I've got an ASUS A8NSLI mobo with the nvidia chipset and I've been reading about all the download problems people ascribe to the nvidia hardware firewall.

Well I've got the download problems, too, very much so.

But:

. The mobo of course has remained the same, but the problems have only recently appeared and are now increasing in level of corrupt downloads to where I can almost never download anything now.

. I have never activated the nvidia firewall.

I am running winXP SP2.

There's a little 5 machine home LAN here and I can go to any other machine on the lan and download happily. So it is not the internet connection, not the switch, not the router.

My ASUS is the only winXP machine so it could be winXP.

It happens with Firefox AND with Opera - so I don't think it is the browser.


Seems to me it is either winXP or the nvidia thing (though I don't understand why it would suddenly appear and get worse).

That's all I know.

It is a major hassle.

Does anyone have any directions/advice for me that i could follow to fix this?

I'm inclined to reinstall winXP but at the moment I don't even know if you can do that. And I've got many, many, programs installed, too.

regards,

ab

Take a look here Download Corruption. That's for Active Armor though so implies use of NAM, which you have not loaded? Note the download files are not quite right in the download: the ethernet driver files have to be renamed, e.g. "nvefdxp.sys" to "nvenetfd.sys" for WinXP.

You might also try disabling Checksum Offload and Segmentation Offload in Advanced Properties of the nForce Networking Controlle in Device manager. They are both known to cause problems with multi-threaded software.

Thank you. I've been there and got the driver file and unpacked it. I'm now wondering how to make sure I have '...driver pack 6.85 with NAM...' installed.

I don't know what NAM is. Excuse my ignorance.

If I don't have any luck I'm proposing to reinstall winXP - something I read somewhere has led me to believe that's the only way to get rid of the nvidia firewall - to install without it.

I can't find any other way.

If you've got any advice about that I'd love to see it.

regards,

ab

p.s. ( a later edit) I've installed drivers, 6.83 I think they were, the right thing for my mobo as best I could make out from nVidia's site.

They installed fine, no problems.

Now the computer throws a blue screen of death after about two minutes and does a reboot.

Hope I can get them out again via a 'safe mode' boot? Otherwise I'm a bit screwed because I did that before I got all my stuff off that drive. If I just do a reinstall now I lose stuff when this ridiculous windows xp insists on wiping the drive.

My fault. I know you should go carefully, carefully, prepared for disaster at any step. But I was just a bit slack and optimistic. I didn't think the wrong drivers would load. I just never expected..... famous last words, eh?

Actually the latest certified chipset driver for that board is version 6.86.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_nf4_win2k_6.86.html
Copy and paste the link and you will have it . Do yourself a favor and do not install the Nvidia firewall or the Nvidia IDE driver .

Okay, I'll try again. This time I'll get my stuff off the drive first.

I got out of that hassle alright, via a system restore to a checkpoint a couple of days ago. An excellent feature I didn't even know was there. It must throw out drivers and reinstall what you had before. That means it must keep a copy of every driver you've ever had? Amazing.


Anyway... are you saying that I'll get the option, when I install these drivers, to install the IDE driver and the firewall and if I choose not to install them they will NOT be installed on my machine? Even if I had them there before? As I do. Well, the firewall anyway. It is there even if I don't use it. It is there.

So the new driver install package uninstalls all previous stuff? That's what I'm trying to say, I guess.

I'll go find out.

regards,

ab

p.s. In another forum it was suggested by one guy that I disable the nvidia ethernet controller and use the other one - which currently has a yellow question mark next to it in my device manager - which we seem to have on our boards. I'd value your opinion on that.

thats not correct at all

the files are automatically renamed during installation to the correct name, via the inf telling it to do so.

you can get a driver that fixes the corruption here
http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/1-vt67290.html?start=0

you simply replace the files in the network driver folder with the files from that package, and then install it.

you should no longer get problems with corruption when running nam.

you can also just remove the NAM... im not sure how atm though

Well that was interesting. I used another computer on the network to download the 6.8 files. I installed them okay and the installation program then prompted me to reboot - I let it go ahead.

It came up saying there was a problem, did i want safe mode or what? I took 'last known good configuration' and that's where I am now.

So I don't know what nvidia drivers I've got installed or what recently installed programs might or might not be here or whatever.....

I'm not getting anywhere except in a negative sense... I'm going through all the options that don't work, aren't I? That's some kind of progress. Like finding your way out of maze by going down all the blind alleys first.

I'll try this network driver files thing and see if it works...

regards,

ab

Ah, well... that was a quick trip.

I've already been down that road. It says you've got to be sure to have the 8.6 AND NAM installed first. I can't install them we just found.... so that's the end of that idea.

Does anyone, anywhere, have any other clues that might help?

regards,

ab

Here's a p.p.s. :

I'm inclined to think the phenomenon has gotten worse over time. That would indicate something other than the chipset driver problem, wouldn't it?

But if it were something else you'd expect symptoms to show up in other places, too, surely? And they don't. Everything else works perfectly. There are no other symptoms.

I'll go find a RAM checker and I'll check the registry. The best thing can think of, if I can do it and if it works, is that 'change the network controller' thing. What does anyone think about it? Take out the nvidia networking controller and switch to the other ethernet controller?

ab

here's a p.p.p.s. :

I reinstalled the original drivers off the original setup disk that came with the mobo.
It didn't fix it.

I checked the RAM and it is fine. I checked the Registry. It is fine.

Any ideas, anyone?

Yes, it is correct. The instructions provided by nVidia are wrong.

And where did you think the URL I provided was pointing to? Maybe if you look before you leap!

If you had bothered to read the readme.txt which comes in the nvidia.rar file and which tells you to "copy all files (except this readme of course) to the windows\system32\drivers directory" you would know that my post was absolutely correct.

Did you uninstall the old drivers before installing the new... and the latest pack is 6.86 for nForce4.

You've done something wrong - the 6.86 drivers install just fine for me: 1)roll everything back to no nForce drivers installed; 2)install the drivers which came on the mbrd CD; 3)uninstall those drivers; 4)install the 6.86 driver pack.

What did you use to check the RAM? Prime95 or Orthos(for a dual CPU version of Prime95) is a must.

Did you try my suggestion of disabling Checksum Offload and/or Segmentation Offload - try both together and then one by one but IME the Segmentation Offload is the most recent problem.

. No, I didn't uninstall first. But I did uninstall first on later attempts to install drivers.

. Difficult to see what I could have done wrong on the driver install. (except uninstalling first, of course).

. I used a little thing called Ramtest. You make a boot floppy and it runs from there.

. Yes, I implemented both Disables, they're in force right now.

. I finally went to BIOS and disabled the nvidia ethernet controller and enabled the Marvel thing - and everything's fine. Every download since then has been perfect, smooth as silk.

. I would very much like to know just what it was all about - but it has been going on since the boards came out - well over a couple of years ago now, I think, though the board is considered quite modern in Australia - and no explanation in depth is findable by me on the internet, so I guess we're never going to know.

regards,

ab