It all started with "What do you want for Father's Day?"

I should have known better right then. What's wrong with sox?! Really? Or a DATE!?

But nooooooooooooooo! I saw these WD 1.5 TB Black Caviars for ~$80 at Amazon, and thought, "That's the ticket!" Good cheap storage on a decent enough modern drive, and as Recluse says, if you want to clone your C drive to it instead, this will be big enough to hold maybe TWO entire new games coming out this year or next.

Hooked it up, and after two days of frustration I finally was able to format - most of it. Failed time after time. Tried different SATA connections, power cables, partition software...sometimes got past "Start", but only to fail at around 70%. So I tried a last ditch plan - an extended partition and formatted a logical drive of just 970 gigs. Worked. Turned out the problem is most likely my old nForce 680i Diamond board which could not get its mind wrapped around more than 1 TB of a drive. Solution is to dl from Nvidia the latest motherboard drivers, and ignore MSI's claim that they are up to date. Great searching, Recluse. Thanks! No, really!

Installed latest nforce. Says the ethernet drivers have to be uninstalled first, sure - reboot and the install process will complete. OK fine. Almost home, and then I can redo that nice new drive, and NEVER WORRY ABOUT RUNNING OUT OF SPACE AGAIN! YEAH!!

Well, you know the rest. Black screen after that initial, crude Windows is starting, which is mostly black screen. Kind of dramatic foreshadowing, as it were.

Then nothing.

Can't get past the Safe Mode start up, as there is no mouse or keyboard function.

Happy Father's Day!

Can I retrieve this without reinstalling Windows? Would that even solve the problem? Motherboard drivers now porked??

Yes, if you have your original Windows install CD, you can use repair mode (but does not always work for many registry problems). Here is how to get started:

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/ar...easy_steps.html

This is a beginner article but take a look and if you have more questions, post back and I will give deeper details.

S! - WD

Thanks WD! I thought about this route, but...won't this strip Windows back to original install? Shopuld leave programs intact though, and not screw up their registry status? Need all XP updates, DX, new drivers for disk controllers, all that stuff? Or can it hone in on the problem?
I'll read the article.

Any ideas about the state of the motherboard/its drivers?

Doing work tonight on an experiment, but let me think on it more tomorrow afternoon. I can say that I have no love for Nvidia chipsets and that with the sole exception of the well known 680i, they rarely made trouble free motherboard logic. I will look into and get back to ya. For XP, to be honest I cant remember if repair takes you back to original install, I believe it does not but will find out (been about 4 years since I repaired XP in the lab; usually use Ubuntu, Debian or Unix).

Get back to you later today - WD

I'm not quite getting it.

If you only installed Drivers for the OS (and not firmware for the mobo) then you should always be able to get into safe mode as the OS should not use any externally installed drivers at that point. I can't get my head around why a new driver would block keyboard and mouse in safe mode or before. Unless the driver install screwed with windows core components.

If you are using USB Mouse/Keyboard, can you get a PS2 connector keyboard and try with that?

The cleanest solution at this point would be to get into safemode, and either run a restore point or remove the drivers by hand. You want to figure out why Safemode is not working, which it should unless there's major OS damage.

There's also the possibility that an updated Mobo driver requires the latest Bios/Firmware on the board to work properly. If you only update the software but not the hardware that can cause problems.

If I'm understanding this, reset the CMOS. It will either be a button or a pair of jumpers you connect. Look up your board if you don't already have the info. It will be labeled on the board, but check up on it to be sure. Don't want to cross up the wrong thing. Or pull the battery (looks like a watch battery) for 5 minutes or so, then reinstall.

Make sure USB and kb/m support are enabled in BIOS after that. That might be the kb/m issue. Should be reset to factory though.

Your OS drive should be in the lowest numbered SATA plug in.

I think you have some setting in the BIOS wrong. Running that drive in AHCI mode might not work. Try running the drive in parallel ATA emulation. Do you have it plugged into the 0 port?

Boot from the Windows CD and choose repair install.

The Driver install sequence removed your mainboard drivers.

Try Booting safe Mode VGA Only (I've done this a few times.) and restore drivers that way.

This was a problem before,
http://www.techsupportforum.com/forums/f15/updated-drivers-and-now-windows-wont-load-367000.html

Thanks guys! These are excellent suggestions and I appreciate your help. Some for me are a bit more drastic seeming than others as this is one problem I have not had to deal with ever.

Skate, are you making two suggestions or one? Safe mode VGA with the damaged computer as is, or using the XP install disk boot, and that option?

@ Rkryptonite, I've never pulloed the board battery before - does doing so affect anything else I should know about? Does it make all bios settings go to default? If bios already indicates USB and kb support enabled - without pulling battery), still try this?

Col. - my keyboard is an older MS Internet board, with both ps/2 and usb. I only have the ps/2 connection in, no problems normally. Will see if I can dig up another older kb with ps/2 and see if it works in Safe mode.

Keyboard does of course work - until attempting to start Safe mode. I couldn't use del for bios setup, or F8 for the safe mode menus if it didn't.

WD - thanks so much - I will watch for any further advice from you. That link leads to some interesting possibilites such as those psuedo PE boot disks. My hope would be to get to an earlier restore point, prior to the motherboard driver update - that might still work.

Also, anyone know whether it might help to disconnect the new 1.5 TB hard drive for now?

Boo.Been there before with an asus nforce chipped mobo.Exact same problem.The older mouse or keyboard will not work either.Scoured the net and there is many many people who have done the same thing and not found a solution.Tried all of the above and nada.

If you do a search you will find my original post somehwere in here from a few years ago.I feel for ya man

Found it..2008


Simple thing yet what an idiot,replaced my graphics card 7900s by two with a single 9800gtx,uninstall drivers replace card ,install drivers.I kept getting a pop up box with an nvidia message which was their when one of 7900s died.Rang a mate,he said uninstall ALL of the drivers ,not just the display driver.So fair enough,he is the guru,i knew i should have listened to my niggly feeling i had ,but anyway.

Add remove/Remove nvidia components(where i normally only remove the display driver) and ticked the box Remove all drivers including display.So in doing so i removed Nvidia ethernet driver components,Nvidia IDE driver,Nvidia display driver, and i know there was one more..just cannot think what it was called.Reboot..no mouse ,no keyboard,will not recognise anything USB,or PS2,tried that first. Scoped the net and at least its not only me It seems i also removed the chipset driver as well.What a champion.Problem now is i only have keyboard available at the Bios and there is nothing in there that can save me.I have downloaded my mobo drivers to a usb stick , how do i perform the operation now? As soon as it loads past my boot screen (xp/vista option) i am dead in the water...at least the original problem is gone lol,all i need is everything that wasnt broke to work!:D

Core2Duo E6600
Asus P5N32-SLI Premium (LGA775)

Chipset - nVidia nForce 590 SLI Intel Edition.
2 Gig ram



Had to reinstall windows in the end.