newbprogrammer

I want to post my experiences, since I think my experiences will help with troubleshooting. I have been around computers my whole life, and I am a middle-aged man - have mostly worked with computers for utility, but have had programmer friends and consider myself a novice programmer. There are steps in this process that aren't entirely clear, so I will show how I got the egpu setup to work: (1)I ran up against a detection issue (Error 43) when installing the egpu. I have a Lenovo Thinkpad T400 (running Windows 8.1). I have a beast pcie board, 650w earthwatts antec psu, zotac gtx 660 graphics card, and viewsonic vt1900led. I used an HDMI connection to connect video card to monitor. I tried to simply install recent drivers, but this did not fix the issue. I realized that I could not do anything more with just the hardware set up, so I contacted nando (and got the setup 1.3 software). Note:-> This may seem like a silly thing, but it is something worth mentioning. Originally, I questioned whether my PSU was actually working. I also did not have the exact same size power connector cables in my PSU to match the cables provided by PCIE board to connect it to PSU. (The connector cable of 24 pin cable was slightly larger - and also there were no six pin connectors coming from PSU - only 8 pin). Long story short, PSU only activates when entire setup is connected to computer. Otherwise, you won't see it activated. Also, the fact that the power connectors coming from PSU had slightly more pins didn't matter - they could still be connected to the cables provided with PCIE board to connect to PCIE board. (2) I didn't do anything fancy to set up the software. I simply followed nando's instructions, so there aren't really any issues I can talk about that I ran into related to this part. (3) I initialized the setup 1.3 software after restarting computer. I chose "menu-based" option and hit F5 (eGPU setup had to be on). The software recognized it. The new software allows you to hit F1 to get explanations of menu items which is helpful. I think I chose PCI ports -> Enable all ports - and the Zotac showed up in the box to the side with the port where it is attached to. (4) I realized at this point that I would have to do a DSDT override (to ensure that I would have enough available memory freed to run card). There were a couple of interesting parts to this journey: -Instead of using the WBT Tools link (where software didn't fully work for me), I had to navigate to DIY eGPU experiences 2.0 thread page 27, where user spanning provides a link to a DSDT editor Linux_Windows that actually did work for me. -The WDK kit software did not work for me. I had to navigate to link in this thread artearte provides for the 4.0 ASL compiler. This did work for me. (5) I should mention that at this point, I think I was having some trouble with the DSDT process, or I just decided to run a compaction in setup 1.3 - chose the large option (I think it is 48GB or something) and chose to compact IGPU & EGPU - and restrict EGPU to 32 bit. This did not solve my problem of error 43, but I thought it is worth noting that I tried this step. (6) I had originally followed all the DSDT override code steps up to inserting the code QWord Memory items into the dst file. When I opened dsl file (used notepad ++ for this), I originally could not find the DWord Memory entries. I had searched and found nothing. I actually had to physically scroll down to find them (a simple step I know - but something worth noting). Upon pasting the code, this step worked out. (7) Another thing worth noting has to do with the aml file. For those who are new to programming, you actually have to drag that file into the compiler folder before initiating it with command prompt code. Again - this seems like a simple thing, but not everybody who is doing this have been programming for years. (8) The other code steps went through fairly straightforward, and now it was time to return to setup 1.3 (at this point I'm still getting code 43). I run compaction again (this time same 48GB option - or the larger memory option - and chose eGPU for compaction only and chose no restriction for 32 bit space). I restarted crossing my fingers - and again - code 43. (9) Here's where things get interesting. I read in some forum about eGPU (can't remember what post) where simply inserting expresscard after boot does something. So I did it. There was nothing. Not even a detection in Device Manager. I was like - OK - I guess that didn't work. Then I restart, and boom - no Error 43 and graphics card driver detected and working fine. Simply inserting expresscard after boot. No code - no fancy stuff. (10) So I'm like- Ok - great - but monitor still is not being detected. I tried installing driver (btw this monitor has Windows XP driver - you have to actually click on option to let driver install when you doubleclick it - it will say something like driver is not compatible - but I think I just decided to hit OK eventually and it installed). I was like - Ok - I guess I'll go back to caveman thought - and unplug hdmi from card, and plug it back in, and then unplug hdmi from monitor, and plug it back in - and Boom - monitor detected in control panel display options. So I'm telling this story not because I'm a fancy programmer - but because I'm a simple man, and I had to actually figure out some simple steps that may help an average joe actually get their eGPU setup working. Good luck.