Help - Nvidia 8800GTS, forceware 97.94, XP SP2, no control panel options

[noTHINGface]

Hi all

Im having a real hard time with this. I have installed forceware 97.94 whql but everytime I open the nvidia control panel I have no options to select from, just a blank pane. I've uninstalled, driver cleaned, safe mode etc but to no avail. Any ideas???

[grimpy]

try installing ntune.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/ntune_5.05.25.00.html

[notsobig]

Have you tried downloading same driver from different location such as guru3D?Also when you first installed your card did "new equippment just added" sort of balloon came up? Does your 8800GTS properly shown in dxdiag, everest?

[noTHINGface]

@grimpy - I have been using ntune but I just wanted to sort the control panel out once and for all.

@notsobig - I actually grab all my drivers from guru3d, might be worth a pop tho, I'll try from somewhere else. Everything is working fine, card is working 100%, has a complete hardware profile and is showing in dxdiag etc, its just no options in the control panel

I hacked the registry last night to force the driver to use the legacy control panel and this works 100%, can see all the options etc and once I enabled the coolbits reg entries the additional tabs became available. Perhaps I should just stop worrying about it(?) but I hate things not working the way they're supposed to!

[Spitfire01]

I am seriously hating this Nvidia Control panel. I want all my options back. e.g. View temperature of the card etc.. It all used to be under advanced in the display properties now it jsut directs me to this barebones control panel.

[notsobig]

Oh I see. Have you tried deleting your card from device manager then reinstall your driver again? I once had stange thing happen to my GC when I accidentally removed my driver in safe mode. It was ATI card but maybe it's worth a shot?

[noTHINGface]

Oh I see. Have you tried deleting your card from device manager then reinstall your driver again? I once had stange thing happen to my GC when I accidentally removed my driver in safe mode. It was ATI card but maybe it's worth a shot?

Hi - yeah, tried that. I also hunted down all versions of dlls left behind in dllcache etc but to no avail. Sod it, just not worth worrying about! Its doing my head in! Cheers notsobig.

[notsobig]

I believe you haven't reinstalled your OS yet, have you? And probably that is the only way to fix this problm, I'm saying this because when I had 2x6600Gts in SLi I also had a problem SLi tab not showing up properly in nvidia control panel when I updated my driver to the latest one. And although I've tried everything I could think of to fix it, nothing worked. So I finally decided to go for OS reinstall and that did the trick. I guess there must be some kind of resistry entries even driver cleaner can't touch/erase? Otherwise I can't explain why it worked so well. Anyway if you say your card is working fine then I probably won't bother either considering all the hassle you've got to go through to reconstruct things again to your liking from scratch, but if you have enough free drive space maybe you can create another partition there and install fresh windows and your card driver only(which doesn't take that long) to see if the same problem occur there? Just a thought.

[noTHINGface]

It did cross my mind notsobig to wipe and drop a new OS but as you say, I just couldn't be arsed with it as everything is working. I'm going to sack it, I prefer the legacy control panel anyway Who knows, maybe it will sort itself out with a future driver installer!