VNF3-250 and Windows 7

[IBMThinkPadX61s]

I bought some RAM and a GeForce 6200 AGP card to get ready for an upgrade to Windows 7 from Ubuntu. Shortly after I placed the order, I decided to install Win 7 x64 just to see how it would perform with my current configuration.

I ran into a problem with the audio drivers, video card drivers, and the Sleep function is grayed out.

Windows Update found a driver for the audio but it would only give me sound though headphones connected to the front panel. The speakers connected to the back of the computer would not make a sound even if I switched the output from headphone to speaker.

Windows installed a generic driver for my Radeon 7000 32mb AGP card with 1024x768 as the highest working resolution. On Ubuntu, I could get it up to 1680x1050 without any problems.

Finally, Hibernation works but the Sleep function is grayed out. I have S1 & S3 suspend enabled in the BIOS.

There are two Unknown Devices listed in the Devices Manager but I'm not sure what they are. A lot of the device names have the word "nForce3" on them so I'm not sure if these issues are due to my motherboard. I have tried drivers from the original drivers CD as well as drivers from a bunch of internet sources and I am not having any luck.

I did a search online and found out that nForce didn't release drivers for Vista but that it works with Windows 7. Can anyone confirm this? Does anyone have Windows 7 running on this same board and could you tell me how you got it all to work?

 

[pat]

I just installed Win7 on my old Soltek K8an2e-gr, s754 with 1 GB RAM and it work good so far. It use the nforce3 250GB chipset and everything but the audio was installed automatically. I did not get online yet to check that, but I would soon.

 

[pat]

I got the audio installed, but the Promise SATA controller has no drivers available. That's the only thing that could not get a driver for.

 

[IBMThinkPadX61s]

I just installed the 32-bit version of Win 7 and it seems to work better. I can get everything to work except audio. I tried the C-Media and Realtek drivers off the CD and they both installed but wouldn't give me any sound. I also tried the sound drivers that came with the nForce3 drivers off the Nvidia site and it wouldn't work either.

Also, I get a blue screen every time I shut down, restart, suspend, or hibernate. When I click let Win 7 diagnose the problem, it says that I need to upgrade to a DirextX 9 compatible card, so hopefully this will go away when I get my GeForce 6200.

I'll have a fully functioning system if I can get those two problems resolved.

 

[pat]

Let me know if it works. I too had to install the 32 bits version, because the computer don't have a DVD drive, and I had to install it from an USB memory stick. And for some reason, that caused conflict with the HDD on the nvidia controller. So I had to use a PCI SATA card that only have 32 bits drivers.

 

[IBMThinkPadX61s]

I managed to get the sound working through the proprietary Chaintech multimedia card thing that came with my motherboard. I went into the C-Media audio settings and enabled the S-Bracket and switched it to 5.1 audio and I am receiving audio through the rear channel port. I have no idea why I cannot get sound to come out of the green-colored (front) audio port--it works fine by default in Ubuntu.

I installed the GeForce 6200 AGP card and now Aero works with Win 7 but full screen YouTube and Hulu is still very laggy which might be due to my 1680x1050 resolution. The sleep function came back and works fine after Windows detected and automatically installed the 6200 drivers.

I ended up using the nForce3 drivers from http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce3_winxp_5.11 and only used the C-Media audio drivers from the drivers CD. The nForce3 drivers from the website solved the problem with the two unknown devices in the device manager which turned out to be two additional audio-related drivers: "nForce MIDI controller" and "Unsupported Game Port" or something like that.

So after the work-around for the audio and the addition of a new video card, I have a pretty functional system on Win 7. I am using an IDE hard drive and DVD drive so I didn't have any conflicts with SATA.

 

[tcsenter]

I have no idea why I cannot get sound to come out of the green-colored (front) audio port--it works fine by default in Ubuntu.

Because Windows 7 is not Ubuntu. There were not even any hardware-specific Vista drivers for these older C-Media AC97 codecs. You have to use the XP drivers, which is a compatibility solution only.

I installed the GeForce 6200 AGP card and now Aero works with Win 7 but full screen YouTube and Hulu is still very laggy which might be due to my 1680x1050 resolution.

That's always going to be the case with any older AGP card. Its a lack of hardware acceleration support for the codecs used by YouTube and Hulu, or any other advanced HD format such as AVC/VC-1/H.264. e.g. for Adobe Flash-based video acceleration, you need a GeForce 8 Series or later (which doesn't come in AGP), or ATI Radeon HD 3000 Series or later.

Under Vista 64-bit, there are even more problems with the AGP controller and chipset drivers because NVIDIA only developed Vista drivers for NF4 and later chipsets. This motherboard (and the NF3 chipset) was basically discontinued before 64-bit Windows became mainstream.

 

[IBMThinkPadX61s]

I turned off hardware acceleration in the Flash settings and now Youtube, and even Hulu, runs smoothly in full-screen. There are occasional stutters but I think that most people would consider it bearable.

It has been very responsive and seems to be faster than my Intel Atom N270 netbook .

 

[IBMThinkPadX61s]

Best answer selected by IBMThinkPadX61s.