NVIDIA nForce2 Vista Drivers with Alternative for Audio and SMBus
NVIDIA does not support officially support nForce2 based motherboard with drivers for Windows Vista. Although this no Vista support decision has disappointed many owners with mobo with nForce2 chipset such as Abit NF7-S, ASUS A7N8X Deluxe, Chaintech Zenith CT-7NJS, EPoX 8RDA+, Leadtek K7NCR18D-Pro, Biostar M7NCG, Albatron KM18G PRO, Gigabyte 7NNXP and MSI K7N2, however, Windows Vista can be installed and ran properly on these nForce 2 motherboard, even without purpose made Vista drivers.
Most NVIDIA nForce 2 drivers for Windows XP can works with Windows Vista with few exception. Actually, once a user installed Windows Vista, it will auto detect and install most drivers needed, including IDE, Ethernet LAN adapter, memory controller, GART AGP Host to PCI Bridge and AGP Bus Filter, although the drivers may not tweak for optimum performance. Here are a few others to make the nForce2 fully compatible with Vista.
For users who use SATA hard disk with onboard Silicon Image Sil3112 Serial ATA chip, the Silicon Image Serial ATA driver version V1.0.0.50 WHQL for WinXP works fine to let Windows Vista recognizes the hard drive. The SATA driver can be downloaded from the mobo’s manufacturer support or download site. As the chip is the same regardless of which motherboard maker, so you can download use the v10050 of SiliconImage 3113 SATA drivers offered by Abit or ASUS.
Note: If you want to install Windows Vista on a SATA hard disk, copy all driver files inside the 2kxp subfolder (for Abit) or all files in the unpacked folder (for ASUS) in the zip archive to a floppy disk or USB flash drive, and click on “Load Driver” when prompt to choose which partition to install Vista.
After Windows Vista is installed, it will retrieve and load latest drivers from nForce 2 mobo from Windows Update. The status of Windows Update will return several updates as “Failed”, with Problem Reports and Solutions will show the following:
- Windows Vista does not support NVIDIA(R) nForce(TM) MCP Audio Processing Unit (Dolby(R) Digital)
- Windows Vista does not support NVIDIA(R) nForce(TM) Audio Codec Interface
- Windows Vista does not support NVIDIA nForce PCI System Management
For nForce PCI System Management (SMBus), for some reason Windows Vista will use a default driver, however, the system will become unstable, especially when system goes into standby or hibernate mode, it may unable to come out from that state or restore to the original normal desktop. For workaround to solve this issue, download Windows Vista 32-bit or 64-bit drivers for nForce4 Series AMD. Unpack the executable with WinRAR, and update the SMBus driver by browsing the unpacked archive location in SMBus sub-folder from the Device Manager.
Sound card driver is a bit tricky, as the architecture of the sound producing and mixing in Windows Vista has changed, most notably DirectSound hardware acceleration support has been discontinued, and DirectSound is run in emulation mode on Microsoft software mixer. But it’s still possible to get at least hearing sound and audio through the on-board sound card.
WinXP version of audio driver should works on Vista. Download the WHQL certified Unified Driver (64-bit version) and extract the content of the executable to a folder with WinRAR. Then go to Device Manager and update the audio driver by browsing to AudioDrv sub-folder in the extracted folder. Other audio drivers that possible works with Soundstorm driver x86/x64 for Vista or NVIDIA audio driver for Vista (32-bit or 64-bit download link). Note that the driver should be updated (go to Device Manager, right click on the device and choose Update Driver Software), so all executables should be extracted first with WinRAR.
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August 6th, 2009 16:51
Use vlite to remove programs and other bloat from Vista. That will speed it up a lot..enough to run it on an nForce2 motherboard.
I slimmed down the Vista DVD to only 580MB and fit it on a CD-R. It still has the Aero theme and is very functional and almost as fast as XP.
It shuts down in a matter of seconds too.
You need a copy of Vista RTM (no service packs), then use vlite on it. Go to http://www.vlite.net or google it.
Regards,
Paul
July 27th, 2009 15:55
Nforce2 chipset driver for Vista. nVidia 2 motherbord driver piz sand me
June 3rd, 2008 20:52
Does this really help? Do i get almost the same performance in Vista with my GPU running these drivers for my mainboard as in XP? Because now my performance in Vista is about 40% lower than it was in XP.
Thank You
January 25th, 2008 00:45
THERE IS a nvidia driver that suports Dolby Digital Enconding, I don’t know why it is so hidden. So hard to find it. It’s nforce audio version 4.66 Beta(6.4.466)
Regards
June 14th, 2007 19:51
Thank you for saving my hair. I have been battling, the non-existant Nforce2 chipset driver for Vista. nVidia don’t support the aging chipset in driver releases so this workaround was a hair-saver
I installed on a Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro2 motherboard.
1: Installed Vista.
2: Installed the Nforce4 SM BUS driver only.
3: Installed the AC97 (Vista_32bit) codec from Realtek.
Works OK for me, have 5.1 sound now, will tinker and try the nforce sound driver.
Thanks again.
May 31st, 2007 17:23
Your page helped me get my ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe based HTPC up and running Vista. Thank you.
I managed to take it one step further by installing nVidia’s nForce2 audio drivers for XP over top of the beta Vista drivers (I don’t know if the beta driver was actually required, but I assume it must be since no one else suggests doing this).
This provides full Dolby Digital Live encoding support as well as SPDIF output (and full control over the outputs).
I posted a detailed run down of what I did to get this running at The Green Button. It can be found here:
http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/3/188141/ShowThread.aspx
May 6th, 2007 23:22
[...] owners who has to wait till summer) entitle to this privilege, as with the case of relatively bad Vista support by NVIDIA compared with [...]
May 1st, 2007 11:34
If you want to have the 5.1 Coaxial/Optical working with nforce2 you need to download 6231_vista_APO.zip file from realtek. uninstall the Nvidia nForce Audio Codec Interface. The other nvidia MCP is for assigning the rear speakers, center, subwoofer and Digital Outputs an ID number so they can be identified as devices in XP. Nvidia failed to do that in these generic Vista drivers so that’s why they don’t work correctly. Plus this will just constantly reinstall itself if you try to uninstall it, so you can just leave it be.
Unpack the zip file and run the install. You will get several unsigned driver popups, just allow them. It may take several minutes for the install as well as it to restart. If you get a freeze up on the initial bios boot screen it should allow you to access the bios by pressing del. go through to on board devices, the install some how miniflashed the bios to add an onboard modem just disable this,save and reboot.(if you don’t get this error just continue) Vista should start now. You should see the new driver installed in the device manager, if not you will have to manually change it with the realtek AC’97 or VIA driver(both seem to have the same affect). Under sound properties you should notice speakers and Realtek Digital Output. Go through the configurations and you should notice the channel testing hitting all the speakers. This will now default the output to 2 speakers instead of the pseudo Dolby Digital freeing up your rear speakers so they can run in matrix. This also allows programs like PowerDVD and others to identify the SPDIF to bypass predecoding for Dolby Digital and DTS allowing your receiver to decode it correctly(which is better anyways, it allows more than just 5.1 if you have a better receiver). Just disable startup of the soundman since the realtek mixer doesn’t work anyways.
I did try to install the drivers directly and it didn’t ID the Digital out correctly, mind you these realtek drivers are Vista Drivers so perhaps the setup install does something else.
Enjoy! If this screws up your computer well, its a chance you’ll have to take if you really want 5.1. I’m not responsible. If you have a Phoenix-AwardBIOS V6 on an MSI board, you should be safe. But maybe I got lucky.