in device manager. Also, the nvidia control panel is inoperative.
I have uninstalled nvidia and gone into safe mode to run Drive Sweep. I then attempted to install the 9600gso but still get no display. I put the 9600gso in a different computer and it works fine.
Any suggestions on how I might get nvidia operating? Also, any suggestions on how I might get the 9600gso card working?

 

[kemical]

Hi Fat2fly,
I'm just wondering if your motherboard is fully updated bios wise? Also whenever I fit a new piece of hardware such as a graphics card or similar I always re-install the os, is this not an option?

 

[fatz2fly]

Yes, you make good points. Additional information is that the bios is up-to-date. I tested the new 9600gso on another machine and it works perfectly. I have not reinstalled Windows 7 at this point. With the new 9600gso card I get only a black screen - not even a boot screen. With the old 6600gt card, I do get graphics. The only driver that works with the old card is the Windows generic nvidia driver. If I install the real nvidia driver from nvidia, I get a fault indication in device manager with the message that Windows shut down the nvidia driver because it was not working properly. Because I cannot get even a boot screen with the new card, I potentially would have to re-install the OS twice. Once to fix the problem and a second time to install the new video card. Thanks for your thoughts.

 

[Jimbo22]

Have you updated your mobo's chipset driver...(northbridge Nvidia nForce4 sli) from Asus web site to make sure you have all the latest drivers? If that doesn't work it might be that some thing on mobo has gone bad relating to you display problem.....ie chipset. If that's the case a new mobo is in order. It happens.

 

[kemical]

Yes, you make good points. Additional information is that the bios is up-to-date. I tested the new 9600gso on another machine and it works perfectly. I have not reinstalled Windows 7 at this point. With the new 9600gso card I get only a black screen - not even a boot screen. With the old 6600gt card, I do get graphics. The only driver that works with the old card is the Windows generic nvidia driver. If I install the real nvidia driver from nvidia, I get a fault indication in device manager with the message that Windows shut down the nvidia driver because it was not working properly. Because I cannot get even a boot screen with the new card, I potentially would have to re-install the OS twice. Once to fix the problem and a second time to install the new video card. Thanks for your thoughts.

Try lowering your resolution to something like 800x600 and then swop the cards over also is the PCIE setting the default in the bios?
Have you tried installing the latest nvidia driver prior to running the new card?

 

[TorrentG]

Have you updated your mobo's chipset driver...(northbridge Nvidia nForce4 sli) from Asus web site to make sure you have all the latest drivers? If that doesn't work it might be that some thing on mobo has gone bad relating to you display problem.....ie chipset. If that's the case a new mobo is in order. It happens.

Yep, this is the reason here, especially if the video error code in device manager is 39.

 

[fatz2fly]

I tried installing the new card using Windows vga, Windows generic nvidia, and the actual nvidia driver. Before each new attempt I cleaned the registry with ccleaner and I ran 'driver sweep' in safe mode. All I got on each attempt with the 9600gso installed is a black screen. Each attempt to install the actual nvidia driver is fruitless because Windows disables it when I have the older 6600gt card installed. I confirmed that both the 6600gt card and the 9600gso card are functioning normally by installing them in another machine. Both cards installed flawlessly as 'plug and play'. The A8N-SLI Deluxe bios defaults to the PCIE setting because the mobo does not have on-board video chipset. I confirmed that the A8N-SLI deluxe mobo is compatible with the 9600gso card. I am down to two possibilities - 1) Windows is corrupted and must be reinstalled; or 2) the PCIE slot in the mobo has partially failed.

 

[TorrentG]

You're somehow missing Bassfisher and my posts?

have you updated your mobo's chipset driver...(northbridge Nvidia nForce4 sli) from Asus web site

 

[fatz2fly]

The chipset driver is up-to-date. With the 6600gt card installed using the NVIDIA driver, the error is 'Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems (Code 43)'. When I revert to Windows generic nvidia driver, the error code goes away. Either way, the 9600gso card will not install. I suspect the mobo as well, but was hoping it might be corrupted software that I could fix.

 

[TorrentG]

Yes, error code 43 means that your chipset drivers aren't right or the motherboard needs a bios update. Install both the latest. Do so for chipset again, even if you think it's latest already. It will reset things if that is what is needed.

 

[kemical]

Code 43
Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems. (Code 43)
Recommended resolution



One of the drivers controlling the device notified the operating system that the device failed in some manner.



Have you tried fitting the new card then starting up in safe mode? If you can do that then you should be able to install the latest driver and/or run windows update.

 

[fatz2fly]

Thanks for your help and suggestions. I did reinstall the latest nForce 4 chipset driver to no avail. Asus and/or Phoenix/Award do not publish a version of the A8N-SLI bios that is specifically for Windows 7. They also don't have an update program that is compatible with W7. The latest and greatest version (Vista 64bit) of the bios was installed just before I installed W7 a year ago. The bios could be compromised, but everything is stable except the video card. Therefore I reluctantly conclude that the chipset has partially failed. I guess I rode this horse as far as it is going to go and it is time to finally upgrade the mobo and processor.

 

[TorrentG]

It will be fixed with a clean install of Windows. It can be without doing that. It's just the quickest/easiest and requires no further troubleshooting.

Code 43 means that the motherboard can not communicate with the graphics card, software-wise, for any particular reason. Chipset driver missing or incompatible, like on nForce3 chipsets (they can never work on 7/Vista), are the usualy culprits.

Something simply got messed up there on you. Easily fixed with clean install, so I recommend this.