Win7/Win8 in-box nForce SATA/RAID drivers

[The_Countess]

hello Fernando, I've been using your drivers since win7 came out, thanks a lot for all the work you've put in, I really appreciate it.

when i read about the in-box drivers i wanted to try them out. i tried to get win7 to install them (sp1 has been installed already) and i figured try to help out and share my findings so far.

the 'update driver' button didn't find any new drivers thou. i tried both methods but no new drivers were found.
so i used the one in the download link in the first post.
with that i could install the 'NVIDIA nForce RAID Controller' under 'storage controllers'

but the 2 'NVIDIA nForce Serial ATA controller' under 'IDE ATA/APAP controllers' need different drivers that weren't in the rar file.

so now i have a combination of the old 9.99 and the new 10.6.0.19 or .18 depending on what your believe.

so far no problems thou al thou I haven't run a performance test yet.

is it possible to update the serial ATA controller drivers too? can i get them from where myself maybe? or could you or somebody else upload them?

system
dfi-nforce4 ultra D (2.75ghz athlon64x2 2gb ddr-500mhz ram)
2x raid-0
win7-x64 MSDN version (updated later to SP1)

thanks again for all your effort.

[Fernando 1]

@ The Countess:
Welcome at nForcersHQ Forum!

so i used the one in the download link in the first post. with that i could install the 'NVIDIA nForce RAID Controller' under 'storage controllers'
but the 2 'NVIDIA nForce Serial ATA controller' under 'IDE ATA/APAP controllers' need different drivers that weren't in the rar file.

The rar file, which has been uploaded by me, contains all needed nForce SATA and RAID drivers, but the associated information file named NVRAID.INF doesn't work with LEGACY mode nForce RAID systems like yours. That is the simple reason why you were not able to get the nForce SATA driver NVSTOR.SYS v10.6.0.18 installed.

is it possible to update the serial ATA controller drivers too?

I really doubt, that you will be able to get the nForce SATA driver v10.6.0.18 installed, because nForce4 Serial ATA Controllers usually do not work with any nForce SATA driver of the v10.x.x.xx and v11.x.x.xx series. Additionally you will need a special information file to get the nForce SATA driver installed, because the file named NVRAID.INF, which is within the linked rar file, doesn't contain the needed entries for LEGACY mode nForce4 systems.

Regards
Fernando

EDIT: Please have a look into my the next post. Maybe you are willing to test one of my modded driverpacks.

[Fernando 1]

@ all Win7 users with a LEGACY mode nForce RAID system:

Since I am very interested myself in finding a solution for your problem to get the Win7 in-box nForce SATA driver v10.6.0.18 installed, I have composed some "modded" 32/64bit Win7 nForce IDE driverpacks, which may be usable with LEGACY mode nForce RAID systems.
These sets contain

1. a folder named SATARAID with the original Win7 SP1 in-box nForce SATA and RAID drivers v10.6.0.18 and
2. a folder named SATA_IDE with just the original nForce SATA driver v10.6.0.18, but accompanied by an INF file named NVSTOR.INF, which I have created myself on the basis of of my knowledge. The SATA_IDE driver folder will only support NVIDIA nForce Serial ATA Controllers of CK804 (nForce4 AMD), MCP51 (nForce 430/410), MCP55 (nForce 550/570/590/650i/680i/750i/780i) and MCP61 (nForce 430/406/400) chipsets.

Here are the download links to these test versions:
>32bit Win7 SP1 in-box nForce IDE drivers v10.6.0.18 mod by Fernando<
>64bit Win7 SP1 in-box nForce IDE drivers v10.6.0.18 mod by Fernando<

Users with an nForce4 AMD or MCP51/55/61 chipset mainboard, who are not able to get the Win7 SP1 in-box nForce SATA driver v10.6.0.18 installed the normal way by booting off the 32/64bit Win7 SP1 image source, may try to manually update the currently running SATA driver from within the Device Manager by pointing to the NVSTOR.INF file of the SATA_IDE driver folder. If this action should fail, you may copy the NVSTOR.INF file into the WINDOWS\INF directory and repeat the installation procedure.
Important notice:
Please remember, that you will do all these tests at own risk. A backup of your system resp. your important data is absolutely recommmended before you are going to start the test.
Nevertheless I hope, that anyone of you will be courageous enough to try it and to report here, if it worked or not.

Good luck and finger crossed!

Regards
Fernando

[ChickFiLay]

Hi. I would like your info on latest nforce v11 vs. win7's included v10. Does v11 offer anything over v10 such as performance? I know v11 has a more detailed control dialog, being able to disable NCQ etc. -- Does v10 not have NCQ, or it does have it but just no control over it like v11 has?

For that matter, I would also care to know if the latest ethernet driver offers anything over the older one included with win7 (other than the broken receive side scaling that has to be disabled for most people).

Thanks for answering this.

[Fernando 1]

@ ChickFiLay:
Welcome at nForcersHQ Forum!

Newer drivers are not always better than the older ones, but generally the users can expect, that the chipset manufacturers do not pay the driver development staff for nothing.
AFAIK the nForce SATA drivers of the v11.x.x.xx series have the best AHCI support and the Ethernet drivers v73.xx the best Gigabit Ethernet support.

Regards
Fernando

[rseiler]

As a consequence all SSD users with an nForce chipset mainboard, who want to get their SSD automaticly cleaned by TRIM, have to use one of the Win7 in-box IDE/AHCI drivers from Microsoft (PCIIDE.SYS for IDE mode or MSAHCI.SYS for AHCI mode).

Since I might be switch to SSD, I have to ask if you know how switching from nvstor.sys to pciide.sys might be done. I can imagine uninstalling the nvstor.sys driver, but bet it would be added right back upon reboot. Normally with a 3rd-party driver, you can tell it to delete the driver from disk, but nvstor.sys comes with SP1, so I doubt it will do that. Let's say that you did get it back to a non-nvstor.sys state. How do you then add pciide.sys? I'm very familiar with doing a Have Disk install for a 3rd-party driver, but this too is one built-in. Perhaps it's merely setting Start here (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\pciide) to 0 and rebooting. Hmmm.

[Fernando 1]

@ rseiler:
The switch from any non-AHCI nForce SATA driver to the MS IDE driver named PCIIDE.SYS is simple:
1. Open the "IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers" section of the Device Manger.
2. Do a right click onto the listed "NVIDIA nForce Serial ATA Controller" and choose "Update driver software".
3. Let the Device Manager show all compatible devices.
4. Choose the listed "Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller".
After the next reboot your NVIDIA nForce SATA Controller will be managed by the TRIM supporting MS IDE driver named PCIIDE:SYS.

Regards
Fernando

[rseiler]

Ah, I'd forgotten that a list of compatible hardware was even presented there, probably since I always ignore it and go right to Have Disk. Thanks.

[ChickFiLay]

@ ChickFiLay:
Welcome at nForcersHQ Forum!

Newer drivers are not always better than the older ones, but generally the users can expect, that the chipset manufacturers do not pay the driver development staff for nothing.
AFAIK the nForce SATA drivers of the v11.x.x.xx series have the best AHCI support and the Ethernet drivers v73.xx the best Gigabit Ethernet support.

Thanks for the reply. So you're saying there's no way to find out if the v10 series enables command queuing?

I finally just updated to the latest stuff anyway, but I've been curious about v10 vs. v11. Had to jump thru some hoops to get it to install too, turned out conflicting old .inf files in windows\inf were preventing installation!

As for the net driver, well, since it's 5 months newer (the nvidia site release) than the win7 inbox one, I put it on and just disabled the flawed RSS setting.

[spacecat]

I have an ASUS A8N SLI with the latest ASUS Bios (using the A8N SLI Premium BIOS 1303 from 2007 with some extra devices disabled).
For starters, I'm not sure if this is a non-AHCI chipset (it just says MPC in Cpu-Z)
I tried to install your 32-bit moded drivers for the in-box nForce SATA but got an error saying that only 32-bit drivers are allowed.
I noticed that the other download you provided had nvstor32.inf and nvstor32.sys.
Is it possible you put the 64 -bit drivers in there?
Furthermore, after abandoning this approach and installing "B. Modded Driverpacks for Win7/Vista:" (9.99.09 drivers) from win7-vista-optimized-nforce-driver-packs-t70915.html
I was finally able to get MediaShield to create a disk array (this array is for data only).
Unfortunately, after creating an array I get an error with the secondary disk.
The secondary disk is brand new and Seagate tools says its fine and I was able to disable RAID and format it NTFS.
Could this be happening because I want to preserve my primary disk data?
Or is the in-box approach more appropriate for my mono?
Thanks