How To: Enable SLI on pre-i7/i5 hardware

[tinytiger]

260.63 drivers has a new one protection

My system win7 x64,260.63 drivers with SLI patch 1.1,works very well

 

[anatolymik]

I know it. But it's a problem for a SLIPatch

 

[sammarbella]

260.63 drivers has a new one protection

So 260.62 are the last working with SliPatch right now?

 

[soundood]

So 260.62 are the last working with SliPatch right now?

no 260.52 is the latest driver that works, and is a beta driver, with a lot of bugs, im sticking with 258.96 for now

 

[Crono]

Currently, I'm using 260.63 (patched with patcher finded here), this is working geat.

Crono.

 

[anatolymik]

I made new patch yesterday which works with all drivers. now i'm working on installer

 

[tinytiger]

I made new patch yesterday which works with all drivers. now i'm working on installer

Great!!!!!!!

 

[Triton.se]

I made new patch yesterday which works with all drivers. now i'm working on installer

Good news, really ! but didn't make me healthier tho, visited hospital today: dr said pneumonia ...LOL, but I'll have time testing at home instead ! Two games dropped in today; F1 2010 and a retro Outrun 2006: Coast To Coast.

 

[Mockyngbyrd]

I made new patch yesterday which works with all drivers. now i'm working on installer

Awesome news!!!!!!!!!!!!
Much appreciation to the people working on this.

 

[anatolymik]

Good news, really ! but didn't make me healthier tho, visited hospital today: dr said pneumonia ...LOL, but I'll have time testing at home instead ! Two games dropped in today; F1 2010 and a retro Outrun 2006: Coast To Coast.

take care about your health. pneumonia isn't a joke

 

[MatteoFlash]

Hi all!
My name is Matteo, I'm from Italy and I just want to say here that I appreciate a lot your work!
I have a Gigabyte P55A-UD3 Motherboard with i5-750, using Windows 7 x64 and I'm trying to install 2x8800GT Amp! Edition in SLI-way.
I red various pages of this topic (thanks to a link found in another Forum) and these are my results:

- With 190.xx drivers and "old" modding way, I had no problems (Drivers->String->LHAL->nvlddmkm.sys). SLI was correctly found at last reboot, even if some games (like Batman AA) had some problems recognizing PhysX drivers (I installed the latest ones after modding).
- With 258.96, I have some problems. I removed old drivers and string, then I installed new drivers, then the SLIPatch 0.8b and, finally, ModdedForceWare258_96_B3, but it isn't working.

In your opinion, are there any old files installed in my system yet? Have you understood something in a wrong way?

Thanks a lot for your patience and thanks again for what you all are doing for the community!

 

[Arisu]

In your opinion, are there any old files installed in my system yet? Have you understood something in a wrong way?

If SLI capability isn't detected, this indicates that something went wrong in the SLIPatch installation process.
It's best to first recheck that everything is installed correctly:

1. Hold down the Windows-Key and press R. Type in "cmd"; a black window will open.
   
   
2. Enter this: (This verifies that all SLIPatch files exist)

   dir /B %SystemRoot%\System32\ntoskrnp.exe %SystemRoot%\System32\halsli.dll

   The result should be this:
   

   ntoskrnp.exe
   halsli.dll

3. Enter this: (This verifies that you've booted into the SLIPatch kernel)

   reg query HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control /v SystemStartOptions

   The result should be this:

   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control
       SystemStartOptions    REG_SZ     TESTSIGNING  KERNEL=NTOSKRNP.EXE  HAL=HALSLI.DLL  NOEXECUTE=OPTIN

   The value for NOEXECUTE might differ depending on your DEP settings; this is okay and doesn't influence the SLIPatch.
   
   
4. Open Windows Explorer, go to C:\Windows\System32\drivers, right click on the file "nvlddmkm.sys" and select "Properties".
   Press the "Details" button the the "Digital Signatures" tab. The dialog box should say "This digital signature is OK." (This verifies that the root certificate for test signing is correctly installed) and the signer name should be "SLI" (This verifies that anatolymik's modified driver is correctly installed).

 

[MatteoFlash]

Hi Arisu and thanks for your technical answer

1,2: The result for SLIPatch files is:

alsli.dll
ntoskrnp.exe
halsli.dll

3: The result for SLIPatch kernel is identical to yours.
4: The dialog box say something like "A chain of certificates correctly elaborated ends up in a root certificate coming from a Certification Autority not present in local list". "SLI" is the signer name.

According to this, I suppose there is something wrong with Digital Signature, am I wrong?

EDIT: I don't know if this means somethings, but my O.S. is in my native language (Italian), I don't know if files are available only for English version or something like this
EDIT2: I checked results from "Install.bat" file, concerning Modded ForceWare #B3:

C:\SLI>call takeown.exe /f "C:\Windows\System32\drivers\nvlddmkm.sys" /a
C:\SLI>call icacls.exe "C:\Windows\System32\drivers\nvlddmkm.sys" /grant Flash:f
C:\SLI>call certmgr.exe /add Windows.cer /s /r localMachine root
CertMgr Succeeded
C:\SLI>call bcdedit.exe /set TESTSIGNING ON
Operation completed.
C:\SLI>copy "nvlddmkm.sys" "C:\Windows\System32\drivers\nvlddmkm.sys" /y
        1 file copied.
C:\SLI>

I just translated "1 file copied" in english version. Then, thanks to Everest, under "Motherboard>ACPI>DSDT", I can see no "nVidia SLI Certification"

 

[Arisu]

According to this, I suppose there is something wrong with Digital Signature, am I wrong?

Yes, this is possible. Press Win+R again, but this time type: "certmgr.msc".
Is there an entry named "SLI" under "Trusted Root Certification Authorities\Certificates"?

If not, right click into the window and select "All tasks" -> "Import...".
In the dialog window select the "Windows.cer" file from anatolymik's "ModdedForceWare258_96_B3.RAR".
In the next step, choose: "Place all certificates in the following store" and click the "Browse..." button.
You need to select "Trusted Root Certification Authorities\Local Computer" here (which can only be seen after you checked the "Show physical stores" checkbox).

After you finished this, press F5 to refresh the window and the "SLI" entry should show up and the signature for "nvlddmkm.sys" should be classified as "OK". You now need to reboot and things should be fine.

The reason for this is that Windows tries to check whether the signature the driver was signed with can be trusted. If the corresponding certificate isn't in your root store, then the cryptographic process won't be able to validate the signature and doesn't load the ForceWare driver at all, but instead the safe fallback VGA driver by Microsoft, if I remember correctly.

EDIT: Just saw your edit and the line that says "CertMgr Succeeded" essentially does the same thing as described above, so you should have an "SLI" entry in your certificate store. About Everest and the DSDT - that's normal. The SLIPatch works a bit different, so you can't see that in Everest.

 

[MatteoFlash]

I just checked on CertMgr, even if the message war okey. There were two "SLI" certificate, so I decided to remove both, uninstall all (drivers, SLIPatch) and start back from the beginning.
This is my sequence:

0. Uninstall old drivers/patches
1. Install 258.96 Forceware (original), Reboot
2. Install SLIPatch 0.8b, Reboot
3. Execute "Install.bat" from Modded Forceware 258.96 B3, Reboot

Is this sequence correct? Do I have to do something in "Test mode" or was it just for old patches?
By the way, I have the same result: "SLI" certificate in CertMgr, but same message on nvlddmkm.sys signature properties.
I don't know if it's useful to help to understand the reason of this problem, but I can see the same signature properties on nvlddmkm.sys into the .RAR file, there is not the "OK" message neither there.

EDIT: nVidia driver seems to be correctly loaded, I can access to nVidia Control Panel right-clicking on Desktop. When I had wrong .sys files, I could not access to the panel and I think that Windows loaded standard drivers

 

[Triton.se]

my sequence was

(SLIPatch 0.8b already installed)
1. Install 258.96 Forceware (original), Reboot
2. Execute "Install.bat" from Modded Forceware 258.96 B3, Reboot

I don't even run any mod/patch/hack files from CMD anymore, but from file explorer.
Getting mod to run in Vista was a hell when it started..now it's very easy ! *all my thumbs up*

 

[Arisu]

Is this sequence correct? Do I have to do something in "Test mode" or was it just for old patches?

The sequence is correct. You don't need to worry about "driver test signing mode", Install.bat all does this for you (in the line "call bcdedit.exe /set TESTSIGNING ON").

Edit: Triton.se's sequence is just as fine, of course. That's because SLIPatch doesn't depend on ForceWare being present and the modded driver doesn't depend on SLIPatch either .

I don't know if it's useful to help to understand the reason of this problem, but I can see the same signature properties on nvlddmkm.sys into the .RAR file, there is not the "OK" message neither there.

I just tried everything out myself again, and you're right. Still, this seems to be okay because somehow Windows recognizes it as valid at boot time. When you're using the ForceWare patcher, it says the driver certificate is "OK" and since I'm using that currently, I didn't realize that anatolymik's prebuilt driver behaved differently.
Sorry about that, but now I'm a bit wiser as well

But there's another way how to find out whether the driver is running properly: Win+R -> "devmgmt.msc" -> Display adapters -> double click on NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT. It should say "This device is working properly." in the device status field.

I hope you're successful. I'm really quite puzzled why this isn't working for you already. Everything seems to be alright... you're running the SLIPatch kernel and the patched drivers... normally, that's everything you need.

 

[MatteoFlash]

Thanks for the sequence Triton.se
I tried also that in order to be sure of the non-influence of the installation order: indeed, as Arisu just said, SLIPatch doesn't seem to depend on ForceWare being present.
Both "NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT" say "This device is working properly", so I think I'm against a very big wall

If 190.xx mod worked properly, I can suppose that I have no hardware limits, even if I didn't use the SLIPatch to let them work during the afternoon.

 

[Arisu]

If 190.xx mod worked properly, I can suppose that I have no hardware limits

Yes, that's the strange thing. I'm really somewhat out of ideas now... since everything is actually running as intended, just with the difference that it doesn't seem to have any effect.

I'm starting to think that maybe something with your SLIC or DSDT is messed up. Maybe you can try to install a fresh copy of Win7 on a spare partiton or HDD on some rainy day. Or maybe someone else here who upgraded from the pre-SLIPatch process knows what to do and can give some advice?

I wish you good luck to get the new drivers working and of course I'll let you know if I find any clues.

 

[MatteoFlash]

I'm already prepared also with the fresh copy of Win7.. I restored a ghost copy of my operating system, which has only system drivers and programs which I usually manage.. If the mess up can depend on changing from 190.xx mod to 256.xx, so I can try to restore again the ghost. If this is not enough to solve the problem, maybe, in a rainy day D), I could try to reinstall the OS from zero, but I don't believe this can help us

By the way, I'll stay tuned in this thread in order to discover every kind of tips which can be useful for my problem and, in the same way, I'll let you all know if I'll solve my problem, so we can insert chipset P55 wigh Gigabyte motherboard in the mod compatibily list

Thanks a lot for helping me, Arisu

EDIT: I've just restored my ghost, installed SLIPatch (+reboot) and Mod (+reboot), but no SLI detected. Should I try to install 260.93 (beta) drivers? If I try this, do I need some addictional operations in order to make the driver work?
@tinytiger: You said something about SLIPatch 1.1.. Where did you find it? I can find just 0.8b, at least for Win7x64
EDIT2: Is there an alternative way to install the mod, just like the older mods? Or did the SLIPatch become necessary because of new protections included by nVidi4?

 

[kirbster]

Thanks for all your hard work. I currently have a Gigabyte 890FXA-UD5 with two GTX 460's running in SLI with the 258.96 drivers. I do not have an SLI cable but am impressed at the scaling even without one.
I have one on it's way and will do some further testing. But right now BFBC2 is working great without issues.

 

[wermad]

take care about your health. pneumonia isn't a joke

It takes a while to fully recover, Im going on one month and I still have some residual symptoms.

Great to hear a new patch is coming along. I had no stability success w/ this new so Im running the previous version and drivers 257.21 atm.

 

[Triton.se]

Something for you devs to test: F1 2010.

Most SLI users (real customers LOL) have bad fps, gpu usage 40% or so. nobody with 60fps in-game (GTX 460 SLI...)

I installed and tested it with 258.96 driver: over 60fps in-game, SLI is not enabled until I add the exe via nvcpl game list. AND.... 2nd card stays at 2D clocks...it does contribute to fps, I see 44% usage... 99% usage for 1st card.

Waiting for anatol's next package...delivers soon ?

 

[wermad]

just to confirm, what is the latest and most stable drivers supported by the patch? I keep seeing 258.96 and someone just told me it works w/ 260.xx.

 

[MatteoFlash]

It takes a while to fully recover, Im going on one month and I still have some residual symptoms.

Great to hear a new patch is coming along. I had no stability success w/ this new so Im running the previous version and drivers 257.21 atm.

Excuse me wermad, one information: are you still using 257.21 release? Did you install the patch in this sequence:

0. Uninstall old drivers/patches
1. Install 257.21 Forceware (original), Reboot
2. Install SLIPatch 0.8b, Reboot
3. Execute "Install.bat" from Modded Forceware 258.96 B3, Reboot

Soon that I cannot make the 258.xx release working, I'm gonna try with this one, even if my problems come from the certification, so the result is not sure for me

Another thing, after the SLIPatch and ModdedForceWare, should I find "Chipset X58" from CpuZ - Mainboard? I ask this because I can find my real one, that is "Chipset P55"