Jul 22, 2008
BSOD with Asus P5N-D Motherboard
Here’s another esoteric tech tip that may help a soul or two who are currently ripping their hair out and cursing Asus with a fury.
If you have Asus’s P5N-D Motherboard, which is based on NVIDIA’s 750i chipset, and are getting a Blue Screen of Death referencing an NVGT.sys error on Windows XP, dispair not! There is hope!
The problem is a crappy driver for the SATA drive controller, and as of yet, Asus (in their Heart Touching wisdom) has not fixed the problem. The cure is simple though.
Surf on over to NVIDIA.com and select Download Drivers. Under Option 1 select:
Product Type: nForce
Product Series: 7 Series
Product: nForce 790i (yes, the 790, NOT the 750)
and, the rest of the stuff that fits your needs.
For quick reference, the English XP version of the above download is here.
The long and the short of it is that you need to install the “Media Shield” portion of the 790i drivers on top of your 750 board. DO NOT INSTALL EVERYTHING! Just the Media Shield portion.
After doing that with my own P5N-D, I haven’t experienced a single BSOD.
Maybe Asus will fix this eventually, but I wasn’t going to suffer through the headache while they take their sweet time. With the advent of the 790 chipset, I don’t expect them to be rushing to fix things on the older/cheaper set.
You can read more about this topic on the NVIDIA forums here.
Good luck!
IMPORTANT UPDATE!
Melle dropped a note to say that NVIDIA has released new WHQL drivers for nForce that are compatible with the 750i. Early reports say that this driver fixes the BSOD problem with the P5N-D.
Check out the dirvers here: http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_winxp_15.23.html
I haven’t installed these on my system yet so I can’t vouch for them personally, but given NVIDIA’s common architecture I would expect them to work anyway. This is great news! Thanks Melle!
NVGT.SYS, P5N-D, Asus motherboard, BSOD 
45 comments
I just wanted to say thanks for the recap on how to resolve the BSOD with the P5N-D motherboard. I went through the motions of installing Windows XP without any problems and then as soon as I installed the last of the drivers… boom… BSOD *ever* time I tried to log into the box. I installed the Media Shield and so far it’s looking better (it’s been up for 10 minutes now, at least *knock on wood*).
Hi Kris,
My pleasure! So glad that it helped… I know I was really bummed after spending weeks researching hardware options, finally ordering everything and then building it all very carefully only to have the rig die on me every few minutes with a BSOD.
Thanks very much for saying hi!
THANK YOU SOOO MUCH you are the man… i couldn’t figure out why the heck it was blue screening. i checked this thread… first one that popped up. once i installed that it seems to work fine no0w… we’ll see. thanks for the helping hand
Yay! Glad to be of help Micah! Thanks for the kind note.
Cheers,
A
Dude, you are awesome.
I recently built this machine, which uses an ASUS P5N-D motherboard and a NVIDIA 8800GTS card, and I’ve been getting this error just about every time I opened my optical drive. I’ve been constantly opening my optical drives and playing DVDs and such for an hour or so and so far, everything is good.
I thank you again kindly!
My pleasure Zim! So glad that it helped you! I’m hoping that Asus fixes the issue soon, but until then this solution seems to work great… All the best to you,
-A
We were having issues like this too, I’m so glad somebody showed me this site, good job
Hi Tyler! Thanks for the kind words - glad to be of service!
I was having this error, but when I booted windows! but, your find seems to have fixed it, ILU SO MUCH! <3
I tried this and I’m not getting BSOD anymore, BUT…I have no Ethernet and no Firewire, etc. I installed only the media shield, as directed here. Scared to install anything else, because last time, the BSOD came just after the boot, making me have to reinstall Windows. Appreciate any additional insight you can offer here…
Also, I have no Ethernet connection either. Uninstalled the 790 and tried the 690. Still no bluescreen, but no ethernet, firewire. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated - everyone else seemed to have good luck with Andy’s suggestion so perhaps I’m doing something wrong?
Hi Brian,
Well, lets start from the beginning and see where things break down. I think I know what may be happening - it sounds like the rest of the drivers for the board are simply missing.
You have to install EVERYTHING from the 750 driver package (the one that came with the motherboard, or one that you’ve downloaded) first. That should give you all of the drivers for everything on the motherboard. Boot the machine and make sure that everything (ethernet, etc.) is there. You may get a BSOD eventually, but the goal here is to verify that you have Eternet, firewire, etc.
If you are getting a BSOD immediately upon boot up, so that you CAN’T get into windows to verify that the other drivers are working, try rem0ving your SATA CD/DVD drive from the boot order. Don’t disable the drive, just remove it as a boot device in the BIOS. That should work to bypass a BSOD on boot up.
Once you have verified that all the “other” stuff is working (ethernet, etc.) then it is time to really fix the BSOD by installing the 790 Media Shield drivers on top of the other 750 stuff that you installed previously.
The 750 drivers will run the majority of the board, but the SATA devices will be running off of the 790 Media Shield drivers.
When everything is back to order, either put your CD/DVD back in the boot order, or just remember that you’ve removed it from the list - its easy to put it back in, I just leave mine out.
Let me know how that goes!
Best of luck to you…
First, I can’t thank you enough for helping with this, much appreciated. Just want to be sure that I have everything straight so that I don’t have to reinstall everything again.
It sounds like you have a good handle on what I have set up, but just so we’re both definitely on the same page. I have two SATA hard drives and a SATA DVD drive. The nvgt.sys BSOD happens just as Windows gets to the desktop. Just confirming that if I remove the DVD drive from the boot order completely that it will let me then boot into Windows. I understand that nothing’s guaranteed but want to be sure that we’re talking about the same thing here.
Thanks again - I’ll wait until I hear from you then give the 750 plus 790 media shield drivers a try…
Nevermind, I just went for it and now all is working fine. Not sure how you figured this out, but great work - thanks for the post and for the follow-up help. Take care…
Brian
Just wanted to say thanks for the BSOD fix! The BSOD error I was getting was with ndis.sys running on winxp 64 bit, on a p5n-d with a Q9450 processor and 8 gigs of mushkin PC800 DDR 2 ram. This mobo is very finicky and won’t even post if I have my external usb hard drive powered on at boot time. Last ASUS board I’ll ever buy due to crappy NVIDIA drivers. Peace.
Brian, sorry, just saw your reply now! You are most welcome for the help - anytime. I’m glad that everything is working for you now!
Just to answer your question too - yeah, you can certainly remove the DVD/CDROM out of the boot order without it being a problem. That simply means that the machine won’t boot from a CDROM that has an operating system on it (like your Windows disk, or like a specially made Bootable CDROM.) The only time you really usually need to do something like that is when there are problems, and its really easy to just go back into the BIOS and put it back in the order. Anyway, great job! Thanks for letting me know that it worked!
Bortz, you are most welcome. I’m really glad that this info can help people! At first I was pretty mad at Asus, but once this fix was in place, I have to say that the board has been rock solid from that point on. I’ve use ABIT boards previously, and they were great for a number of years, but their quality went down, so I switched to Asus.
I guess its the age old problem of - Good Features, Fast Performance, Cheap Money - Pick any two!
All the best,
A
Thanks for the help Andrew, but am facing the same problem but from a different perspective. The problem is that I just made a new rig (Didn’t install an OS yet) and my P5N-D won’t recognize my two Seagate SATA HDDs, but if I remove my SATA DVD burner and install an IDE one; everything goes well, so I installed Vista 64-bit and the new nForce drivers (750i - I didn’t use your method) then reinsalled the SATA DVD Burner and never had a problem (I also removed the DVD from the boot sequence) and no problems so far.
However, If I try to reinstall Vista again, the problem reappears. I really don’t want to go through this hassle everytime I format my PC? Any suggestions to help with this problem, maybe there is something in the Bios to stop this conflict.
Hmm… That is an odd problem indeed. It sounds like the old days of IDE with master / slave conflicts, but SATA doesn’t use that technology.
When you say the P5N-D “won’t recognize” the two Seagate HDD’s, what exactly do you mean? Do you mean they don’t show up as options in the Vista install, or they don’t show up in the BIOS at all? (meaning they don’t show up on the MAIN tab under SATA1-SATA4)
Knowing that will at least help us to narrow down the issue a bit.
Also, I would try the following things:
1) Make sure that you have the latest BIOS for the P5N-D
2) See if your SATA DVD Burner company has released a firmware upgrade (unlikely, but possible)
3) Try using a different combination of SATA ports for the devices. For example, if you SATA DVD is in SATA1, try putting it in SATA4, etc.
4) Check out this link. It may help, as installing from the IDE drive is going to load up a different set of drivers than doing to from the SATA DVD. http://vistasupport.mvps.org/installing_raid_sata_drivers.htm
I’ll think on it some more, but would be very interested in knowing if you can see them in the BIOS when the SATA DVD is installed.
Good luck!
-Andy
Thanks for the reply Andy. I have the DVD Burner connected to SATA 1, and the two HDDs to SATA 2 & 3, however, the Bios shows “NONE” which means empty for SATA 2 & 3 (it does show the DVD burner in SATA 1), I tried installing Vista and it also doesn’t see any HDDs!! The link you provided seems to offer a very interesting approach, I will try everything you suggested and report back.
Thanks for the help.
Try putting the HDD’s in 1 & 2 and the DVD in 3.
If they drives don’t show up in the BIOS, then I don’t think they will show up at all. It must be a hardware problem with the DVD Burner…
Who makes the DVD drive?
its a Lite-On DVD Burner.
I’m going to try this BSOD fix right now! I just wanted to say THANKS!! to Andrew Milo for this article! I pulled out all my hair over this..
My pleasure Doug! Thanks for the note! Best of luck to you…
@Moe - anything work for you so far?
Just wanted to let you know its been 5 days and not one single BSOD! I cant thank you enough! its been killing me. I would have had about 8 bsod’s now but not a single one! My hats off to you kind Sir.
Hi Doug! I know what you mean - I was so upset after building my rig. That BSOD would send me into sputtering fits!
I’m so glad that your machine is consistently working well! That is fantastic news. Thanks very much for the nice note! Very glad to be of service…
New problem with the p5n-d- computer just shut itself down (like power outage type shutdown). Did this one time yesterday only. Also had a freeze up last week where the mouse cursor looks like it’s disintegrating, then the puter locks up. Ran prime 95, orthos and video card test to no avail. This random stuff is driving me nuts. At least no BSOD since the nforce updates though.
Hey bortz - sounds like a heat issue, but you’ve run orthos. Any idea of the temps at lockup time? Like from an external temp readout? Unlikely that you have a drive bay temp display but thought I’d ask. Try running it without the case door on for a while and see if the hangs stop.
Also, what kind of power supply do you have? Have you double checked the connections on your case power and reset switches?
Does shut down or hang happen at any particular time, or is it completely random? Not always during a game, or always in IE, etc?
You have the latest drivers for your video card?
Anyway - probably asking a bunch of things you’ve done already, but just thought I would ask.
Hey andrew, i bought my computer a month ago, with exactly the same problem you had. And you know what? This really fixed it! Thanks for the great post. Also, today I noticed nVidia had a new driver online, compatible for both 750i AND 790i. I installed all the drivers in this package, and no blue screens since! So it seems they fixed the problem. The link for the driver is:http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_winxp_15.23.html Hope that helped
Hey Melle!
Thanks for the tip! I’ll update the post to let people know!
Cheers,
Andy
Hey Andy, The hangs occur randomly. I’ve done the updates thing with the 8800gt drivers , directx, nforce drivers. The bios is the latest as of a couple months ago- 0601 I believe it is. My load temps at the core s are running mid 50’s under load. I’ve got water cooling and a thermaltake toughpower 700W. Single vid card, Q9450 chip. Neither the processor or memory is overclocked. Maybe it’s xp 64 bit I was thinking. Most of my programs are x86 mode that I used to run on my old xp 32 bit box before I got this box. One thing I haven’t done is let XP auto update itself after I reloaded my system, since the updates cause the computer shut down time to increase from 7 secs. to 35 secs. Could not having one or more of those xp updates be hanging it? Thanks
Hi bortz - absolutely, not keeping up with XP updates but keeping up with the latest drivers, etc. can absolutely cause a challenge. Not only that, but running stock XP will leave your system open to a ton of exploits. I’d update right away. I hear you on the shutdown time - I hate that kind of thing. But I think the extra 30 seconds may 1) fix the problem (no guarantee) and 2) will certainly keep you a lot more protected.
I’d try that first thing. If you are adamant about not wanting the updates, I’d say do a backup of your system before updating. If the updates fix the problem, then you have your answer. If not, I’d still suggest keeping them, but you can opt to restore from your backup.
Your temps and power supply sound fine. Actually the temps are really good.
Anyway, just some thoughts. Let me know if you give it a try!
Best of luck,
Andy
Wow, this saved me some money and a lot trouble. I hope you don’t mind Andy, I have to put a link to this blog on the asus website. I spent the last 4 hours or so on their forums looking for a fix to this problem.
It appears that there are a number of P5N-D users out there… anyone tried to burn a DVD with this fix yet? I’m not having a problem, just haven’t tried it and was curious. I need to go out and buy some DVD’s and I wanted to see if anyone was having issues.
Again, can’t thank you enough for this. It’s unbelievable to me that asus doesn’t have any sort of fix.
I don’t mind at all! Glad it helped you CRX… Also, FYI, I’ve burned DVD’s with it, and has worked fine.
Just curious - did you use the 790 drivers, or the new WHQL version listed in the update?
Thanks for the note - really glad your rig is working now!
I went with the new WHQL version for the 750. Everything is working perfect. Pretty much left a dvd running last night. I’ve been installing some other software this morning, and no errors what so ever.
I do have one more question for anyone reading: Anybody deal with a USB Controller issue? In my Device Manager, my Universal Serial Bus (USB) Controller says that the drivers are not installed. I’ve done some searching online but can’t seem to find a solution. The only problem stemming from this is that when I plug in a USB 2.0 device, I get a diolog box telling me it could run faster blah blah, you know the one. I’ve run my ASUS install disk as well.
Hey Andy, I went with the WHQL drivers as well so maybe you can suggest that one as well as the 790i update you’ve already spoke about. I’m running crash free so far (fingers crossed). It seems to have been the winxp 64 bit auto update security fixes and patches that I balked on because of the longer shut down times. No problems since patching! I should have considered this right away and known better since I’ve been around computers since the apple 2e
Just goes to show that stubbornness doesn’t pay. Can’t seem to understand why the puter won’t cold boot if my external hard drive has the power on though. Will warm boot fine with the drive power on but not cold boot. It will hang half way through POST with the drive power on for some reason. If we can get that squared away, I’ll have a perfect glitch free system. Thanks again- Frank
Hey Frank! Glad to hear things are looking up!
I was pretty certain the updates would help, but you never know! I hate the slow shutdowns as well, but I guess its worth it for the stability.
On the Hard Drive - I would go into the BIOS and make sure that USB isn’t listed as an option in the boot device list. If you turn that off, your system will probably boot just fine. If you ever need to boot from an external drive, you can always go in and enable it again.
Let me know how it goes!
Cheers,
A
Hi Andy- I checked the bios option for a usb drive enabled or disabled for a boot up choice and I only have my internal hard drive enabled right now. Should I leave the external hard drive powered up and enable that drive in the bios if it’s recognized? I’m at my work puter so I’m not even sure the bios will recognize the externalloy connected usb hard drive right now. Thoughts?
Thanks,
Also, I’ve got the random shut down problem happening still but narrowed down to when I play Tiger woods golf 2008. I backed off on the game’s graphic settings and that’s helped to reduce the random power offs, so I’m thinking it’s either the video card or power supply or a combination of both. It’s kind of odd for it to be the gt8800 though because other games are just as taxing and run perfect. The power supply is quad sli certified, so I’m wondering about that too. I can live with it but it’s still annoying. I guess I could always pop the old nvidia 6800 card in there from the old puter to test what the actual problem is but I’d hate to loose the eye candy that the 8800 enables .
Frank
Hmm… That is strange indeed. It should be ignoring the USB drive completely if it isn’t set to a boot device. This is a strange suggestion, but try moving the drive to a different USB port and see if that helps. Unlikely, but worth the shot.
Sounds like Tiger has a bug in it - another thing to try, is to make sure that you have the latest sound drivers. If there are no visual anomalies on the screen, I’ve seen the sound card be the problem more often than the video card.
I’ll think more on it and let you know if I come up with anything!
Cheers,
A
Hey Andy- The thing is, the bios identifies the external hard drive when it’s powered on. I tried to set up the boot sequence with and without removable drive as a boot up option but neither helped.
I’ll try switching the drive to a different port but I agree that it probably won’t help. For more clarification, the post sequence halts just before the memory check portion of posting takes place, if that’s useful info. When it halts, I press the reset button (not the power off button) and it posts fine. It will also warm boot fine with the drive powered on. Why on earth would a cold boot halt it and a warm boot or reset let it post normally? Regarding Tiger game- I cut way back on the video settings and it runs fine, so it’s just that particular game. Thanks again-Frank.
Hey Andy, I’ve got the problem fixed with the games randomly causing the comp to shut off. It was the power supply. Swapped out the old thermaltake with a new thermaltake (those modular cords are great) and no more shut downs. Still getting the cold boot problem though with the usb hard drive powered up, which I think is something with the p5n-d. Will try disabling legacy USB in Bios later today. Getting closer to the perfectly running system…
Great news Frank!! Makes sense that it was the power supply, now that you know! hahaha
Let me know if the legacy USB makes a difference. If I can get a few min, I’ll try it myself as well…
Hope you are doing well!
-A
Just a quick (possible dumb) question. I too am having the BSOD problems associated with SATA DVD player on a 750i motherboard. I understand your basic instruction to install the Media Shield component; however, do I need to do this from a new Windows XP install, or can I just install it over the existing driver set? Obviously, I’d prefer not to wipe the disk and start over, but anything is better than these BSOD problem. Thanks.
Not a dumb question at all… Just download the drivers from the “update” section below, and then you can install all of them. You don’t have to just install the “media shield” anymore. The new drivers from NVidia fix the problem, as well as provide updates for other things.
You just run the installer right from your current windows install and follow the directions. No need to use the Windows XP disc at all, and there should be no need to wipe the disk and start over. Hope that helps!
Good luck!
Cheers,
A
You are AWESOME! This worked wonderfully! I have been struggling with this for 2.5 months! Have your wife give you a hug for me!
Glad it worked! :^) I’m reporting to my wife now!! hehe
Leave a Comment