Vista - SLI Not Working :(

Hey guys, hoping someone can help me out here. I'm running a Nvidia 680i LT SLI Mobo, Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4Ghz, 4GB Corsair DDR2 PC6400 RAM, 2 Geforce 8600GT XXX Cards in SLI on Windows Vista Home Premium x64 SP1

Ever since i upgraded to Vista a couple months ago, my SLI has not worked for 3D applications. I would try to open a game like WoW, HL2, Crysis etc.. and the game would crash telling me the display device had failed. After lots of research I decided to just wait it out for new drivers and in the meantime use only one of the cards in Non-SLI mode. I recently downloaded the 178.24 driver update for my video cards and decided to give SLI another shot hoping that they fixed the problem by now. I can now open and play my 3D applications in SLI except for one big problem. In certain random areas of the screen there are flashing lines randomly throughout gameplay, taking up to 75% of the screen at times. The games seem to run smooth like they should with SLI on but as I said the game looks glitchy or flashy and I don't know what to do please any info possible would be a big help, I've had this 2nd 8600GT XXX in my system for over 6 months now with no way of playing my games unhindered in SLI mode!

Also wanted to add, I run my games fullscreen at 1680x1050 at 60 refresh rate. I just noticed when I open Assasin's Creed DX10 in windowed mode, and also Fallout 3 there is no problem, but fullscreen the problem persists.

It seems like you might have a bad graphics card try taking one out and test them both individually and see if you still have any problems, if you still find you get problems with one or both of them maybe you should get them checked out.

Are you using the SLI bridge? And try checking if it's on the right way. Some SLI bridges can go on either way, but others have to be slotted on a specific way.
I had a problem with SLI last week when I built my new PC and I had some strange problems, so I turned the bridge around and it worked fine.

thanks for the suggestions but, tried both of those solutions and still got a problem only on SLI with both cards active

You could try this:

Go to the speaker icon bottom left and double click on it and go to "Recording", right click in a blank space and click "Show disconnected devices" or something. If you have one called "Stereo", click that so you have it showing in your recordings tab.

Try your games now with SLI.

Sorry I can't go in to more detail. I'm working on an XP machine at the moment, so can't test it myself, but it's something along them lines.

Was just thinking about it now, when I got my 8800 GTS SLI on my XFX motherboard (Have seen you have XFX too), Call of Duty 4 crashed on startup with SLI enabled. I did this and now it works fine.

Edit: Just got on my Vista machine, and go to the recording tab and right click and click "Show disabled devices" then right click on "Stereo Mix" and enable it.

try the 180.43 beta drivers

remember its always better to use some driver cleaner software in safemode after uninstalling your drivers to properly clean out all traces of old drivers

i use this its VERY good , read the instructions!!

http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=1655

hey guys, thanks for the suggestions again. Still no luck.

I tried going into the recording devices and enabling both disabled and disconnected devices, but I have nothing with the word Stereo in it. The list goes like this. Microphone, Auxiliary, Line-In, S/PDIF-In, "What U Hear", Microphone, Microphone, Line In, Line In, Digital Input Device (SPDIF) and they are all enabled and have a status of Working.

As for the Driver Sweeper solution, I followed the instructions, had to reinstall the 178.24 Drivers afterwards because the 180 beta drivers don't support my 8600 GT XXX cards. Anyway, this also didn't work. I'm still seeing flashy/glitchy lines appearing in SLI mode while running 3D apps.