Bought this desktop computer a week ago, and it arrived yesterday.

Specs:
Antect 1200 Gaming Case
Corsair 750W PSU (140mm fan, ATX/EPS, 8xSATA, SLi)
Asus P5N-D nForce-750i SLi Socket 775 (ATX, Firewire, GbLAN, DDR2, 2xPCI-Ex(2.0)16)
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 2.83GHz 1333MHz 12MB BOXED w/fan
Corsair TWIN2X 6400C5DHX DDR2, 4096MB
2x Samsung SpinPoint 500GB SATA2
XFX GeForce GTX280 602M 1GB DDR3 512bit
Creative SB X-Fi XtremeGamer soundcard

MS Vista Home Premium 32-bit

Pre-intalled by Komplett.no

So here's the story.. on first launch, I was just filling in some forms about user etc, you know the drill. Then all of a sudden, when launching the "desktop interface" the screen went black.. "No Signal" I thought it might be normal, as these LCDs go black all the time when adjusting screensize etc. but it didn't go back on as usual.. so I figured something was wrong and rebooted. Filled in the forms again with a new username (cause it kept saying the other already existed, naturally 'cause I created it in the first startup).. this time it works fine, load the desktop and I proceed to read through some of the things in the welcoming screen. Then I delete the second user I made and everything worked just fine for a while.

I made sure all the drivers from the various discs (asus, xfx) were installed, some apparantly weren't. Then I rebooted and started installing UT3, I was looking forward to run this on at least medium settings, 'cause I had been playing it on low graphics with my brothers 2-yr old rig with XP. Installation went fine, I launched and went to Settings. Thought I'd try it at full res 1900x1200 (or something like that) 'cause it looked really stretched on my BenQ 24" Widescreen. Screen went black again, for 5 mins before I rebooted. I had sort of suspected it would complain when I put it at full, I'm not used to playing on State of the Art machines so I always have to go for medium. :P

So I went in the .ini and changed it back to default setting. Started the game and tried setting it to the lowest widescreen res, to reduce the stretch, same result. Rebooted and made nVidia refit the screen so it wouldn't stretch, nice black line son the sides. No changes in settings on UT3 and launched a new campaign. The opening movie runs fine, no lags or anything, as smooth as on the old XP-rig. Then when the actual playing is about to start, I get another 'No Signal' and I give it up. Uninstall UT3, look up on xfxforce.com for the latest drivers for my card, and for Vista 32-bit of course. Find they are newer than mine and install them. Then I download DX10 'cause I wasn't sure whether it was installed or not, and DX10 is the only reason I installed Vista anyway. Then I reinstall UT3 and try to launch, but now it crashes already at the login. I check the UT3 boards for tips, and find a good amount of tweaks to improve performance and fix well-known bugs. Did the things, no improvement. Figure my computer actually can't run UT3, for no apparent reason, and decide to install a different game. WarCraft 3, this game runs on my 6 yr old Fujitsu Siemens, with a nVidia 5-series card. It can't possibly have trouble running in high res, full settings.. or so I thought. Guess what I get? I get another crash- after adjusting settings once again. I actually haven't tried running a game on WC3 yet, but I've downloaded the latest patch and I can log on battle.net and join the chat without trouble.

I did a little look around and found some performance check tools in the Control panel. And a tool to determine my WEI (or whatever it is, that rating that goes from 1.0-5.9) and tried to run it. It says the screen might blink a few times during testing, then it says "Testing Aero.." and black screen. Allright, it said it would blink so I'll let it run for an hour or so. Came back after a while to see if there was any change, while i sat there the computer suddenly rebooted and claimed to have had a faulty shut-down, and asked if i wanted to start in secure mode. I've run that test several times, with different drivers and without Aero- no visual effects at all, so it looks like Win98- but it gives almost the same result every time. With Win98 looks, the screen didn't go black, but it went blue-green.

Ran another test I found, the one with something that looks like speed-o-meter, with a red field on it, says it'll run for 60 seconds testing. Result showed that my Processor, Graphics, Memory and Storage were poor. And that I most likely would need to upgrade. Something has to be wrong here.

Any ideas? If nothing helps I'll try run XP instead, as I've heard it's still a lot better than Vista. Even though someone convinced me that my specs would make Vista 64-bit the best performance option. Wouldn't 32-bit run smooth if 64-bit is supposed to?

Hi Chester,
could you check the bios on the motherboard and make sure it's the latest. You also said that you installed the drivers from the disks that came with the rig. I would say that those are probably way out of date and you need to chase up the latest versions.
Is SP1 installed? If not then it may be worth reformatting, installing SP1 (service packs are best installed straight after a fresh install) and then following up with the updated driver sets..

__________________

I've tried insatlling the latest drivers for my GTX280, 177.41, and it didn't help. I can't seem to find any drivers for my nForce 750i-SLi. How do I update the BIOS if it is out of date? I read you need to do it through a disc.

By the way, I've played WC3 for half an hour now without any trouble. So it would seem that the crash occurs when the graphics are pushed a bit.
// Scrap that, it just crashed in WC3 as well, just after I had minimized to check if something had started running (was getting lags) and then when I maximized, it crashed.

It's Vista SP1.

Your chipset drivers are here:
Driver

I'd also try this beta 177.92, It has lots of improvements, some of which can be read about on the download page:
GeForce Release 177


As for the bios:
Instructions on how to flash yours is here:
http://support.asus.com/technicaldoc...Language=en-us
(second one down)
On this page is links for all bios updates plus more information (down the left hand side)
http://support.asus.com/download/dow...us&model=P5N-D

__________________

Thanks a lot, I'll check it out. Just found ASUS Update on the disc that came with the mobo so I'm testing if it works. Guess it's best to start with the BIOS and update everything else further from there, eh?

Umm..
nForce 15.08 Version: 15.08 Release Date: August 28, 2007 Operating System: Windows Vista 64-bit Language: U.S. English File Size: 40.1 MB
Is there a 32-bit version?

Found out my BIOS was up to date (0801) but I updated it anyhow in case of a faulty installation. The Beta driver for my card is also x64, can't find the x32 version. Going to try and run the WEI-test again now.

I'm a bit confused here!!....on your first post under specs. of machine you have " MS Vista Home Premium 32-bit" and yet on your latest post you say" The Beta driver for my card is also x64". If your OS is Vista 32bit you should be using the Vista 32bit drivers for your card. This can be found at:

http:///www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x86_177.41_whql.html

or as kemical suggested the newer beta at:

GeForce Release 177

Er....I missed that lol.. Thanks for pointing that out superbill.. So which is it Chester?

__________________

I've never said anything other than that I have a Vista x32 OS. I said the drivers provided by Kemical was for x64, which I don't have, and that I couldn't find the ones for x32.
Meaning, I'm still running 177.41 for x32. Downloading the Beta for x32 now, could you find the x32 version for the chipset as well? When I search for drivers it returns no result.

By the way, running the WEI-test resulted in a crash once again. I let it run for nearly two hours with no other than a black screen with no signal when I got back.

Well, whatever here's the links for 32bit:
Graphics:
GeForce Release 177

Chipset:
nForce Driver

Creative:
Creative Worldwide Support > X-Fi XtremeGamer


I'd also run windows update after you've updated the drivers,right-clicking and choosing to hide any which you don't need. (you might get a graphics driver update being as your using a beta, just right-click on it and choose to hide it.)


re' the 64bit confusion : I must have misread your last few lines of your post and thought you were running in 64bit (totally forgetting 32bit was written above lol)

__________________