So after completely destroying a Phenom 9600 BE (What a waste, I didn't even enjoy it when it was functioning), I checked the Fry's advertisement. They were running a deal on an E8400 and some ECS board for $169.99. I immediately hopped in the car, since that was the processor I was looking at to replace it after being disappointed with AMD's new processors. So I get home after picking it up, have a hell of a time with the HSF I purchased but eventually connect everything and think I'm ready to go.

So I fire it up, run through the BIOS and check everything, make some minor changes, and save and exit. Upon entering Windows (Vista-64), my on-board USB ports failed to work, so I switched to a USB controller, which did. At that point I went to install the drivers that came with the board only two find my drive missing. I eventually copied over the set-up folder to a flash drive and upon installation was met with "This OS is not support." Manually downloading correct chipset drivers and audio drivers fails. So I'm without an IDE CD/DVD-ROM, motherboard USB driver support, ethernet, and audio drivers.

In a situation like this I would just reformat, but I'm currently in corporate housing with non of my OS software. Any suggestions? Should I just try and return the board and get a better one? I'm low on cash since I had to replace a failed PSU and now a processor.

My current set-up is:

ECS GF7050VT-M (1333 MHZ)
E8400
4GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2-800 (running at 667)
nVidia GeForce 8800 GT 512
Windows Vista 64-bit

The board supports 45nm cpu's. Make sure your bios is up to date.

http://www.ecsusa.com/ECSWebSite/S [...] 69&LanID=9

Here are the 64bit drivers:

http://www.ecsusa.com/ECSWebSite/P [...] 44&LanID=9

If possible, try a 32-bit OS. If that won't work, return the only board.