SLI Nightmare :(

[Dragoon42]

So I rebuild my system in hopes of doing SLI. But for some reason everytime I go to my nvidia control panel and click "enable sli" it just uninstalls my graphic drivers @@

I'm using an asus p5n32e-sli (680i chipset) bios 1205. Using an e6400 chip. I have everything running stock right now. I plan to OC, but I can't figure out why it keeps uninstalling my drivers.

I'm using XFX 8800GT 512mb Alpha Dog Edition

One of them is green PCB with a regular xfx fan, and the other is black pcb w/zalman fan.

[Asgard_thor]

they mind have different bios?

[XFX Tech]

We have ran the Zalman 88GT with the original reference design before. They do have different BIOSes but that shouldn't be a problem. Is this on XP or Vista? Do you mean that when you click apply for SLI it pops up the uninstaller or that after you restart there are no drivers associated with the cards in device manager? Is this on a clean install of the OS? Have you tried uninstalling the drivers for the cards and then running driver cleaner pro from guru3d in safe mode and reinstalling the drivers while still in safe mode?

[Dragoon42]

We have ran the Zalman 88GT with the original reference design before. They do have different BIOSes but that shouldn't be a problem. Is this on XP or Vista? Do you mean that when you click apply for SLI it pops up the uninstaller or that after you restart there are no drivers associated with the cards in device manager? Is this on a clean install of the OS? Have you tried uninstalling the drivers for the cards and then running driver cleaner pro from guru3d in safe mode and reinstalling the drivers while still in safe mode?

I spent 2 days troubleshooting this. No the entire time it was a clean install of windows XP and then upgrading to Vista. I ended up reinstalling it like 3x times with different bios for mobo & drivers. I finally got it to work with bios 1205 and 169.32 drivers.

The problem I was having was, when I went to the control panel and clicked "enable sli" my screen would go blank and then it'd reset to like 800x600 resolution. I'd go to control panel-->system--> device manager--> display and then it would have "unknown vga card" or something like that. Either way, after trying out different bios and drivers, 169.32 was the one that worked. 175.16 and 175.19 was no good :(

I also ended up installing windows with a single card first. Instead of having both of them in during installation (i'm not sure if this matters or not).

[XFX Tech]

Have you tried each card individually to make sure both are functioning properly? Do both say Unknown VGA or only one?

[Dragoon42]

Have you tried each card individually to make sure both are functioning properly? Do both say Unknown VGA or only one?

it was both of them. I did test each card out individually. I had the card with a stock fan on it for about a month or so.

It finally worked, when I just did a clean install (starting with windows), and the Zalman version as single GPU. Installed the 169.32 drivers, and the other drivers (mobo, sound card, etc...). Ran crysis for about an hour. I then added the 2nd card. It installed the drivers automatically (for the 2nd card), rebooted. Then enabled the SLI. Finally got it working :).