Win7 Nvidia drivers freeze shutdown

Hey guys. This is an odd one I have.

I recently upgraded to a P8Z77-V Pro motherboard, 3770k, and 8gb of ram. I know everything works, including my 480GTX.

My problem is that when I install nVidia drivers, the system never wants to shut down. Even after immediately installing the drivers and restarting using the driver installer, the system hangs on shutting down.

On the flip side, once the drivers are uninstalled (just drivers, not physx or audio -- I dont install the 3d drivers or the nv updater) the system will happily restart or shutdown.

I also have an asus xonar essence STX audio card in the system. the relays in the card are audible, and click whenever the system starts up or shuts down. in the case of the system hanging, they STILL click, indicating the card has 'powered off' yet the system sits there on "shutting down". I am sure it is not frozen since the orb keeps spinning on the shutdown screen.

I have tried the following drivers...
301.42 WHQL
306.23 WHQL
306.97 WHQL
310.64 BETA

happens on every one of them.

Thoughts?

P.S. when the system is hanging, I can hit the reset button and windows does not notify me on "windows was not shut down properly" upon restarting

After you replaced the board did you perform a clean install of Win7, or is the current install from your previous system?

completely clean. Also used drivers from Asus' website, instead of on the disk.

Have you tried to update your chipset drivers?

Oh. Sorry for not updating. Apparently my ASMedia chip was faulty. my second X1 slot wouldn't accept my sound card at all, and when something was plugged into the USB3.0 ports on the back that would cause the freezing issue.

The relation to the graphics drivers I am not sure. Maybe because my monitor's USB and card reader were attached to those ports? I don't know. RMA'ed the board though.