Motherboard Diagnostic

You won't find anything as Nvidia dropped all support for the NF4 back in 2008. This is the last driver set they put out for it,

NVIDIA DRIVERS 15.23 WHQL

Seeing as you have the second computer, have you tried any of the supposed bad drives on it? Would help to rule out if it is the drives themselves, or the controller on the motherboard is going.

sygnus21 said:

Those hard drives may be going, especially if he can't read the SMART info and SMART is enabled in the BIOS.

If I remember correctly that was the norm for the NF4 chipset when the SATA controllers were run in SATA mode and the Nvidia driver was used. I believe that if the default Windows driver was used, then SMART was available (been a while since my NF4 died, but don't remember getting SMART in Vista at least with the Nvidia driver installed).

I just went into the BIOS and found that all 3 of the drives SMART was set at auto, so I changed them to enabled...just for good measure. However, DLG still says that SMART is not available on any of them. Since SpeedFan does have access to SMART data on all three of those drives, it tends to make me believe that this is more of a compatibility problem with the software, rather than hardware or drivers.

I had intended to move that new drive to my external case when I rebooted, but forgot, so that is next on the list.

Think you will find that Speedfan can read it for the same reason that it gives those weird temperature readings when you first install it (how many have seen that ever popular -127°C), it bypasses the drivers/bios completely and queries the hardware/sensor modules directly. Pretty sure that if you uninstalled the Nvidia SATA/IDE drivers and rolled back to the default Windows driver that SMART would then be able to be read by anything.

I just moved the new drive to the external case, and it now shows normal SMART data. That seems to indicate that the problem is with the MB and/or drivers.

stormy13,

What are you referring to...the nForce driver?

As can be seen in the screenshot, three of the items listed under controllers are using Windows drivers. Obviously, the other two are using nForce.

seekermeister said:

What are you referring to...the nForce driver?

Yes. No SMART readings in most programs is due to a combination of the Nforce SATA driver and the NF4 chipset itself. SMART will be read by just about any program as long as you only use the default Windows driver. Also why the you're not getting any readings for teh drives when connected internally, but do when connected externally.

Another thing with the NF4, ever noticed that it doesn't support AHCI or NCQ when run in SATA mode?

enable AHCI on nForce4 (A8N32-SLI Deluxe) with Vista x64 • nForcersHQ.com

As an experiment, I disabled the first nForce controller (that option wasn't available for the second, probably because it was being used by Windows) and the Maxtor 680Y0MO disappeared in DLG. Therefore it appears that the other controllers with Windows drivers are not being used.

stormy13 said:

seekermeister said:

What are you referring to...the nForce driver?

Yes. No SMART readings in most programs is due to a combination of the Nforce SATA driver and the NF4 chipset itself. SMART will be read by just about any program as long as you only use the default Windows driver. Also why the you're not getting any readings for teh drives when connected internally, but do when connected externally.

Another thing with the NF4, ever noticed that it doesn't support AHCI or NCQ when run in SATA mode?

enable AHCI on nForce4 (A8N32-SLI Deluxe) with Vista x64 • nForcersHQ.com

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the nForce driver is used for more than the hard drive controller, it is also used for the Network Adapters. Yes, I do have a Marvel Yukon controller in addition to the Nvidia one, but the last time that I tried using it, it didn't work. Therefore, unless it is possible to uninstall only the drive portion of nForce, which seems unlikely due to the experiment that I mentioned in my previous post, removing nForce altogether would cripple my system...wouldn't it?

Yes the driver package contains more than just the SATA/IDE driver as you mentioned. To uninstall select the Nvidia Drivers entry in Programs and Features and it will then open an windows where you can pick which or all of the driver components to uninstall.

If you try make sure to have at least a restore point made before you try, just in case Windows decides not to start after.