8800GTX install going from bad to worse...

[tomb18]

Ok, I'm almost at witts end here.
I have always bought the newest nvidia cards when they come out and never had a problem at any time previously.
I have tried all of the drivers and again I have never had any problems. Recently I've had the 7800GT, 7900GTX, 7950GX2 and all went fine even in Vista RC2. That is until I got a 8800GTX...

The following pertains to XP64 latest drivers
The drivers have to be the worse junk that nvidia has made yet. Although things do seem to work, the control panel is a mess.

The install went fine, I benched some software on the 8800 vs the 7950gx2 and other than far cry referencing some invalid memory everything else seemed to work.
I then downloaded ntune and did a bit of overclocking.
The PC locked up once or twice in 3dmark06 but then I settled on 625,2000 very stable.
Now, During this, i noticed that the new control panel was behaving weird. The new overclocking screens were there but then the next time, it seemed that they were the old ones, like that given by coolbits. At first I forgot about it, but today I went to look at my 3d settings and lo and behold, all of the control panel catagogies are gone except for the overclocking! There are no more 3d settings, all gone.
So I figure that ntune messed them up, so I uninstalled it.
SH*T! Now the control panel is completely empty.
Ok, so I decide to uninstall the driver, then reinstall it. No difference. I read that some people had luck installing an old driver,then installing the new nvidia drivers, no luck.
I then did a system restore to the day before I bought the 8800. Then I did a reinstall of the 8800 drivers. Guess what! Still an empty control panel!!!!!
I did find a registry entry hack in this board on how to enable the old classic control panel and now at least I have a control panel! But it seems to me that the valujes in it are for an old board..in otherwords there are no special aa modes etc.

How can I get the control panel back?????
Some people have exported theie control panel registry keys from other systems, and then imported them and apparently this has worked.
Any other ideas?
Thanks!!

[SLippe]

My install of my new card turned into a big mess yesterday. What should have been a simple card swamped turned into a format, fresh install of XP, broken cables, etc. I finally got everything working at 2:30 a.m. last night. I was very beside myself by the time I was done and too tired to play any games. Anyways, I don't know about your ordeal. My advice, give up on Vista for now and go back to XP until drivers mature for Vista. Right now, it's a big clusterphuk. Sorry, man.

[Redeemed]

So true SLippe. I'm running two GTS in XP Pro no problem. I'm hesitant to get Vista simply cause of the lack of proper drivers.

[Amun]

If you want to play around with Vista make it a Dual boot option with WinXP... but please for the love of god do not make it your primary and only os... it has just come out!!!! :headexplode:

[Spartan 117]

my 8800 GTX SLI seem to do good in Vista, but im still at XP for gaming and simply the fact that the drivers are better for xp

[tomb18]

Once little problem, this is on xp64 and not vista!

[Spartan 117]

honestly, XP Pro x64 was garbage, thats a reason why I stuck with XP Pro, nothing seems to work with XP Pro x64 :thumbdwn:

[tomb18]

honestly, XP Pro x64 was garbage, thats a reason why I stuck with XP Pro, nothing seems to work with XP Pro x64 :thumbdwn:

Really?
I've been running for over a year on XP64 with *no* problems running anything. In fact, the performance is consistently higher than my x32 box with identicle hardware as well.

This is the first time I have difficulty, and it's the darn 8800 drivers!

[tomb18]

Any ideas?

[ATOJAR]

My advice, give up on Vista for now and go back to XP until drivers mature for Vista. Right now, it's a big clusterphuk.

Roger that! i had vista ultimate installed but have had that many troubls with it that i have switched back to xp.... everything running fine!

[ynnek]

just curious, after you install your new drivers, are you rebooting your system before actually really using them? If not, strange things could happen.

[tomb18]

Yes, im rebooting.
I've tried many things so far.
Someone has to know...

[SLippe]

Do you have System Restore ON by any chance? Have you scanned for Viruses and Spyware, etc.? What about all the WinXP updates, including DirectX, Jave, etc.?

[tomb18]

The computer is completely up to date.
Perhaps someone can help me out. Can you look in your nvidia control panel under help " system information" and tell me what you see?
Under vista I see a lot of categories for the 3d settings,display etc whereas under 97.92 I only see the control panel dlls listed.
Thanks