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.

Ha! Can you believe i was hopeless enough to have done this twice totally forgot about this one..check this...

Yes indeed arggghhh! spitooieeee! and all that! As per my previous post i installed a new mobo, (GA H55M UD2H socket 1156)chipset (i5) and ram (DDR3) the other week.Had some driver issues and was on my way to getting them solved..or so i crazily thought.

Latest issue Installed new chipset drivers (as per the technical advice from Gigabyte) and now on reboot all of my usb ports do not function, excellent.Cannot get past the log in screen, awesome.Mouse and keyboard work to get into bios but once past that ..the lights drop out and bzzzzzzz.Flatline. Yes i have tried a non wireless mouse and the old ps2 type, nada.

I actually have had this problem before luckily enough, about 3 odd years ago with an asus nforce chipset board, i was instructed to uninstall all of the nvidia drivers and then reinstall , cannot remember why.Anyhow exactly the same thing happened.I ended up having to pull out the hardives and back up what i wanted and then reformat and clean install.


..and that was only last year! original post here.. WHAT AN IDIOT

Removing the battery/ resetting will reset any changes in BIOS to default. Set the system clock after that in BIOS.
Better to reset the way the mobo manf. tells you to, using the jumpers or a reset button if there is one.

However, if reinstalling Windows fixes the problem for others, then this is probably the wrong way to go as that shouldn't affect the mobo.
Sometimes after a decent effort it's best to go ahead and reinstall rather than continue pulling your hair out.

Before even doing a Windows repair off of the disc, be sure to back up any important documents, browser bookmarks etc. The "repair" option is notorious for not only not working, but forcing you to reinstall after making things even worse. If having issues preventing that, burn a Linux LiveCD or Windows Ultimate Boot cd and boot from that. WinUBCD is a very good thing to have around, especially if you're on XP.

Booting to safe mode, can you run msconfig? I can't remember. Try selective startup or diagnostic startup if you can.

Did you format that hard drive NTFS?

You Can Try Booting Ubuntu Linux Live DVD.

You Can try Fixing he MBR.

If the System uninstalled HDD Controller Drivers for Onboard HDD Controllers int eh Chipset, then you might have to run FixMBR.

When I re-did my parents system an d moved one HDD from one port to another and disabled his IDE ports he was stuck at a black screen.

So try FixMBR.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314503

Thanks for these ideas. I am going to first try A) System Restore via install disk or a rescue disk like BartPE laborious command prompt typing...if A fails then try B) manual method of restoring system registry from original machine build. If B fails then try C) Repair and get virgin file from install disk.

If C fails then D is looking like reinstall. After backing up some things like Docs and Settings.

Hi Ajay,

I'm a computer tech in a college and I've had a similar problem in the past when changing motherboards.

I've always got around it by running a system repair from the windows disk. It seems to be because the chipset is different from the other motherboard so the IDE/SATA interface doesn't work. The repair sorts this out.

Hope this helps,

Andy

Wow, this is bad (by design I mean). Even if the Mobo drivers are non functional, you should at least have keyboard and mouse in safe mode. Seems Nvidia requires correct mobo drivers for something so basic...

Col - cannot GET into safe mode as once it tries to start, KB and mouse support is gone.
I've clarified at least the first layer of problems by attempting to launch Safe Mode with Command Prompt. That kicks off the error revealing that Windows cannot find the System file in system32 subfolder. The A, B, C options are general (System Restore) or specific methods to address that. If System Restore is manually available through an install disk boot or BartPE and a recent one works, I'm feeling very good. If not, B, and C at least might restore the system file although losing a lot of system settiungs (B) or all of them (C).

Afflicted by flu plague this week also, so am moving slowly on this!

@ AnbyB , when i tried the system repair it locks up at something like the gup or kup driver? I found out that the file directly relates to the drivers for the mouse and keyboard. Nowhere on the net did i find anyone who had actually found a solution for the above problem that Eugene is having.Hundreds of people with it and a heap of attempts to fix with all of the above listed here on one forum or another but it's just no go.

Nvidia tech help came up with nothing and same with Gigabyte, i went through a couple of days back and forthing with a Gigabyte tech but he came up blank,even though he was the one who recommended i unistall the drivers.Go figure.

The only place you have mouse and keyboard is the bios,thats it.After you exit the bios you have nothing so it makes it near impossible to do anything.

Anyone have an old machine they would like to try the problem on and see if they can work out a fix ?

Ok did some searching for you Eugene and it seems there may be a solution.

Read this post No keyboard or mouse Uninstalled nvidia drivers and then this oneScroll down to blugoo's post


This is the actual post if anyone else is interested in a read..


This is addressed to anyone who just screwed up (uninstalled) his motherboard drivers and locked himself out of Windows]

A thank you goes to the other online forum members that shared their knowledge and helped me solve this issue.

Hi,

[I recommend you print and read this message once in full before starting changes to your system files]

So you were thinking you could remove some drivers, reboot and then use the default windows ones for a session while the new ones would be installed.. Not the first and (unfortunately) not the last victim of that bad M$/nVidia joke (the joke was on me too, for a while). The uninstaller removes everything nForce related, even keyboard and mouse functions (the HIDs). So no access to the device manager to reinstall the drivers.
The question is: what do you do when you can't use your usual GUI (Windows)? Well it's simple, you use another one to access your hard disk and repair the bad system.
What few people know is that Windows stores the system configuration (this tree of drivers with the exclamations marks in the device manager) in a file on the hard disk and even keeps a 'blank' one for emergency repairs, like in this case.

Now to the files and programs...
In 'C:\WINDOWS\system32\config' is a file called 'system' (it doesn't have an extension like .sys etc.).
This is the file now missing the nForce drivers and dumb Windows is stuck with it but dumb Windows has the lost spare stored somewhere :
'C:\WINDOWS\repair' has the other 'system' file - the simple one that doesn't know your specific hardware but can do simple things like allow keyboard and mouse use.
So now we know where the files are but we need to get to them. I'll give you the procedure that doesn't require network access (probably down anyway) or work inside the machine (like to remove the hard drive and access it from another PC). You just need a bootable CD with a GUI in it. 'Winternals (recently bought by M$) ERD Commander 2007' is one of those and it looks just like Windows (it can actually do a lot of complicated things to your Windows like access the registry but we'll just use it for the luxury of mouse controls )
So you boot with this kind of program - doesn't have to be this particular one, we just want access to the system hard disk so if it's SATA, SCSI, etc. it should obviously be supported. The second important thing is you don't logon to your system because if you load the Windows files, you won't be able to modify them. ERD offers the 2 options so you select the one where you can't do modifications to the system; we just want to use its file explorer.
Once inside, simply go to 'C:\WINDOWS\system32\config' and rename the 'system' file to 'system.bad' for instance.
Then go look for 'the spare' in 'C:\WINDOWS\repair' and COPY it in 'C:\WINDOWS\system32\config'.
That's it and you soon will get your system back as it was before (in a few minutes).

Once the 'blank' system file is in place, you leave the GUI, reboot (remove the CD from the drive) and let windows boot. It will start a discovery of your hardware and as soon as it's not doing anything on its own anymore you should reinstall the motherboard driver package. Once it's done, Windows will discover more and more stuff and you can check with the device manager exclamation points that everything is in order. Usually, some will remain because of devices installed before the driver package but if you remove them from the tree and hit 'refresh', it will rediscover the devices and install the right drivers from the said package.
Last little issues: during and after these drivers updates, auto-starting programs like antivirus, audio properties, advanced mouse and other peripherals services, Speedfan, etc. may give error messages or stop functioning. Some will go back to normal by themselves once all drivers are operational but some will need a reinstall (I used the program update function for Avast! and installed the last Speedfan over the old one to keep my settings so no biggie).
The other weird thing may be.. (optical and hard) disk letter associations : Windows may change those while rediscovering the drives as new ones so be sure to remember or note your favourite hard disk letter order; that too can prevent programs from running smoothly.

That should cover it; I hope I haven't forgotten anything (if so, be sure to leave a commentary and help the community)

Good luck and have fun



Tell us if you get it working

cheers

Ajay! Thanks so much for this. In fact, I was just logging on here to say I fixed the problem - in a similar way as you are suggesting but perhaps slightly better or at least easier. Recluse had suggested searching for a viable System Restore file. You can use the Recovery Console to do the task from a command prompt, although I decided to build a UBCD disk first and at least be able to recover files if necessary. UBCD is a rescue disk built on BartPE, but with lots of utilities and tools.

UBCD has a file manager, so after booting from that disk I took a look at the System Volume Information directory, which has a _restore folder with all System Restore points saved, each in a series of "RPxx folders", where xx is a number. The RP folders have a Snapshot subfolder, and in each of those are _REGISTRY_MACHINE_SYSTEM and _REGISTRY_MACHINE_SOFTWARE: Your HIVES.

I picked RP restore point files dated a couple days ago prior to the driver and hard drive install and copied the hives over to the Windows\system32\config folder. Renamed the current SYSTEM and SOFTWARE hives .bak - you never know! And then deleted the _REGISTRY_MACHINE_ wording to end up with hopefully viable SYSTEM and SOFTWARE hives. AS far as I know, they do not have any visible extensions/ Just SYSTEM, SOFTWARE.

Took out the UBCD disk and rebooted normally. YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! At least on the surface everything appears back to normal. Networking, drives accessible, a few quick programs I tried.

So this might help others who end up in this fix, to have a series of options starting with the least loss of your current working install, moving down from there. Of course smart guys have backup images and the likeand don't live dangerously!

Thanks to all of you for all your helpful information and advice. I learned a lot from you guys. Events like this push back the hidden dragons of destruction and turn what used to be the threat of a full Windows reinstall into a minor remedy.

That UBCD disk is sure a handy tool to have. To build the iso/disk, you do need your Windows install disk, or some luck that the right files from install disk are saved on your drive somewhere.

http://www.ubcd4win.com/

Cool as dude I am saving this topic to a file and printing it out so if i am ever daft enough to do it again i will not have to reinstall.Touchwood.WOOD!! DAMMIT!! WHERE'S SOME WOOOOOOOD!

Great news, and thanks for sharing your solution!
Keep your flu to yourself next time, leave the pc out of it. LOL

Flu is lasting longer than the "flu"! But at least one is cured

So any advice on the nForce motherboard driver upgrade? In order to format the entire Black Caviar drive, that's a must. However I was able to format just under 1 TB of it as a logical drive. The wimpy approach might be to avoid messing with this board's drivers again, as everything has worked just fine in the past. The $82 for a 976 gig drive is not a horrible deal. But it bothers me not to be able to fully use this 1.5 TB drive!

I've backed up the hives from several recent System Restore points, so if the exact same thing happened - same kind of corruption - I could recover. Not sure whether other things *could* have been corrupted though, besides the system hive (andpossibly the software hive, although that probably was ok).

my last resort woulda been to re-inflate the Drivers from the DVD or system dll cache.

make an Image backup, then try to update the nvidia drivers again:

If it gives you the option to de-select drivers,

DONT INSTALL - Ethernet Driver (v60.24) "WHQL"
DONT INSTALL - WinXP IDE SataRAID Driver (v6.91) "WHQL"
DONT INSTALL - WinXP RAIDTOOL Application (v6.91) "Sedona"

These should be fine:
SMBus Driver (v4.57) "WHQL"
Installer (v5.17)
WinXP IDE SataIDE Driver (v6.91) "WHQL"


Everything Else looks good.

http://www.msi.com/product/mb/P6N-Diamond.html#/?div=Driver&os=XP%2032

Skate - does the infamous NAM firewall Network Access Manager come as part of this driver package, and CAN be eliminated? Uninstalled prior to the new drivers being installed? Or is it a separate software package from the nForce drivers?