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I have this desktop PC that my brother gave me. It had windows XP so I wiped it and put windows 10. Works fine, but in device manager, there are no drivers for the co-processor. The CPU is an Intel Q6700 @2.66GHz. The mobo uses the NVIDIA Geforce 9300 chipset which also includes drivers for the onboard VGA. I think the co-processor driver is for the onboard VGA, but can't really find info on it. I have the on board VGA disabled as much as possible, but the co-processor still shows up in device manager so I have it disabled.

Do you think it will impact the performance of the mobo? I currently have 8 gigs of ram installed. It has a MSI Twin Frozr II/OC video card. Only drivers available are from Windows 10 dated in 2015. I'm planning on selling the desktop, but was wondering about the co-processor issue.

https://www.asus.com/supportonly/p5n7av ... knowledge/

From Googling around that seems to be part of the nForce chipset drivers. I also vaguely remember having all kinds of issues with NVidia chipsets in those days. The "co-processor" is probably the monitoring system chip (fan speed and temperature monitoring).

You probably don't need it, but Windows may not clock the CPU down to idle without it, although there's probably a simpler fall back method it'll use. Also, if it doesn't throttle down at idle it's not a disaster considering back in WinXP days there wasn't much throttling going on anyway. CPUs back then didn't throttle down as much as they do now, and the CPU will just run at full speed all the time, which is not a real problem.

I'd suggest:

- Install HWMonitor: https://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html
Run it and see if you can see the cpu temps and core clock speeds. Make a note of the core clock speeds and see if it's slower than the 2.66 GHz base clock speed.

- Install Prime95:
Run it and see if the CPU clocks throttle up to 2.66 GHz.

As a precaution (for any PC really) I'd run Prime95 all night to see if it's stable. That maxes out all CPUs and RAM. If it crashes overnight, you don't have a stable system.

OK thanks for those which I already have on my laptop. I'll do that tomorrow morning as the temps here are almost 110 degrees outside, and over 90 in my garage where I've been playing with this old desktop on my workbench.

I also installed Linux Mint 20.1 which installed just fine with no issues, so I was going to leave it on Linux, but if I want to sell it, most of the buying public will want Windows and not Linux.

Ok I ran the prime95 for about 30 minutes, and all 4 CPU's were maxed out at 100% all the time and never dropped until I terminated prime95..

Looks like temp & fan telemetry is working and Windows is managing the CPU clock so it looks good. As I said before, I'd let it cook all night or several hours at least to torture test it for stability, and if it doesn't crash, I'd say it's solid.

OK I finally got the driver installed. I followed these instructions:

I searched for the specific error in driver details: \VEN_10DE&DEV_0AA3&SUBSYS_83561043&REV_B1\3&267a616a&0&1D requires further installation

It lead me to the first google search which was for an HP laptop. I tried those instructions and drivers but they did not work, so I proceeded with the second search. This got me to this site eventually: https://www.win-raid.com/t15f37-NVIDIA- ... r-Win.html

Which then lead me to this site: https://www.win-raid.com/t1300f25-T...o ... l#msg15574 in order to import the certificate to have the drivers accepted.

I then downloaded the 1. "Latest nForce Driverpacks for Win7-10" from the first link above from section "B" Mod+signed nForce Driverpacks". I ran the installer which worked and installed a bunch of stuff under system devices. So "Fernando" did some really nice work and very clear instructions especially on the certificate issue. If he was here where I live, I would buy him a few beers.

So in the end, the missing driver was important after I saw all the stuff it installed. Note to self: NEVER USE ANOTHER nFORCE chipset mobo.

Glad you solved it.

Yeah, nForce was the suck back in the day. Lot's of issues.

I had an XFX board with NForce drivers. I remember having to change one of the settings in the Ethernet Adapter properties (can't remember which) because the adapter would randomly quit. The drivers never got updated either.