1st system, nf7-s driver issues.

I just got my first computer built and I am having some troubles with drivers. I have a 1700+, Nf7-s rev2, and a Radeon 9500 NP. I installed win98SE. I had some issues installing the motherboard drivers. I was asked to insert my windows CD, I did this but it did not recognize it. I finally got the motherboard drivers to install by pointing the program to the win98 directory on the windows CD. I am not sure if they installed correctly. Now when I boot into windows it searches for drivers for a PCI universal serial bus and a PCI Ethernet controller. I am not sure where these drivers are. I put in both the win98 CD and the Abit CD and did the autosearch for drivers. None where found. Each time I boot it searches for hardware and then asks for drivers.

So after this I decided to reinstall my motherboard drivers. I am able to start this process but after I get about a quarter of the way through windows again detects new hardware and asks for the drivers. I can not get past this point. So I am stuck as what to do next.

Also I am not sure if this is related but when i click on the nforce tray options I get a message which says "Failed to initialize the nvidia audio driver. Please install and try again” I am able to get windows sounds and play mp3s, but I am not able to start any of the 3 games I have tried.

Thanks for your patience and advice.

just say no to win98se.... is there anyways of getting winxp onto your system? friend? family? try that instead

Thats the conclusion I just came to after a night of frustration. I can get XP Pro for $95 bucks at school, I think I will do that. Thanks for the advice.

Make sure you download the 2.03 nForce drivers from nVidia so you have the most recent version. They work a lot better than the ones on the CD do for me.

Also, after installing WinXP, make sure install SP1 before you install the nForce drivers, otherwise you will end up reinstalling XP and repeating the whole process over again.

It took me 3 installs of Windows and 2 days just to get my computer to the point where I could play Raven Shield and BF1942. Also, if you are going to be using the onboard sound, get a heatsink for the Southbridge (I'd recommend a Zalman heatsink with a 40mm fan on top of it, tied down to the mobo with AS Epoxy). If you don't it will overheat and cause the computer to reboot or just freeze.

Good luck and I hope you have less probs then I did. But it's all worth it in the end.

Take it easy, and if it's easy, take it twice.

PCI universal serial bus

This is really a modem but 98se gets confused sometimes.

If you have a modem just point the modem driver files at it.

OTOH just install w2k or XPpro. They're soooo much better.


I have 98se aka 98lite as a dual boot option with w2k. With the drivers from Abit & nVidia I had no problems. I don't have a modem either.