Ageia Physx and Windows 7

Hi all,

Does someone know how to get my stand alone Ageia Physx 100 (Asus) enabled on Windows 7?

The NV physx drivers (last official) do get installed, but the Asus Physx card isn't recognized and the drivers are enable on my 8800 GTS - The NV control panel doesn't even show me an option to enable it on my standalone card (which is logical as no other card is seen)

I'm running Vista, Win 7 and XP (trippleboot) and use the latest WHQL drivers (186.18) en Physx drivers (9.09.0428)

In XP and Vista the drivers are working perfectly and Physx card is recognized.. Only Windows 7 is refusing to co-operate, and is driving me crazy. :3eyes:

Peace, R

 

Re:

Install first the PhysX 2.40 Ageia drivers ,install in Xp Mode your card will be recognized, look in the device manager.

Install The nVidia PhysX drivers, it asks for removing the old drivers (2.40)
do not remove the old drivers , install your new drivers.

GreetZ Ogimos

 

Thanks for the tip!

Someone know here to get the 2.40 drivers? i assume these must be old ones?

Thanks

 

Win7 ageia physx issue solved!

Hi there, i saw i was not alone with Ageia driver issue on Win7. After some serious attempts, this finally worked:
1. uninstall nvidia physx driver that came with new Forceware 190.XX driver (physx driver 9.xx) from uninstall menu via control panel
2. download PhysX_8.09.04 driver from Nvidia and run it via Troubleshoot compatibility (right click) where u select Windows XP (SP2 or SP3) mode
3. Ageia PPU (as PCI device) finally recognized in Device mng.

 

You can also then install the latest and greatest PhysX drivers from NVidia right on top of those, so you have both the old AGEIA control panel and the new NVidia drivers. You access the old AGEIA control panel from the Start menu like you always have, but to use the card you need to disable GPU PhysX from the NVidia control panel first. I've found that most, if not all, PhysX games run better with GPU PhysX instead of AGEIA. I'm also running SLI though so the GPU is kinda twiddling it's thumbs at times, so your mileage may be different.

 

that method doesnt work with ati and ageia. I currently have a pcie x1 ageia ppu and the only way it works for me is to install the PhysX_8.09.04 driver. anything newer and it wont work anymore.

 

Nvidia Control panel error

Well it seems this saga is far from over for me. It goes like this:

In my previous post the solution i found was true specifically for Ageia driver - It worked when i uninstalled physx driver that came with new Forceware 190.XX driver (physx driver 9.xx) an than installed PhysX_8.09.04 driver (it seems this is the only version that works anyway). Ageia PPU was recognized in System Devices, Nvidia driver 190.38 (WHQL) installed, Nvidia Control panel installed and working, Nvidia newest Physx driver 9.XX not installed. Under Uninstall Programs on Windows Control panel there's only PhysX 8.09.04 because i previously uninstalled 9.x version to force detection of Ageia Pci card.

Than came Nvidia Control Panel situation: My system is stuck with combination PhysX_8.09.04 driver + Nvidia driver 190.38. If i try to update or downgrade to any of official Nvidia drivers (also tried new 190.62) Nvidia Control Panel stops working! At the end of driver installation it prompts that control panel could not be installed properly. Nvidia Control panel is than still visible in Windows control panel but at launch it says there's a version mismatch and than opens only stereoscopic configuration without 3D and other advanced settings for graphic card. Pretty useless.

I was eager to get to the bottom of that crap, without luck - tried Guru3D driver sweeper, uninstalled ageia ppu from device mng with tick on software uninstall + reboot + installed new 190.62 with Ageia exclamation mark in Device mng = no luck. Tried standalone installation of Nvidia control panel and wont install. In every possible combination there is always problem with Nvidia Control Panel at the end. It just won't work properly.

Now i have only 2 options regarding Nvidia Control panel after system was several times restored to the first point as follows:

1. leave it as it is - combination PhysX_8.09.04 + geforce driver 190.38 = works, but physx driver is not updated to 9.xx (minor issue).
2. update to new driver, lets say 190.62 and Nvidia Control panel stops working. Physx is than updated to 9.xx or so it seems, because under Windows Programs u actually see two drivers, 8.xx and 9.xx.

This whole thing became hunt for Nvidia Control Panel solution after Ageia was detected as described in previous post. Damn Nvidia...

If anyone have a solution for Nvidia control panel i'll be more than grateful.

/Running Win7 x64 Ultimate (7600)/

 

With a AGEIA PPU you first need to install version 8.09.04 as it's the last driver with the files needed by the AGEIA PPU (Driver version 1.0.0.15 or something like that.) on top of this you then install the latest version and then you install the GPU drivers.

Should work just fine.
(Don't remove the AGEIA PPU from the device manager as newer PhysX runtimes will remove old "obsolete" files so you won't have the driver files if you delete it from the device manager.)

 

Question. Can it do too with 9800GT as PhysX accerelator. Because the default 190.68 don't allow SLI+PhysX card.

 

Well a 9800 GT should be able to handle any PhysX effect just fine, but so should the 295 when SLI kicks in.
(Even without full SLI support it should work quite OK,card is quite powerful.)

 

Nvidia Control panel error

*Jonas thanks for the tip but it didn't worked for me.

Regarding Nvidia Control panel (NCP) I gave it another shot assuming steps you mentioned would work:

1. combination where Nvidia control panel works = forceware 190.38 + physx 8.09.04 + nvidia stereoscopic 3d driver (that's the components under Windows Programs, as u see without physx 9.xx upgrade)
2. Uninstalled forceware graphic driver and stereoscopic but not physx 8.09.04. Ran Guru driver sweeper 2.05 just to be sure everything was gone (ticked driver and physx; btw cleaning physx via driver sweeper has no effect on 8.xx physx driver which is good). Rebooted.
3. With only physx 8.09.04 driver installed and ageia still present under Device mng i tried to install only newest physx driver 9.09.0814 first, but as many times before installation terminated prematurely just before finish and it gave msg something like "installation terminated because of an error" (nothing specific like in cases when windows installer is corrupted...).
4. Nevertheless physx driver 9.xx did install some of its components as it showed under Windows Programs. Finally i installed graphic driver 190.62 and this time there was no msg at the end of installation about Nvidia control panel "not installed". When i opened windows control panel there was NCP still missing!
5. After newest forceware 190.62 installed i used manual force and extracted all files of Nvidia control panel package NvCplSetup with Universal Extractor and copy-pasted them in Windows Safe Mode to System32 folder. After reboot NCP did showed up in Windows control panel but it wouldn't run.
6. Once again I pressed System restore and went back to 1. step. No luck.

Last thing i would try is installing new forceware driver on top of the old one just as i always did when i was on XP - without prior uninstall of any kind (and no driver sweeper). I know that installation will show msg about NCP not installed at the end, but than I will do manual force copy-paste in safe mode again. We shall see than if machine is really doomed and needs fresh install of OS. Simply cannot believe what a mess - it reminds me on old Win 95 issues or something.

 

Seems something is a bit bugged.

Uninstall the display driver and PhysX driver, restart and abort Windows attempts to auto-install the drivers.

Go into the system device manager and press the update button (magnifying glass.) and see what it finds (Incase the AGEIA PPU device has been removed completely when uninstalling the drivers.) but abort any attempts from the OS to install drivers. (Not critial for the PPU but it isn't recommended for the GPU.)

Check the add and remove / programs and features if all PhysX and NVIDIA display entries are gone.

Reinstall NVIDIA PhysX driver 8.09.04 to get the PPU up and running (Feel free to start the AGEIA control panel and activate the PPU but it can wait.) then install 9.x.819 or what the latest version is over it, check to make sure that the setup completes successfully. (Try nvidia.co.uk incase the download doesn't work from NVIDIA.com.)

After that just install the NVIDIA display drivers 190.62 or what the latest version is, PhysX should initialize but abort as it's already installed and then the GPU drivers and NVIDIA control panel should install.

Restart and check so that everything works, this should work but perhaps some registry entry is blocking the installer or some file or folder remnants remain there might be issues, install with administrator priviledges as well unless UAC is disabled just to be sure everything is properly set-up so that UAC isn't interfering.

Not much else I can suggest something is causing problems with the PhysX 9.x.819 (Or what the version number was.) from the looks of it, to manually delete those files (After doing the above un-installation but before installing anything.) go to the program files folder and delete the AGEIA folder and then the System32 or SysWow folder (SysWow incase of x64 OS) and delete the PhysX files (System) and AGEIA files (Language) plus the AGEIA folder (Driver)

There's some reg entries as well for the PPU but it shouldn't be important as it'll be overwritten when reinstalling the program.

Bit lengthy but I hope this helps explain the process, hopefully you won't encounter any bugs with the installer but to be sure clear out the C:\Users\YourUsername\Appdata\Temp folder so none of the older setup files remain, don't think you need to do much more than that.
(Unless as above a registry entry is either damager or "protected" in some way, such as with permissions to read but not write, albeit this shouldn't be the case.)

 

Nvidia Control panel error

Thanks for effort Jonas but I just followed exact procedure as u described, including manual delete of Ageia and other Physx entries in Program files and System folders with no luck. On fresh install of Ageia physx 8.xx driver there was "installation terminated, fatal error" thing, but some of Ageia components did install (it showed again in device mng). Same happened when upgrading to physx 9.xx "installation terminated" but again new driver showed under Windows Programs. Than followed graphic driver installation, surprisingly without any prompts, but after reboot there was no Nvidia Control Panel (NCP). I looked into System folder and there were all relevant NCP files except that thing wouldn't start. Tried manual install of Nvidia control panel and it said there was release mismatch. Guess something very dark stays in registry or somewhere, i don't know...

Again I pressed System restore and loaded 190.38 combination as described earlier. Thanks for nothing Nvidia :bang: ... fresh OS install i guess. It's just too much that this relatively simple things happening in latest and greatest OS or drivers with such a long heritage of releases.

Tnx again Jonas.

 

Sounds like some registry entries are jacked up...

Use the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301

Remove anything related to Ageia, Nvidia, and Physx.

Restart and try re-installing.

I am betting it will get rid of those pesky install errors if you do this.

 

True that. I am able to select 9800GT as PhysX acceralator. However it seems by in-game it accerate by cpu, which drop the fps to 1 when PhysX is active. So I am looking a way to get 9800GT to force work on new Forceware drivers. I don't know how so I question about several post.

 

That's strange, from what I've read though the latest 190.62 drivers should allow you to select which card to use for PhysX as long as you have the latest runtimes installed (Included with the driver however.)

Should just need to install that and then run either the NVIDIA control panel or the stand alone PhysX control panel, set acceleration to GPU and select the 9800 as the GPU processor that'll handle the effects.

There's also been posts in the NVIDIA section about using the NVIDIA control panel feature "expand to desktop" or what it was called to kick start the secondary card if it isn't connected to anything, unsure if that is still needed with the latest drivers however it's worth trying.

 

Runtimes? What do you mean exact by that? Does Vista has those features??

 

When I said runtimes I simply meant the latest PhysX driver version.
(Called runtimes or something like that, although more specifically that term refers to the libraries in the C:\Program Files\Ageia\ folder.)

 

Nvidia Control panel error

cyclone3d: Installed Windows Installer Cleanup Utility with no errors but when I try to run it Utility starts to install again and than nothing happens. Another ridiculous bug i guess or it's jut incompatible with Win7 x64?

 

Hmm, it occur some windows error pop-up before the shutdown. You sure it is allowed SLI cards+Decided PhysX card?