Will Windows 7 32 bit drivers work on the old GA-K8NF-9 ?

[Kenshiro]

Dear Forum,

I still got a classic 939 socket mobo (see above) in my possession which I am planning to hand-over to a friend, who has more than enough with it.
However, before giving it to him, I will test if everything is still working on it, who knows how much dust this baby caught these last years....

Ok, this mobo doesn't have neither Vista or Seven drivers, all I can get is XP 32 drivers here.

I really don't know if Audio, Chipset, Lan drivers will work on Win7...
I also read that some people did install the following driver for Ethernet (Vista) and it worked.

What do you think?  Obviously if I install XP no issue at all, I was just wondering if I could try it with Win7.  Doesn't Win7 install generic drivers by default?  In theory it should work, or?

Also, I'm fully aware that the mobo only supports 150MB/s, I don't have any jumpers left to limit the HDD to that speed...is it really necessary? Should't the mobo automatically adjust it?

Again, thank you for reading me.
Looking forward for any response,

Kind regards,
Ken

[absic]

Hi Ken,

one of my friends has a different socket 939 Gigabyte motherboard and that too only has XP drivers for download. But he was able to run Windows7 OK on it and I would think the best idea would be to try it and see.

The worst that can happen is that certain hardware items won't function due to lack of drivers but you might find that there are drivers available from other places. Vista drivers should work with 7 but there is no guarantee that they will.

I also feel that there shouldn't be a problem with the HDD as my experience has shown me that even SATA3 6GB/s drives will work on these older motherboards without the need to use jumpers.

[Kenshiro]

Cheers Sir Absic,

Always there, answering within the minute, you are amazing mate! 

Yeah, the best thing is just trying it out as you say, the most important nevertheless is seeing if all the components are still alive
Of course, if I can make W7 run on it, then perfect...if not, then XP.
Noted about the HDD's.

Have a nice week-end!
Cheers,
Ken

[Kenshiro]

Ok...back again...

I got problems.....

The last time that this mobo was running was August 2009, with a Nvidia 8500GT, no issues.
So I tried this weekend with a higher card, a 8800GT Alpha Dog Edition.(pci-e 2.0)
The system won't even boot, nor post, nothing, nada, nichts...

Last Friday the 8800GT was working perfectly with a ga-M770T-ud3p.

I'm using a branded psu to test it, a modular corsair 620w which is running fine.
I really only have time to do things over the weekends, too busy under the week.

I will try with another psu I got, a be-quiet 650 Dark Power Pro, which works flawlessly.

But I have the impression that it's the graphic card that is giving me troubles. I really hope I haven't damaged it, will put it back on the other rigg ( which I also am giving away). 
I still have a crappy graphic card lurking around somehwere, but the fan is not spinning properly and is terribly noisy.
I maybe will get a really cheap graphic card with no extra juice needed, just like the 8500GT.
I also will try to test the Ram modules, but I don't think there's anything faulty with them.

What to you think, could the graphic card be the source of my problem?

Cheers,
Ken

[Dark Mantis]

Hi Ken,

Personally I don't like the Be Quiet PSUs as they are normally not very good and I have seen quite a few of them cause problems. I would stick to your Corsair PSU if I were you. How old is the Corsair unit ?

Make sure that you use a seperate 12v supply rail for the GPU if the PSU has more than one. Also make sure that all power plugs are correctly inserted.

[Kenshiro]

Hi Dark Mantis,
The Corsair was acquired in June 2008 and used until Nov 2008, after that for only 2 days in Aug 2009, it has remained unused...it's almost new you could say...
The Be-Quiet I have been using since May 2008 almost every day, it never caused me any trouble, it digested everything I threw at it. The cabling is just so much better then the Corsair, gotta love modular sleeved cables... Anyway, I used it for "Folding At Home" for almost two years and it still is rocking.
Dead silent, but gets damn hot if you get it working...my room was like a sauna...

Ok, I'm drifting away now...
Yes, on the Corsair i used that separate pci cable (6+2 pins) for the gpu, all is well connected.
There can be a few things going wrong:
1. gpu not recognised by mobo pci-e 1.0a
2. faulty corsair (doubt it)
3. short-circuit on mobo?

All the fans attached to the mobo were spinning, so juice was there (cpu, gpu and psu fans spinning).
The thing simply left my screen black...also, the light on the keyboard wasn't on...it should have at least blinked to me...

There's one thing though I might have done wrong (hope not):
Inside the box, where I had the case stored, I also had a monitor, with all its cabling.
I did keep the power plug from the corsair locked inside the pc-case...however, what if, I took by error the power plug from the monitor instead when I stored it? They almost look identical...one is just a bit longer...
Would have the Corsair psu been able to start with a wrong power plug - meaning - not providing enough juice?  This looks like so very me...

I'll try again over the week-end exchanging psu's (my wife's getting so mad...) and testing the gpu and ram.
If I can't boot with both psu's and 8800gt on the GA-K8NF-9...I will assume that I need to "downgrade" the gpu.
Hopefully there will be some cheap options around, but I feel that I have the obligation to provide my friend a functional system, it just hurts to spend money on something that you don't even know if it will work or if it is the source of your problems...

Cheers,
Ken

[Dark Mantis]

I am assuming that by lead you are referring to the "kettle" lead for the mains supply to the PSU. If that is the case then there is nothing to worry about as they are all the same unless you have a massive PSU and then sometimes they will use a thicker than average cable. They are all interchangeable though, PSU, monitor, printer, and many more items.

Have you got a buzzer or speaker connected to the motherboard for BIOS beep purposes ? If not it would be a good idea to fit one.

[Kenshiro]

Hi DarkMantis,
Thanx, this is a relief...yes, I meant the lead, no clue how to translate it, and was to lazy to google it
I'm not sure if a buzzer was already integrated, I think this mobo doesn't have one,  I'll have a look. But I have one which I can use...where should I connect it, to the Audio - no. 10 on the attached connectors overview?

And what if the battery just has ended its life - could that be a possibility?

Waiting to be Friday...omg....

Cheers,
Dirk

[Kenshiro]

Huge update    (long read)

I cleared CMOS, placed only 1 DDR module, I bought a cheap pci-e 2.0 graphic card, system posted and I was able to enter Bios without issues, all fine….apparently.

Welcome to my personal nightmare:

1 . I changed Boot priority to CD/DVD and having only one SATA HDD connected, I got no notification for “Press any key” to start reading from DVD.
Instead, I saw the Windows Logo and it loaded W7 Ultimate 64 bits that still was present on the HDD…very weird.  I used this spare Seagate HDD to make my testings.
The HDD was previously installed on a ga-770T-MA-ud3p (AM3) running with a X3 720BE…
Ironically, no keyboard was working, I couldn’t do anything but to force shut-down holding power button. I couldn’t even start the DVD Manually by placing it into the optical drive, that would have been the solution, fresh install but starting from within Windows.

2. When I burned the Win7 Prof. 32 bit iso, it opened without any issues on the pc it was created. So for me the dvd was correctly burned, I used a usb dvd drive for it.
The optical drive I’m using for the ga-k8nf-9 is a standard IDE drive…but it worked flawlessly to install Win7-Ultimate 64 bits on the above mentioned AM3 mobo.
Since each time I tried to boot from DVD it loaded Win7 64 bits (read from the HDD), which makes no sense as no O.S. is installed on that socket 939 mobo, I thought that I needed to format the drive.

3. After formatting the drive through an external USD device I happily started with the process again.
Unfortunately now the message I obtain is the infamous “Bootmgr is missing. Press Ctrl. + Alt+Del”…can it get worse?
Now I’m sitting here, googled thousands of pages about “Bootmgr is missing”  and realized that I would be able to repair it…but…only if the system is installed…what an irony.  I can’t even get to “press any key”…sigh..

4.  Since I installed perfectly the 770T-MA-UD3P on the HDD after I did a “Full erase” (zero fill) on it, I thought that I maybe should do the same again for the 939 socket mobo.  I did it last night, this morning it was finished, I will have to “initialize” it this afternoon through Disk Management before it gets recognized….but after that, what?

Maybe the ga-8knf-9 doesn’t like Win7 at all, crying for XP?  I think that W7 should still work.

These are the my options to get this baby running:
1.   Try the freshly zeroed and initialized drive on the ga-8knf-9  (as it worked on the UD3P)
2.    Try to install Win 7 32 bits on the AM3 board  1st, and see if it works afterwards on the 8knf-9 (having the HDD not previously formatted).
3.   Try to get the “Bootmgr” somehow on the drive which claims it is missing?  Could this proggie here be useful? ->  (http://www.partitionwizard.com/help/rebuild-mbr.html) It’s about the MasterBootRecord though…

Oh – and I almost forgot.  I have been unsuccessful to get the Bios on a floppy drive.
I was going to install the latest one for this mobo, the f12k:
I extracted all 3 files (autoexec.bat /FLASH895.EXE / k8nf-9.12k), but each time I copy the files over to floppy, only two files are being revealed:  k8nf-9.12k & Flash895.exe)… I don’t know how many floppies I have formatted these last days… When trying to copying again the autoexec.bat to floppy, it tells me that the file does already exist… I have had this issue on another occasion, but I always sorted it out…


Any thoughts?
I’d appreciate any input from you guys,
Kind regards

[Dark Mantis]

OK. Firstly the autoexec.bat file isn't showing because its a system file and so will be hidden. Don't worry about that though.

Clear the CMOS and then as the system is going to boot keep tapping the F12 key. This should bring up the boot options and you can select your optical drive from there.


By the way the buzzer is attached to the Two (four) pins on the FPANEL connector block marked SPKR. It is shown in the manual 

[Kenshiro]

Hi DM,

About the files on the floppy i have my little doubts, as I also tried to flash the Bios on the ud3p through floppy. Files were copied over, but it didn't detect the file to flash...anyway, let's leave that for now...1st things 1st.

I did clear CMOS on the weekend as well, but still couldn't boot from dvd, I'll give it a try again.
If nothing works, I'll install w7 32 on the ud3p.

You are right, I had speaker....and sound...hehe, such a forgetful person i am...

What surprises me most is that how could the socket 939 mobo read from a HDD that had W7 64 bits installed and even load the whole stuff...still don't get it...

Anyway, as always, I appreciate your time and thoughts. I'll let you know the outcome.

Cheers

[Kenshiro]

  Hell Yeah!

 I finally managed to get the system running on Win 7 – Professional 32 bits!  What an ordeal...  

So, if someone’s interested this is what I did:

- A zero format was performed on the drive with Seagate Tools. As it needs to be initialized, a MBR sector gets added, this is what allowed me in the end to install windows on the drive.  Folks, this really helps…

- On booting from CD the nvidia boot agent told me that I should check cable…I trusted technology...

- The culprit was the IDE cable from Gigabyte, I used another one and violà…it worked!!  Should have thought about it earlier, as I had installed my other system with it….same optical IDE drive, same cable

- Drivers that do work with the ga-k8nf-9 (rev.1.x) downloaded from Gigabyte site under Win7 – 32 bits:
1. Realtek AC97 Driver  (Windows update will find you a newer one, but this one works)
2. Ethernet driver, the one I posted in the beginning of my post (Ethernet)

These do not work:
 NVIDIA nForce4 Chipset driver  -  it tells me that it is only compatible with xp
 NVIDIA CK804 Lan Driver – forget this one, it just mucks up your Ethernet connection, leaving you without connectivity

I think that I found something for the Chipset drivers following this link -> http://drivers.hardware-guy.com/nvidia_nforce.htm
I’ll give it a try later on. Vista 32 bit drivers should work on this mobo.

All I have left now is to update Bios with floppy and see if this baby can cope with the 8800GT .

Even though Win7 is installed, which was my purpose, I have to admit that it goes a bit slow. A more powerful graphic card or a faster cpu could help…but it really makes no sense investing too much money on this platform.  XP will run just fine on this one.

A huge thank you to DM and absic again for their patience and endurance !!
This thread can be considered as solved.

Kind regards,
Ken