Vista - I almost! gave up!-680i and Vista 64

First up, hi to all fellow 64 bitter's, (is there such a word?) --- well, never mind-- my experiences with migrating over to vista 32/64 so far, have been of a frustrating nature, and pretty much endless issues.

But i persevered over the last 3 months, and today i am happy to say i can use the OS properly for the first time, and to be honest i am overwhelmed with relief.

My problems began back in February of this year, when i purchased new hardware. My aim was to build a powerful gaming/HTPC.

The Parts.
BFG 680i SLI Motherboard s775
Intel Core 2 Duo e6600 s775
4 x 1gb Cellshock ddr2 800mhz
4 x160gb western digtal re hard drives
BFG 768mb 8800 GTX
Creative SB XFI xtreem gamer sound card
Silverstone 850w power supply
PS --ADDED DUE TO BOARDS OVERHEATING PROBLEMS--Watercooling---> Swiftech mcr 220 rad--/ mcw60 w g80 adaptor/apogee gt/ mcw30/ masterkleer tubing
mcp655 pump
all in me old case Antec p60 windowed

The plan was to build in a week and enjoy! yeah ! right! i was dreaming.

Feb 2007

Praying to the Computer Lord, i put the components together with due care, and booted up. Note, i booted up with 2gb ram to start with--- Success!
Entered BIOS, and started looking around.. The pc health monitor screen gave me a scare, as the MCP temperature was reading 62 c !
I thought this was strange, as i had attached the fan that came with the motherboard to the heatsink as recommended, and it was running at full speed---
started to load vista, 5 mins later, blue screen of death-BSOD!
reboot, 1 minute later BSOD...
Updated the bios next morning, as board had cooled down overnight. Successful, so was hoping to see some improvement......
nothing....same issues ....BSOD after 1 - 2 mins, barely enough time to take a proper c___!

So, i then ruled out the cpu by testing it on another machine, and it worked fine...memory was fine too...
RMA'd the board, and was sent a replacement from the states three weeks later...

March 2007

Received the new board, man, do they take this long usually?

Hooked it up, and booted her up... success.... BIOS pc health monitor screen was showing high temps on MCP again! Aprils herereplaced the thermal goo under the heatpipe with arctic ceramique

Only this time, i managed to load vista.. Saw the welcome screen---- then BSOD! AAAAAAAAHHHHH

It was at this point, i decided that this chipset MUST be responsible for the BSOD'S, as it would boot ok from cold temperature, but once it warmed up, it would always crap out, so i looked in to watercooling. I purchased the swiftech Apex Ultra kit, and slowly re built the rig. The MCP chip is in a stupid position on the 680i reference board, and the Swiftech MCW30 DOES NOT FIT on the MCP. very few waterblocks will clear the longer graphics cards like the 8800gtx. I researched, and found a MIPS MCH027 waterblock which does fit, and placed an order.
At this point, my nerves played up, and i started to think ' what if all this watercooling malarky still
does not fix the heat issues'---

April 2007

Aprils arrived, and i am worn out-- disheartened

fitted the new waterblock, and ended up with a tubing loop less than 4.5ft. this included the cpu, graphics card, northbridge (SPP) and southbridge(MCP).

Booted up, and checked the temperatures...MCP reading 27 c , CPU reading 29

Guess what------------------------------ no BSOD AT ALL------------ BUT

other issues started to appear...., clear that RAID function not working, only able to run single channel sata--- damn

RMA'D the board after carefully removing all the parts---this takes a lot longer now due to the watercooling----

May 2007

three weeks later received new board--- i hope this one works out!
A week later and i have it up and running, only no RAID.. wt$

Decided to forget raid , and see if this board is capable of anything. Installed vista 64 and first problem was with the nforce drivers, on nvidia website. The sata drivers that vista installs are v8.22, and the hard drives run fine, albeit performance is quite down..
When i updated to the driver package on the nvidia website, (driver version 9.31 WHQL)my hard drives randomly made 'ticking' noises, and would spin up, then spin down at random. Tried to roll back the drivers, but still same problem....
1 hard drive made a loud click the next day, and died a foul death-----

Researched in to this, and found lots of posts where others were having issues with these drivers. Found a modded set of nforce drivers v9.92 which were highly praised on certain forums...decided to reinstall vista, and after installing these drivers, hard drive performance is where it should be and bless my cotton socks, NO MORE TICKING NOISE!.
Why does Nvidia not release these drivers? I say that they should pay the modders who create these working driver packages, and fire those twit programmers working in their offices.

Happy to say the drives are working great now--given up on raid for now as i just want to use the damn thing--4 now..

On to problems with finding working Creative Soundblster XFI vista drivers.

June 2007

Seems ages now since i started this project-- Vista 64 drivers for XFI soundblaster are working, but not like as they work in XP.

emailed Creative, re this problem, and they replied ''that they are aware of this issue, and a VISTA XFI cd will be released SOON!''

Well stfu too!

Guess what? I found an iso image of this so called VISTA cd on the internet, and i can confirm that 95% of all modes and enhancements are working in vista 64 bit.

Creative--not so creative after all!

Today 16 June 2007
My wife thinks i am crazy, and should have given up on this a looooong time ago, and just bought an Intel board.

What an education it has been
Finally, i have a running operating system, with zero driver conflicts. The foundations are in place ladies and gentlemen
Now
Now, on to overclocking!

TBC....


bzz ..fly

Welcome to the site m8 and rep added for the longest first post in history

Hope you feel better now you have got all that off your chest lol, I cant wait for the next instalment

I heard the hell out of that. Mine too was the longest construction project I've ever encountered. Mine was weeks rather than months however. I guess because I chose Intel for the mobo as well as the cpu, yeah, that made it real easy....not. Pretty good feeling when you finally beat the bast*rd, huh.
Now, on to OC'g??? I thought about that for about 1 second. You sir have stones of steel for that comment. I applaud you!

Wow .... In Depth First Post

Good luck Overclocking mate and make sure you do it very carefully else you will have more problems

lol yeah your Wife is right , you should have bought an Intel board and you would have never faced so many problems , they r the "set it and forget it" kind of things in Computer Hardware

Neways "All's Well That Ends Well"

Hi fly,

Keep that stiff upper chin up. In case your dvd drive throws one at you.

I can't wait for the results of the OCing either.

Good luck,
Shawn

Thanks for the feedback, & the comments guys, it is appreciated

Yeah, 1st post rant champion , it seems, i did need to get that off my chest-- i feel better already. lol

Most of all, i just wanted to share my experiences, and if by doing so, i help others to avoid any pitfalls, then will have been worth it..

Fathers day today...
Received Halo 2 Vista as a pressie from my son.... He tried it out this morning--strange how he seemed EAGER to get involved today. ..good though..

First impressions... do not buy this game yet-- only 20- 30 players online--- booring...
OMG... Fear plays and looks brilliant, on this set up-- everything running at stock..

Initial overclocking results--
e6600 @3.0ghz
1333mhz FSB
at stock vcore voltage
running stability test as i am writing
will post pics later (is this allowed here?)

Hoping to get up to 3.6 on the cpu and 900mhz on the ram....

Question: Does 3D MARK 2006 work on vista 64 bit?


Thanks
Fly

Yep Seems like it works : Source

3.6Ghz
Which stepping/batch do you have ? You certainly need a ver nice clicking chip to get 3.6Ghz.
Good luck and let us know

Cheers Asky...

Stepping and Batch?

are these numbers found on the retail box by any chance?

cpuz says stepping of 6 and revision of B2

numbers on box read:

FPO# L629f057
Pack Date 01/15/07

What do you reckon Asky, 3.6 achievable?

fly

L629F is a very very Good Stepping/Batch ,lucky you
3.6 is achievable especially since you are on watercooling

That is good news Asky,

I was a bit dismayed when 4 weeks after i bought the e6600 (paid over £200.00 retail) the price dropped by £70.00!
Did the price drop, also tie in with worse stepping/batch variations, or am i just plain LUCKY to get hold of this one?

Any how, lookin forward to the results

Will post back soon
fly