Vista - Vista 64 Bit Ethernet Signed Driver Trouble

I am having a heck of a time. I have installed Windows Vista Home Premium 64 Bit and the ASUS P5QC mobo I have came with an unsigned 64 bit Atheros AR8121/AR8113/AR8114 PCI-E Ethernet Controller
driver.

I called ASUS tech support and talked to them and as of this time, they have only a beta version of the 64 bit signed driver. Vista is not accepting the driver and is considering it as unsigned, so I am left without a computer that can connect to the net.

I have searched hi and low all over the internet to see if I could buy a wired ethernet adapter which has a 64 bit signed driver, but all of the ethernet cards I have been able to find are only compatible with the 32 bit version of Vista or they only have unsigned drivers for their ethernet cards. This is really frustrating!

Does anyone know here WHO (what manufacturer, make, model) of a wired ethernet adapter card 10/100 or 10/1000/1000 (that does not cost a fortune - is retail version, not industrial or commercial)
I might be able to purchase that has the appropriate signed drivers - or

Does anyone here know HOW to disable the signed driver enforcement in Vista Home Premium 64 Bit with SP1? I understand it was possible to do it at one time, but since Microsoft HEXED us with two patches, that route has been disabled. So if there is a way to disable the mandatory signed driver requirement, I would like a step by step explanation of how to do it, in lieu of the need to purchase a new card (my ASIS mobo comes with an UNSIGNED version of the 64 bit driver - so I would like to use this if possible.

So any help would be greatfully appreciated

1 - Do you know who makes wired ethernet cards with 64 bit signed drivers compatible with Vista?

2 - In lieu of this, how do I disable the mandatory signed driver requirement in Vista 64 bit?

3 - If you are using Vista Home Premium or Ultimate 64 bit edition, what ethernet adapter do you have or are you using? Is a mobo adapter or a PCI card?

Try Updating your BIOS. I have the ASUS P5QC mobo, and the wired connection works great with Vista Ultimate x64. Perhaps you have a bad mobo?

~Lordbob

Aha. Ok, you should be able to press F8 during startup to disable the signed drivers feature.

Hope that helps.

~Lordbob

Thanks - I will try that tonight when I get home. Will I always have to press F8 to boot, since I will then have unsigned drivers on the computer?

I am not sure, but I would guess at yes. Though it will Bly be temporary untill the signed driver comes out.

~Lordbob

I too have a similar problem. I have ECS mobo A740-M with AMD Athlon x64. I have Vista x64 Ultimate installed on the primary HD and windows 7 x64 installed on the secondary HDD. They were both working fine until suddenly stopped working and wont boot. On trying to find the problem, I observed that the Atheros LAN driver is causing the OSes to boot in normal mode and can only boot in safe mode. I cant even restore the OSes to their older states as none of the restore points have been saved. I tried unistalling the LAN device and it would boot the OSes normally. Now when I try installing the driver again, the OSes hang and wont boot in normal mode again.
Any help is greatly appreciated.

This sounds like the hardware could have gone bad. Obviously it used to work, and having it suddenly stop working means that it is probably bad. Can you leave it disabled? That may be the best solution short of getting a new mobo.

~Lordbob

ASUS has had a few MB's with problems lately. If that is a new MB I would recommend getting an RMA from ASUS and getting another one. They are a good company and getting an RMA should be easy. add the ftp to .asus.com.tw/pub/ASUS/nb/A6R/

Guys,
I too suspect the mobo to have gone bad. The mobo is ECS A740GM-M. I will have to try gettinng their support and get it replaced if possible. I could keep the Ethernet contriller disabled and it would boot without problems. I have a netgear network card but I do not have the Vista drivers for it.
Thanks for your responses.

This seems more like a hardware compatibility issue to me, though bad mobo could cause it. If you want to RMA the mobo, go ahead, hopefully that will fix it.

If the new mobo still encounters the same problems, then it is hardware compatibility.

~Lordbob