On 14 Okt., 14:29, "Poppy" <popyb...@optusnet.com.au> wrote:[color=blue]
> Oops. The model number for the board in question isAsusP5B-E not P5N-E.
> Sorry everyone. Anyway...
>
> This board (withVistaHome Pre) is now back with the customer, hence my
> memory failure with board ID. And unfortunately I cannot check bad driver
> details. That's my unshakeable excuse for all you nit-picking sceptics out
> there.
>
> Graig, your experience is very interesting. This difference in behaviour
> requires explanation. Here are some thoughts.
>
> According to your experience, it seems that theP5K-SE board has an Attansic
> L1 chip which may well not be identical to that on the P5B-E board even
> though they appear to be the same to the OS. I note too that Attansic has
> been bought out recently which probably accounts for the change of driver
> name from Attansic to Atheros.
>
> Since my original post yesterday, I also discovered that theAsuswebsite
> added, on 8th October 2007, a beta driver for Atheros L1 controller for the
> P5B-E mobo. It may well be that this is the same deadly driver that MS has
> on its Update server.
>
> I concur with others that the moral of the story is be careful when
> installing hardwaredrivers. Or as is my foolish motto... do as I say, not
> what I do :-)
>
> Poppy.
>
> "Craig Brown" <broca...******.com> wrote in message
>
> news:O38kEOIDIHA.5208@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
>[color=green]
> > Hi,[/color]
>[color=green]
> > I have anASUSP5K-SE with the Attsanic L1 network controller and the
> > driver from Windows Update worked great for me. It was newer than any
> > driver available from anywhere else and have been running it for a few
> > weeks without problem.[/color]
>[color=green]
> > Craig[/color]
>[color=green]
> > "Poppy" <popyb...@optusnet.com.au> wrote in message
> >news:CE0ABD48-77AC-41FA-8B6C-A8C3D76D9073@microsoft.com...[color=darkred]
> >> Here is a warning to those with Attansic L1 Gigabit network controller
> >> chips on their motherboard, such asASUSP5N-E.[/color][/color]
>[color=green][color=darkred]
> >> Do NOT, repeat NOT, install the recommended network adapter driver from
> >> Microsoft Update. The recommended hardware driver appears with a
> >> different manufacturer name, not Attansic. (sorry I can't remember).[/color][/color]
>[color=green][color=darkred]
> >> If you download and install the recommended hardware driver,Vistawill
> >> no longer boot normally. It hangs while the scrolling bar is on screen.
> >> Because other things were downloaded at the same time onto my PC, it took
> >> much time and fiddling to figure out the cause.Vistawould boot into
> >> Safe Mode OK. Control panel revealed nothing amiss. The clue was the
> >> failed attempt to boot into Safe Mode with Networking. This suggested
> >> that the updated network chip driver was the cause.[/color][/color]
>[color=green][color=darkred]
> >> Removing the driver while in Safe Mode did NOT solve the problem for me
> >> becauseVistaseemed to reload the wrong driver ?from backup, upon
> >> attempted normal reboot. Because of the mess I had made to identify the
> >> problem, I needed to do a clean install to recover. Downloading and
> >> permitting an install of hardware driver from MS Update reproduced the
> >> same noboot problem. This time it was possible to recover to a last known
> >> good state because I had a very recent good state to go back to.[/color][/color]
>[color=green][color=darkred]
> >> I suggest hiding this particular update if it is recommended for your PC.[/color][/color][/color]

I wanted to add my experience:
A couple of days ago I bought
- Asus P5K
- 2x1GB Kingston PC6400
- Albatron 8800GTS
My old setup completely died. So I had to reinstall, and this time I
wanted a XP & Vista dual boot.
I start out installing XP Pro, then install ALL drivers from the asus
driver CD, then install video driver.
All is fine so far. I then install Vista as dual boot. Then install
ALL drivers from cd as before. However
I notice here, that some of the drivers already are installed, and
that the versioning scheme seems
different, and it looks like some of the drivers on the cd are older
than in Vista?! The cancel
button didn't work, so everything was installed (I'm not impressed by
asus' "automatic" driver install).
Anyway I then do a windows update, I see the new LAN driver. I
install this and the windows hangs.
Cannot boot - same as you guys describe.
After a lot of hassle, I finally delete my two partitions with xp &
vista, and start over. And here's the weird
part: I'm now unable to install the LAN utility from the CD. If I do
Windows hangs. I can install the driver
only from device manager. But if I use the CD to install drivers it
will hang.
And this is really strange, because I'm nowhere near the windows
update driver - I'm not even connected
to the LAN (since there's no driver installed). I have to reason,
that the driver somehow affected my motherboard!
I've now managed to install both XP and Vista with LAN driver only,
and it seems to work.

/Best regards