Maximum PC

I have been a long time fan of ASUS, especially their technical/warranty support. Based on recent articles I read in Maximum PC, I decided to give MSI a shot at my business. I liked their pricing/value and they had the exact features I was looking for. I built a midrange gaming system and everything worked fine. Based on that success I decided to build another system for a family member.

I purchased an MSI P45 Neo3-FR moterboard and decided to build a modest gaming rig around it. Everything went fine with the build and it booted right away. I installed Vista Home Premium (32 bit) and there were no problems. When I installed the video drivers for my BFG 9800GTX OC2 and rebooted, there was just a black screen and an amber light on the monitor after starting Windows. I found that I could go into Safe Mode and video did display. I called BFG tech support and they had me try different versions of the driver... then they had me return the card. The new card did the same thing. I tried re-imaging with windows XP, Vista (again), different power supplies and video cards (from my good system). Eventually I contacted MSI's online tech support and they had me try all the things I had already done again. They then advised me to contact their RMA department for replacement of the motherboard. I went to their site and filled out the RMA request and immediately received an email stating that they received my request. I waited for over a week and did not get a response. I submitted another RMA request and waited another week... still no response.

Has MSI gone MIA?

Went to Their technical support site - back to my original ticket and explained what happened and asked for a phone number. They posted a reply with a person and a number to call and he has given me an RMA.

Sorry to jump the gun

MSI is pretty good compared to most on service. Interesting that it took that long though.

I had the exact same problem with the exact msi board. When I installed the ati drivers my screen went black on reboot and would only go into safe mode.

The way you fix the problem is th flash the bios to the newest version...which is 1.4. It fixes that problem. I made this post from my msi neo3-fr board with drivers installed!