Posting here in case I can get lucky here one more time, know I'm wearing thin though so not expecting anything.

QUESTION 1) Windows/Motherboard question.

Thought my MB was bad, and last ditch troubleshoot was to unhook everything and then try with just memory, CPU, and PSU. Discovered a fixable problem (CMOS related), and it POSTED. So I hooked everything back up. Trouble is I have 5 SATA drives, and didn't mark them to be able to ensure I put them back into same SATA slots on motherboard. Upon restarting, Windows gave an error message and did a "recovery" that now has things messed up. (Can't update Windows as one example). Could this be due to plugging SATA devices into different slots on the MB??? Any way to find out which cables/devices I had plugged into which slots previously? Please I hope I don't have to start over with a new Windows load from scratch.

QUESTION 2) Display question.

Am experiencing annoying problems depending on whether I have my computer hooked up to my monitor in my room or to my receiver in the den. The receiver is hooked up to an HD Vizio TV. With the exact same computer, and the exact same settings, games will appear full screen in my room on my monitor but won't on the TV in the den. (For example, Age of Empires fills up the screen on my 1080P monitor while is only a square in the middle of the 1080P TV. WTF??? Another example, the intro to Civ V plays great on my monitor, but I get nothing but sound when it was in the den. WTF? I even carried it back and hooked it up again to make sure I wasn't imagining things. SAME GAME SETTINGS. SAME VIDEO CARDS. SAME NVIDIA SETTINGS. I don't change ANYTHING. But when I play Age of Empires in my room on my monitor, nice and pretty on the whole screen. Out in the den, it's got two thick black lines up and down both sides as it's just a square in the middle of the obviously widescreen HD TV.

Sorry for the length again.

BTW, today is day 13 of my Steam Experiment TWO. And I have verified every day so far that the games are working. If two weeks is still the problem, I should be seeing something either tomorrow or the next day right?? Against all odds I'm finding myself hoping that indefinite offline mode will in fact work. Sure would change my attitude about Steam.

The most important is the drive with the bootsector on it and the drive with Windows installed on it, just have only that drive in the first SATA port on the mainboard, the other drives can be later assigned using the diskmanager in Windows.
As for Windows not updating, I'm afraid the damage already has been done, Windows makes a hardware configuration snapshot which is coupled to your registration, when it is changed you will probably need to reregister which hopefully can be done with the same code, after reregistering it should update again.
I would wait with regegistering until you have your problem solved because the code only works a few times. Don't know, I still think you need to look in the scanningrange settings of the drivers or display and try setting it for overscan.
As for the video not playing but the sound is is generally a codec issue try uninstalling re-installing video codecs.

What scaling settings are you using in the "Adjust desktop size and position" part of the NVIDIA Control Panel?

Using these settings might help:

Scaling mode: Aspect Ratio

Perform scaling on: GPU

Override the scaling mode set by games and programs: YES

I bet you say that to all the girls. :P

As far as not updating windows. Check the date is correct in the system tray. You reset your CMOS, so it reset your clock. Windows can't find updates when the date is 1900, not sure why. Probably a problem with the receiver not liking the timings from the graphics card. Did it work before on the TV correctly? Try hooking it up straight to the TV, and see if you get the same problems. Probably more timing issues. As far as the Civ V movie, it could be in a resolution that your receiver or TV does not support.

Edit: you may want to try another HDMI port, some ports have a different HDMI version with different resolutions. I know my older LCD screen only wants the PC on HDMI 2. The other ports work, but the picture will either have a black bar on one of the sides or will be too large and overfills the screen.

My steam experiment failed horribly on my last trip. I turned it to offline mode the night before a flight. I probably browsed some more online, not in steam, but firefox. After browsing for an hour or two, I shutdown (do you have to leave the thing in hibernate or Sleep mode now). Anyways, I launch Civ4 on the plane, it can't find a connection and no more offline mode.

Thanks, I think I've got this one mastered. It wasn't just the SATA drives, as it turns out I also had not reconnected all of memory sticks and this too might have been the culprit. Regardless, I hooked everything back up, including the memory sticks and both video cards, then did a system restore back to before I had the problem in the first place, and everything APPEARS, I say APPEARS okay now. Haven't gotten really into all sorts of the things I was doing with it before, but so far so good. Yet it plays both sound and video when I'm in my room/office hooked to the monitor. My video drivers are up to date as possible, and again, no issues whatsoever when I hooked it up in my room to replace the one with the questionable motherboard that question one was about.

It just seems there is something "wrong" when I hook it up out there, and I haven't ever tried hooking it up directly to the TV and bypassing the receiver because as it turns out THAT would be a major PITA, but I really think it's got something to do with the receiver, even though it is a relative brand new, HD 3D ready (in fact I watch 3D TV on it all the time out there). It's just bizarre, and I guess no one has the answers.

AND THANK YOU so much for answering. I know my constant pleas and length have outgrown their welcome here and I am trying to respect that as much as possible. THANK YOU very much for the suggestion. I will check these settings and see what happens. But I do want to remind you that whatever these settings are currently, the fact remains in my room/office with my 27 inch HD monitor, I get full screen on these examples I cited and perfect functionality (as with the movie intro to Civ V) of both sound and picture. Yet all I do is unplug it from the 27 inch monitor, carry it out to the den, plug it into the receiver that the 42 inch HD TV is hooked up to, and suddenly, without changing any Nvidia settings, any game settings, any Windows settings, any settings anywhere, I no longer get full screen with Age of Empires and the Civ V movie intro has sound but no picture. Yes, unfortunately this has also been true my whole life. Far too little length in one arena and far too much in the other. Life, it seems, is not without irony.

Thank you for that reply. You had every right to tell me off for being a troll there and needlessly derailing your thread. I would have been happy to offer up a real answer were I not a computer idiot.

New Question: Nvidia Drivers.

It appears to me that most of the Nvidia GeForce cards post 400 series use the same drivers, as I have 470's in one of my rig and 560ti's in the other, yet both use the exact same Nvidia drivers.

Since I thought I was going to have to basically rebuild the rig with the bad motherboard, I purchased two 760's to replace the two 560ti's since that rig has the Z77 chipset with the Ivy Bridge processor and includes the PCI-E X 16 3.0 bus, thought I'd get a couple of 3.0 cards to fill up those slots.

Would you go ahead and uninstall all of the Nvidia software/drivers prior to switching them out or would you just take the 560ti's out and plug the 760's in. Same question applies to switching the 560ti's in for the other rigs two 470's. In essence. both of my gaming rigs (room/office and den) would get updates. I do sincerely apologize, I was not in any way whatsoever trying to "tell you off" at all. Your reply made me LOL and I was merely responding honestly.

TRUE STORY: My ex-wife and I had been married for about 4 or 5 months and we had our first really big, yelling included, knock down drag out fight. To this day I can't recall what it was over (it was over 30 years ago), but I recall VIVIDLY how it ended, with my tail tucked between my legs and me whimpering away. She said, and I quote (can still hear it in her voice) "You're a prick. And a little one at that."

BOOM. End of argument. End of discussion. To this day I don't know how we lasted 7 years after that, but we at least made it that far.

Again, I'm the one that's sorry. I was not trying to be a smart ass. It was just TMI I guess, and now I've gone and provide even more, but I did so only to show you I really wasn't angry at all with your reply, as it made me LOL and nod in agreement.

This is silly, I owe you an apology! I was trying to thank you for having a sense of humor about it. :D Seriously, I loved you reply and in no way did I take it as anything but in jest. I'm going to back out of here before my foot gets any further into my mouth. :P

In my experience uninstalling first is unnecessary, but a new install will (probably) be needed once the new cards are in (might be a good idea to use the 'clean install' option, just in case).

Yes, you were correct. The system date was showing April 2012. Once I rehooked up everything again, and did a system restore, and corrected the system date, all appears well, so far. THANK YOU. Yeah, I've often wondered whether hooking it up directly to the TV would change things, as I've suspected this is the problem myself. But the TV and receiver are installed in such a way that it would be a major PITA and I haven't tried it yet, although I still may.

In fact, originally intended to hook the computer directly to the TV with an HDMI cable, and hook my sound directly to the receiver with an optical out cable. This is how I had originally done it. But no matter what I did in Windows, the optical cable out to the receiver wouldn't result in real surround sound. It was basically 2.1 sound, despite configuring it in windows as 5.1) and I have grown far too accustomed to hearing my enemies behind me over the years with true 5.1 surround sound to end that. Once I hooked up the HDMI cable directly to the receiver and configured that in Windows for 5.1, I had real surround sound.

Again, I don't understand this, as I actually preferred the optical cable method as I had purchased a now useless new sound card to use in the den. Perhaps it's me, but I just could NOT get it to give me true 5.1 surround sound using the optical out cable from the computer. It shouldn't be a resolution issue, as my monitor and Vizio TV both support 1080p and that is what my computer is always set too..

THANK YOU FOR ANSWERING.
Thank you. I think I will do this.

THANKS!

ONE LAST (?) QUESTION:

I asked my motherboard vendor about this but haven't received a reply yet, so gonna ask here too.

Presently have two 560ti's running in SLI mode. I plugged them into the PCI-E X 16_1 and PCE-E X 16_2 slots in the motherboard, per MB instructions and manual labeling and in fact the MB itself lists the slots as 1 and 2.

However, the Nvidia software insists on calling the card in the number ONE slot the number TWO card, and calling the card in the number TWO slot the number ONE card, and I don't know but wonder if this explains this issue.

ISSUE: If I have the HDMI cable plugged into the card in the number one SLOT (labeled the number TWO card in the Nvidia software), I do NOT see any BIOS info onscreen, and only get a picture once Windows loads up. If I plug the HDMI cable into the card in the number two SLOT (Labeled number ONE card in the Nvidia software), I DO get the BIOS screen but then get nothing when Windows loads. I have to move the HDMI cable to the other card to get a pic once Windows loads.

Any ideas??? Don't worry about it until I switch out the 560ti's and see what happens with the two 760's????

I'll make this my last question for sure, AND JUST WANT TO THANK YOU FOLKS AT GOG ONCE AGAIN FOR ALL OF YOUR HELP.

YOU GUYS REALLY ARE AWESOME.

God and/or my parents owe me an apology. :P

I went for one of those penis enlargement ads once, but they really helped, they sended me this huge magnifying glass. =P

I guess it didn't work?