Gigabyte GA-K8NMF-9 pci slots don't work

[Mesaeus]

After answering hundreds of questions (occasionally even right ) I can use some help myself. I built a pc for a customer with a Gigabyte GA-K8NMF-9 motherboard. This board is based on the nforce 4x chipset, it has 1 pci-e x16 slot, one pci-e x4 slot and two pci slots. The pci slots won't work right with any card inserted. Windows XP will correctly identify the cards, install the correct drivers and there is no error message anywhere not even in the logs.

The problem is, it just doesn't work. I've tested ten different pci network cards from old Intel pro/100 cards to 3Com, realtek etc. All cards that work ok in other computers. In this one, whatever I do there's no communication, the sent and received counters stay on 0. Eventually I had to use a USB ethernet adapter to get a second network connection going (the built in port works flawlessly). If I try a sound card, I get the stuttering effect where the first 100ms part of a sample gets repeated over and over again. (Which used to be the soundtrack to another Soundblaster Live crash on my old pc). The computer works perfectly, while the sounds stutters and repeats like mad. I haven't gotten any BSOD yet, it's just that the network cards won't send data and the sound card will only play techno

Now I'm going to probably RMA it tomorrow since it's obvious the PCI slots just won't work, but I was curious if someone here has encountered this before; it was most certainly a first for me.

[glc]

The only thing I can think of is try the latest version of the NForce platform drivers.

[Mesaeus]

Tried the 6.70 drivers, no effect. Updated the bios to F9 which is the latest on Gigabyte's site, and still no change. This puppy is going back to the factory tomorrow. So nobody has ever encountered something similar ?