I'm pulling my hair out over here. I have a 3x 580 3GB SLI setup and everything was working perfectly until I rebooted my system this afternoon. On the initial W7 splash screen that says 'Windows is starting' it will freeze and throw a bunch of brown lines, after about 10 seconds Windows will load but with just the basic VGA driver. NVIDIA Control Panel says there is no monitor attached to an NVIDIA GPU. I tried a bunch of different things to fix it before resorting to the old reinstall W7 route. I removed two of the cards, all but one stick of RAM in slot 1, anything else that wasn't necesary, and set everything back to stock clocks. W7 installed fine but same problem when I tried to install the 296 NVIDIA driver. I've tried the other two cards and in different PCIE slots but ever configuration gives the same brown flashing screen followed by W7 booting with generic VGA driver. Device Manager reports the error:
 
"Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems. (Code 43)"
 
Current hardware configuration for troubleshooting:
EVGA X58 770 Motherboard
920 CPU at stock speeds
2x 120GB Corsair SSD's in RAID0
EVGA GTX580 3GB - have tried each card by itself in different slots, same problem
4GB stick of Corsair memory - tried two different sticks in slot 1, same problem
EDIT - forgot the Cosair 1200 PSU


If anybody can think of anything else to try I'm all ears!
 
William.

After messing with it some more I've discovered that two of the cards exhibit the problem but the third works perfectly. I don't know if this is coincidence but the problem started when I rebooted the computer this afternoon which is the first reboot since yesterday when for curiosity sake I set it to 2-way SLI with the third dedicated to PhysX. The cards that are now not working are the ones that were in SLI and the one that works was the PhysX.

I'll try re flashing the BIOS now.

William.

Hmmm...
 
So you have been running 3-way SLI without issues....
Then yesterday you set the NVCP to (2) way with physX... and you didnt shutdown (reboot) for 24hrs?
So I assume it was in "Sleep Mode" overnight, or did you have it turned off?

So do you have your comp setup for Sleep Mode or not?
 
Do you have any PS2 devices connected? 
 
Have you tried a system restore to before the problems occured? nevermind, just saw your SSD's 
 

You might want to look over my Nvidia Driver Guide http://forums.evga.com/fb.ashx?m=1174372
 
Then -properly- uninstall your current driver
After the graphics driver is done uninstalling, it will ask for a RESTART
on that restart, look for the "Standard VGA Adaptor" has failed message (shown below)

*yours will show (1) extra notice
 
At that point, do not install the new driver (or anything else)
Simply Reboot (maybe twice) till the message does not appear...
Only -then- will you want to install the new driver
 
I suggest 301.24 Beta as that driver has worked for me and my 580's to FIX code 43 errors due to a BUG in prior driversets

 
 

I would certainly try the 301.24's before a OS reinstall
 
My big worry is that your issues are appearing on the splash screen, thats a very bad sign

I am going to PM you my phone number bro, lets talk

I appreciate the offer of phone help but I'd prefer to keep this on the forums in case someone else has some ideas. I also want to include this thread in an RMA ticket, as it's quickly looking like that's what it's coming to.

I've just re-installed W7 and since I tried 296 first I'm going to install the 301 beta. I currently have the one good card in the first PCIE slot so the driver will install. I can then add a second card in and see what happens.

William.

I can assure you William, this guy is amazing! solved my problem! :)