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Windows XP 64-bit + Shuttle SN26P + Nvidia Nforce4 … it all SUCKS.
I got in a bit over my head with my latest hardware purchase.
I bought a Shuttle SN26P barebones in January. It’s now June and the darn thing still isn’t working right. In this blog, I’ll explain my rationale behind this decision, what mistakes I’ve made, and what I’m going to do to finally get a working desktop system.
Background
In January, my desktop computer (a Pentium 4/3GHz) finally bit the dust. It had been having boot problems for a while — so much so that I made sure everything was backed up on a regular basis and ceased turning the darn thing off at night like I had been previously. One day, I needed to reboot because the system hung hard, and that was that… the system never worked again.
It wasn’t a huge deal for me, as all important data had been backed up on my laptop and I’d known this day was coming for quite a while now. Nonetheless, I wanted to get my desktop up and running again, so I hauled it in to Simpli and had Russ take a look at it.
After pulling out a spider web and a pile of cat hair, Russ decided that there were several problems that had caused my system to finally bite the dust. First of all, my ancient ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 7500 video card had a fan that had died, which was probably what had been causing my (more and more frequent) system hangs. (Video card overheats… system dies. Sounds logical to me.) Since I didn’t really need a fancy video card — just one with DVI that supported 1600×1024 resolution, Russ offered to sell me his old one. “Great!” I said. He brought it in, plugged it in to my desktop, and lo and behold…nothing. Still dead.
Further diagnostics ensued. Whoops… not only had the video card died, but the reason my system had utterly failed, as opposed to just hanging on a regular basis and not booting properly, was that my motherboard (an older Asus) was also dead. “Hey,” I said, “that explains all of the USB problems I’ve been having of late.” (I was having a lot of problems where I would plug in my Treo or iPod to sync and get a “USB device has malfunctioned” error in Windows.)
At this point, with a dead video card, a dead motherboard, an obsolete Socket 478 processor, and a CD-RW drive that needed an upgrade anyway, I decided it was time to build a new system. We parted the ol’ desktop out and Lawrence from Ymetro (who works upstairs from us) now has the case. The processor went who-knows-where (I think into a desktop at Simpli) and the memory and CD-RW drive were set aside to assist me in building a new system.
After doing some research, I decided on a Shuttle machine. I wanted a tiny desktop that didn’t take up much space, was deathly quiet, and ran like a dream. I also decided on a nice dual-DVI video card, paying a small fortune for it but deciding that it was worth it because I could have two DVI ports for my two SGI 1600SW monitors. I decided to go with my first non-Intel desktop and pick the 64-bit AMD processor with the Nforce4 chipset. Little did I know what I was about to get into.
At the risk of taking the rest of the day to summarize this, here is what has happened over the past 6 months. Keep in mind this system goes for $2700 retail. This is NOT a low-end desktop. This is a premium, cream-of-the-crop sort of desktop. The fact that it has taken so long to even get up and running is disappointing in its own right, but it gets better…
What Happened
I bought Windows XP x64 Edition. I figured it would be able to run 32-bit applications. After all, on Microsoft’s website, it says “Windows XP Professional x64 Edition gives you access to greater amounts of memory while continuing to support 32-bit applications.” WRONG! Or should I say… NOT EXACTLY! While some 32-bit applications will work, most won’t. And that “most” means I would have to spend hundreds of dollars upgrading every application I use to the latest and greatest bleeding-edge stuff to even have a prayer of it working. Let me give you some quick examples of what does not work: iTunes (even though Apple claims it does); any version of Photoshop older than CS2; older versions of Dreamweaver (I’m still on MX 2004!); PartitionMagic; most virus scanners; most backup applications; most anything that burns CDs… and on and on and on and on.
Taking a step backwards… before I even found out about this problem, I had to get Windows XP x64 installed. That turned out to be a nightmarish experience. I have installed XP approximately 25 times on this computer. First, the Nforce4 drivers that Nvidia provided with the Shuttle do not work properly on x64. I tossed those and got the latest version, which, by the way, have to be installed from a floppy disk during the Windows XP install. Gee, I don’t have a floppy disk drive! Okay, I’ll be ghetto and hang one off the side of the computer. There, that worked.
Now Windows is installed, but the first time it reboots after the install, it hangs, saying it can’t find ntldr.sys. There is no solution other than to reformat, because this error means Windows can’t see your hard drive. I got conflicting reports from forums. I tried slipstreaming the drivers onto the CD instead of loading them from the floppy. No change. I tried different drivers from Nvidia’s site. No change. I tried some drivers from some German site. No change. Finally, I stumbled upon the answer. It appears that when you load the drivers off the floppy, or slipstream them onto the disk, if they are not “Microsoft certified”, Windows replaces them with its own drivers upon first reboot. So Windows replaced the drivers for the Nvidia SATA chipset with “Generic IDE” drivers of its own, which, of course, do not work with my chipset, thus destroying the system before it even had a chance to activate Windows. Solution? Someone hacked the drivers to stop Windows from doing that. I deployed the hacked drivers and it worked. (UGH!!!!) This problem alone took me probably 15 hours of work to resolve.
One of the first things I downloaded onto my new (and finally working!) system was iTunes. Unfortunately, iTunes does not work with some 64-bit systems. But before I even had a chance to discover that, I noticed that anything that I downloaded larger than about 20MB was giving strange CRC errors on install. In fact, any file I downloaded was a few bytes off the size it was supposed to be. Back to the forums I went. Hmm, looks like a lot of people using Nforce4 chipsets have this problem. And the problem is… memory bandwidth. The Nforce4 chipset says it supports dual-channel DDR400 RAM, and sets itself up automatically for that in the BIOS, and then (for whatever reason) the system cannot “write” quickly enough to its SATA chipset from RAM (especially when you have RAID-1 enabled on the chipset…I do), and “misses” a few bytes. What I want to know is… how the fuck did this get past QA? I have a $2700 (retail; I didn’t pay that much) system and here you’re telling me that the RAM it’s supposed to support does not actually work in it. Great. But since I only had DDR333 RAM anyway (remember, I’m using the RAM that worked fine in my last computer, and I ran a thorough memtest86 to confirm that there were no issues with the RAM itself), I went ahead and set my BIOS to force the RAM to DDR333 speed. Problem fixed… I think.
Today
I am typing this on my “new” system. It works, but it’s louder than I would have liked. XP x64 does not meet my needs, so I will likely go back to regular Windows XP. And I’m still concerned about the overall reliability of my system. My P4/3GHz worked great for 2 1/2 years before it finally started having problems. This system had problems out of the box, and while most problems can be fixed with new hardware, this looks like a buggy SATA chipset or RAM problem from Shuttle/nVidia that cannot be fixed simply by upgrading. It’s unfortunate that such a high-end system would run in to so many problems. I’m going to reformat to Windows XP (32-bit) soon, and will try to remember to post an update once I get that up and running. For now, my vote, for what it is worth, is to completely avoid nVidia’s Nforce4 chipset and to stick with Intel wherever you can (dual Opteron servers excluded.)
Update: I finally got it working. Complete details here.
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14 Responses to “Windows XP 64-bit + Shuttle SN26P + Nvidia Nforce4 … it all SUCKS.”
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That’s interesting, as I’ve been running the nForce4 chipset in FC4/5 (64-bit) and WinXP (albeit 32-bit so far) on a ECS mainboard and SATA (albeit a single drive) and it’s stable as a rock. I’ve not noticed any data corruption on it in it’s WinXP setup (I’ve been transcoding movies over to my PDA getting, files in excess of 100mb).
Not sure what else to say.
Hope things turn out better for the desktop, and for you.
Video card fan has failed me to. Never hung my system unless I was trying to do video intensive stuff (like playing Civ4 for 2 hours)…
Just sayin…
Oh, and the only suggestion I have for a new machine is to get the ‘arctic cooling’ fan for your vid card. Totally worth the $20-$40 if you are a big gamer/big into video intensive stuff..
I’ve been considering a desktop upgrade too, and was also looking at AMD64 with an NForce4 chipset. I run Gentoo though, not XP. You can try out their 32-bit LiveCD first, to see if Linux is for you, and then their amd64 Universal Install CD to see how it handles your hardware.
The main limitation of the 64-bit architecture, as far as I’m aware, is that you need to run a 32-bit build of Firefox in order to use Java or Flash, since those plugins are only available in 32-bit versions. Being Gentoo, anything that’s OSS is compiled on your system, so if it’s marked stable for amd64 then it should be ok. I’m pretty sure that NVidia provides working 64-bit drivers, too. (Obviously, there’s not much point in this setup if they don’t.)
I’d be very curious to hear what happens if you try this out.
Just to be funny, “sounds like you pissed off a higher power”
seriously though, lady luck can really have some bad days in store for us all. i guess we’re just really lucky that those bad days are usually so rare
XP-64 bit edition Does run more recent programs, unless they were coded by braindead coders. The specs have been out for at least 7 years, so you’d have to be lazy to not have your code up to snuff and ready for XP-64 bit.
As far as the hardware, well i’m a big fan of the theory that there is magic dust inside the chips
guess they were skimping on it when they were making your parts. hehe.
I know, technology is really made using hightech processes that don’t always work out. most people probabbly got a lot better deal than you, even if they bought the same hardware.
you know downloaded drivers can become corrupted, and cd-roms don’t always press quite right. I bet that the software end was just corrupt drivers etc. cause i KNOW nvidia has solid software coders. and XP-64 bit edition is an early release, but still it’s been out quite a while, and microsoft is probabbly ready to release a service pack for it that helps it run more software better. We All Know Service Pack 3.0 is the one that microsoft usually gets right.
Although lately i’ve been having really good experiences with any service pack level, maybe that’s just me 
don’t get mired in negativity, though over a few pieces of blown hardware
it’s only money, and this happend right away in install too so the parts could be returned for warrenty, or you could just bite the loss… or you could just figure out what your own heart was most comfortable with. i think my option about letting your heart decide is the best one 
Funny - I’ve built a pair of amd64 systems over the last few months, with exactly the opposite experience: my little nForce4 system was fine, WinXP x64 and all, unless you count the SATA performance being a bit sluggish.
The dual Opteron, meanwhile, was a nightmare. First, the Gigabyte motherboard had some BIOS issue which stopped it working with dual-core chips (their suggestion? ‘Try a single-core part or a BIOS upgrade’ - great idea, except we’re a pure Intel setup aside from that one system, and couldn’t get it to boot far enough to run an upgrade). RMA it, get a decent Tyan board: fine, except it doesn’t like the PSU. Change the PSU, and it’s fine, apart from the third SATA card playing up for some reason.
Windows’ preference for signed drivers isn’t just an x64 problem, either; I’ve had a couple of PCs “lose” sound cards that way (Windows Update comes up with a signed driver which claims to match another version of that PCI device, which Windows considers ‘better’ than an unsigned exact match…)
Loading NTLDR, by the way, is done by the boot ’sector’ using BIOS calls (int 13h), not a device driver; failure at this stage gives the dreaded “NTLDR is missing” error.
I feel your pain.
I went through the exact same experience. In fact, I found this page doing a search for the topic because I’m in the process of re-installing 32bit Windows after a frustrating experience with x64 Windows. I just want my freaking printer to work with my PC again - thanks for nothing Lexmark! Piece of crap…
I’m dumping RAID and putting win32 on one drive and Gentoo on the other.
I also find this interesting since I just built two XP 64 Pro systems with absolutely no problems. The first was a Shuttle SN26P and everything works great including my Lexmark P4350 All in one printer with the 64 bit Lexmark drivers. The second system is an EVGA Nforce4 SLI mobo and EVGA Nvidia 7600 GT SLI ready video card. I was expecting a problem with the SATA drivers but everything went fine. The only software I’ve had a problem with is ITUNES.
hi Slash Chick! I have been using windows x64 bit since feb of 2005 now and have had NO problems. Sure I had to give up my cheezy 50$ intel quickcam, but it was easily replaced by a better logitech. Also, my hp scanjet didn’t work anymore (NOT SUPPORTED and will not be). Well I can’t hold on to old equipment forever. it was a slow piece of doggy doo anyway. So it got replaced too!
Everything else has worked except anything requiring a driver
such as a piece of equipment that isn’t supported.
also as for itunes: works perfectly, both with FIREWIRE 800 and FIREWIRE 400.
I have both.
and the drivers for itunes are 32 bit. HOWEVER,
Microsoft included a driver for 64 bit for ipod’s.
AND - for the 32 bit cdrom burning driver (made by GEAR SOFTWARE) - there is a driver for 64 bit that works 100% with itunes on their homepage gearsoftware.com.
although 64 bit is hard to support, it does offer a full migration path to VISTA. It will have a much better supportbase when vista makes it to market and should be much easier to use then.
good luck.
Haha. I love windows xp x64bit. It is so much stable like windows 2000 64. The bad side is the many drivers I can’t install. But that doesn’t matter because the only driver I wish I had install was for my pinnacle 500 pci card. I also have an AMD x2 64 bit. Shuttles kind of suck, they are nice but the way they are design makes heating your worst enemy. Plus for x64 my iTunes,Nero,Avast antivirus n firewall, were all working. The only problem is every hardware you buy you must RESEARCH and see if the company has x64 bit drivers, if not your screwed. I love my x64 because most viruses on the web can’t affect its 64bit. The nvidia chips, well some of them your not suppose to install. Like my nvidia firewall that came with my asus a8n, my friend suggested not to install the chips because they would end up crashing my system. To your original post, Shuttle sucks, nvidia is lovely and so is x64 besides the fact that very little drivers provide for it.
I agree with SlashChick. I ave customers who run my software on all platforms of windows from NT on up to XP.
I have one customer running x64 and is constantly having problems with lockups and freezes. XP 64 maybe ready for the casual user but would not recommend this experimantal beta o/s for anyone in Business!!!!!
Installed WinXP 64 to 2nd hdd to test on Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe w/3200+ and 2gb ram. The first thing I noticed was
I run an ABIT NF8 (AMD64 3200+, nVidia nForce3/250GB chipset, ATI x800 PCI). RAID turned off, but using the SATA and IDE ports.
I waver between various boots/releases (including pre-RTMs) of 32 and 64 bit XP and Vista installations, with varying degrees of success. (I’m a MS developer; as long as Office and Visual Studio and dev-server products are working I am in business for 90% of my usage scenario.
The only one that consistently works with all of my hardware is XP32. Surprisingly, once I got things up and going with XP64, it was by far the most stable and consistently reliable.
There’s always some amount of hacking with any other flavor, even with clean installs; I have had to make an expedition similar to yours (for hours and hours) for just about every non-XP32 install.
Without going into any details of the various issues (drivers, VS/SDK/Office compatibilities, etc.,)
the one thing that I will confidently say is that I will never buy an nVidia platform chipset ever again. They seem to keep up with their display driver releases, but their platform updates are spotty at best (my year-old nForce3 has pretty much already fallen into the no-longer-supported category).
i have an older shuttle, amd nforce3 with fn85 mobo (sn85g4 v2). i couldn’t find the sata drivers for the floppy. where did you get them from?
Installing winxp 64 bit was indeed a big big disappointment. Although I got the clean install running quickly on my nforce 570 system, getting my hardware to function properly has still (1 year now) not fully succeeded. My twain compatible SCSI scanner (HP 5P) and iomega jaz drive will probably never work, although they work perfectly with the 32 bit windows (98 and xp), without any driver at all. But hey, it’s 10 year old hardware.
What I can’t grasp is that Microsoft just decided to do away with IPX. That’s not something nobody uses anymore! Officially IPX is not supported, although it is a setup option. But installing IPX, breaks 32bit TCP/IP beyond repair (not the 64bit, but only 64bit IE uses that (Why are both IE’s installed anyway?) while IPX still won’t work.
And it is still not possible to reliably write a cd/dvd. OK, the Nero enterprise suite (illegal because I can’t afford the minimum 100 licences you have to buy) can burn discs, but with the note that it might crash and that if it does, you’ll need to reinstall Windows. Absurd!
The only working video driver for my 7600GT video card allways complains at startup that the SLI setup (which I don’t have) isn’t working.
I’ve got 7 severe isssues left and Microsoft doesn’t even want to tell if they _can_ be solved before I pay 75 euro per issue. And a discount on the upgrade to Vista is also out of the question, even though everybody buying windows XP now, gets a free coupon with it. My problems won’t be fixed (if at all) for under 400 euro. Microsoft support just laughs at me “hey, it’s not our problem you were stupid enough to buy windows 64 bit”
And to top things off the recent service pack has ‘windows 64bit’ in the title, but in the readme calls it windows 2003 server everywhere. Oh, and it breaks .net and windows update. Thanks Microsoft! I’m now doing a fresh install because the system has become cripled beyond repair even before I’ve been able to get it fully operational..
Luckily I’ve got windows 98 as backup on multiboot, on which everything does work. It’s as if I’ve bought a new mercedes and need to keep my Lada, because the new car breaks down often and can’t get me to certain destinations.