SLI from hell

[Sovereign]

Just read what I sent to the "Vista Quality Assurance" dept. at nVidia to get a summary of my problem...

Regardless of whether I have a clean install of Vista or one that has been around for (gasp!) a week, I can't seem to make this work. I installed chipset drivers, video drivers and audio drivers in that order. No matter what, I am faced with at least one of the following problems:
1. The "SLI Strobe" - Installation of all drivers goes smoothly, and there is no static from my speakers. However, after enabling SLI and rebooting (to simulate having shut down the system when I go to bed and then turning it on again) I get a lovely little strobe light after my Vista loading screen. The screen is black, then flashes white, black, white continue ad nauseum. The audio works during this process as I hear the Vista startup sound.
2. Static from Hell - I install drivers (chipset, video, audio) and reboot for the last time after the last install. I enable SLI and then do the reboot for the reason mentioned under "1." I then get a nasty, endless burst of static from my speakers, even though I am presented with a Vista logon screen. The computer makes no sound other than a POST beep until the static begins at the logon screen.

I have used many drivers, 158.18, 158.45, 160.xx, 162.11, 162.22, 163.11, 163.18...sorry if I got some numbers wrong but you get the idea (I hope). I have also tried both 15.00 (the drivers that were stable when my system worked) and 15.01 chipset drivers. With all of these, I get either problem "1" or "2" as mentioned above. I am _forced to rely on a single card_ which is _completely unacceptable_ as I paid $1000 for two then top-of-the-line 7900GTX cards in May of 2006. The lack of driver support has me vowing to never use SLI technology again (which surprised my friends because I was always the "SLI whore" who insisted that "SLI owns all").

I doubt I will get a personal response from nVidia as I did not get one last time. Yes there is a bit of a rant in here. Why? Because I, as a consumer of NVIDIA products, feel ripped off. Rest assured that I have tried posting in many forums to try to see what I was doing wrong before I began using your Bug Report System, but failing that I am sending this report (and my previous report) to you in hopes of a solution.

This whole situation is personally offensive to me and I have serious doubts about purchasing nVidia products in the future, nor will I recommend them to friends either should they require serious dual-GPU action to drive 24", 27" and 30" displays (where SLI is supposed to shine).

[DMB2000uk]

Now it makes you wonder if any of this is vistas fault.

But it sucks that vista has been out for so long and good sli drivers are still not available.

Dan

[Sovereign]

It's funny because the system worked originally with 158.xx (can't remember what the "xx" part is though). Then I tried to update chipset drivers from 15.00 to 15.01 (because most gamers keep their drivers up to date). That caused the screwup. I couldn't roll back, I used System Restore but lost control of my X-Fi as the Audio Console would no longer launch. It's too bad that I didn't hear about the YouPAX X-Fi installer because that might have fixed my problem as reinstalling any driver even on the "restored" system messed things up.

I've started with two clean Vista installations and both times I've been hosed by the SLI Strobe and the Static of Death...

I'm never using SLI in a build again. It. Should. Just. Work. Especially when it costs so damn much to begin with.

[Major_A]

Did you try the MS SLi/Crossfire Hotfix?
http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=1680