Running Windows XP Pro w SP3 I have a duo core intel 2.6 with 4 gb ram 2 WD 150 10,00RPMS Hard drives in RAID 0 with a 3rd 500gb for storage
I run 2 8800 Ultra GTX video cards in SLI. I updated the drivers to 180.48 from NVIDIAs Web site with my SLI disabled and the bridge removed.
Rebooted fine running the new drivers on one card. I then installed the 2nd card & bridge jumper and enabled SLI mode through nvidia control
panel. This was going fine until it said it would need to shut down some software to finish the installation. I hit ok and instant
CRASH to black screen.
No luck on reboot. Black screen. I Pulled one card out swapped sockets and cards one at a time nothing.

I could boot to the bios screen tapping F8 and even get to the safeboot boot screen holding DEL key and tried to boot to last known good configuration. I tried every option on that screen and still got black screen.

After some research I then booted to my CD Rom drive 1st and used my Windows XP Pro installation disk. To try to repair. The windows
Install CD is only showing the D drive which was my data drive. Which has none of the windows system files on it just storage stuff.. I was ble to swicth to the C: drive with the dos prompt but could get any further to see anything on the drive with any dos commands.
I then read up on Linux and Knoppix and created a LINUX 5.1.1 bootable CD and was able to "see" my hard drive partions. The Knoppix desktop showed Hard Disk nvidia_fdbijcig1 and Hard Drive sdc1 and can click on them and see all the files and folders. The nvidia one looks to be a complete set of all files and folders from my C: drive. And the sd1c has all the storage drive stuff.

I then went to media and saw these items cdrom fd0 hd hda hdb nvidia_fdbicig1 sdc1 test

Right clicking and checking properties they all all empty and 3.4mb in size with the exception of nvidia_fdbicg1 it is 279.5GB with 126.46 free same as my c: drive was. and sdc1 has 465GB with 452.7 free.

Not sure at where to go from here. I beleive I could get a exteranl drive hooked to muy USB and copy these files to at least save them...but I think I could be just a few steps away from maybe getting my computer to boot up using the 2 150GB 10,00RPM drives in RAID 0 again...

Any help greatly appreciated.

I dont know where to go from here but it appears that at a critical step in the update driver process NVIDIA's install process crapped
out and left me hanging with a C: drive that cant boot....

Any help greatly appreciated,,,