"There was an error while gathering PCI card information" error message

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Level 1

82 points

"There was an error while gathering PCI card information" error message

This is a message returned whenever I run System Profiler and try to examine what is in the PCI slots.
I've been asked by a third-party parts supplier to send a System Profile report but saving the profile is impossible as it simply sticks when it gets to the PCI part of the report. I presume the failure to produce the profile is due to the error message "There was an error while gathering PCI card information." What could be causing this and how do I correct it? The manufacturer's developers urgently need the profile to investigate a hardware problem as they cannot reproduce the bugs I'm experiencing.

Model Name: Mac Pro
Model Identifier: MacPro3,1
Mac OS Version: 10.5.7 (fully up to date). Permissions repaired. Caches deep cleared, PRAM reset.

Many different Macs since 1984, Mac OS X (10.5.7)

Posted on Jul 23, 2009 10:54 PM

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Answer 1

DPArt

Level 3

604 points

Jul 24, 2009 1:39 AM in response to Neal Jackson

Do you have a flashed 4870 card?

They will cause that.

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Answer 2

Neal Jackson Author

Level 1

82 points

Jul 24, 2009 6:47 AM in response to DPArt

No. It's an eVGA GTX285 Mac version PCIe card. With EFI64. All is as it should be.

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Answer 3

Jul 24, 2009 12:45 PM in response to Neal Jackson

It's an eVGA GTX285 Mac version PCIe card. With EFI64. All is as it should be.

Were there any OSX drivers to install on the CD that came with the card?

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Answer 4

Neal Jackson Author

Level 1

82 points

Jul 24, 2009 1:25 PM in response to Malcolm Rayfield

Yes there were. More importantly there were newer drivers on the nVidia website than those supplied on the eVGA CD which came with the GTX285 card. Neither sets of drivers work with the Sims 3.

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Answer 5

The hatter

Level 9

60,980 points

Jul 24, 2009 3:11 PM in response to Neal Jackson

Check eVGA for news and updates also:
http://www.evga.com/forums/tt.asp?forumid=87

Some people though have been very impatient and want to pull rabbit out of a hat, or think you can turn out new drivers in a day. Instead I'm thinking it will have to be in or just before the next Apple update.

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Answer 6

Neal Jackson Author

Level 1

82 points

Jul 24, 2009 11:27 PM in response to The hatter

Thanks for the link to EVGA. It's plain wrong of you to criticize EVGA customers justified impatience. Reading through a lot of the postings I can see many EVGA customers have every right to complain. There look to be no basic customer services in place and that is just plain wrong for a graphics card costing $450.00.

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Answer 7

The hatter

Level 9

60,980 points

Jul 25, 2009 1:38 AM in response to Neal Jackson

Someone may have rushed the product, or not understood the differences and difficulties, but drivers for Vista took a year plus and was the biggest issue for problems. And I've seen ATI beta development for the Mac take most of a year.

Windows 7 adds on to Vista, millions of people used the beta and now the RC and drivers are always coming out monthly with fixes, improvements, and to address problems in individual games and applications.

If someone asks, fine, but to keep asking and complaining over and over? maybe if they want to and know how to do testing and troubleshooting they should ask to contribute.

Maybe knowing how long it takes companies like MicroMat, Alsoft, SoftRAID, FirmTek and others I'm more forgiving. ATTO took a month to identify a bug in their SCSI controller and get a test beta to me to see if it worked, then took another 3-4 months to get that in a final format.

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Answer 8

Neal Jackson Author

Level 1

82 points

Jul 25, 2009 12:49 PM in response to Neal Jackson

I have located the problem. It was caused by a Creative Labs Sound Card in one of the additional PCI slots. Take that out and the profiler report completes. Oddly, put it back in any PCI slot and profiler will not work.

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Answer 9

Neal Jackson Author

Level 1

82 points

Jul 25, 2009 1:44 PM in response to The hatter

Hatter,

Just an opinion. I think the point made by several of the EVGA customers is that relatively speaking a gaming card for the Mac is not such an issue as one for Windows. We have far fewer games and rigs for EVGA to test. The card is only intended for half a dozen Mac models, all of which are tightly controlled by Apple.

Since purchasing Vista Ultimate the day it came out and running Vista RC for some time before that my family members and I have run:

Sniper Elite,
Call of Duty 4 and 5
Brothers in Arms ****'s Highway
Stalker Chernobyl
Stalker Clear Sky
F.E.A.R
F.E.A.R Expansion
F.E.A.R 2
Several STEAM purchased games
Biothingy
Velvet Assassin
Fallout 3

and quite a few others like ROME + Expansions, you know, all the usual younger audience stuff only available in PC format- I can only remember the few I played 🙂

Stalker's were both infuriatingly buggy. Point is, though typically PC glitchy, none of those games actually failed to run with any version of the Windows Nvidia drivers I used beta or otherwise.

From what I can gather over at EVGA, games are actually freezing the OS forcing a hard restart which can corrupt and destabilize an OSX install. Not a joking matter and a serious blunder for the card vendor. Apple should pull this product from their store until such times they and Nvidia can prevent these disastrous crashes. As an experienced Mac user you will know the consequences of such low-level .kext bugs.

And, I may be wrong, but in the case you referred to (ATTO) I'm sure customers were kept informed as to the issue existing and their working on a fix. EVGA seem to have gone dumb and are not supplying customers with any information. Not even a tacit nod that the driver bugs exist.

Mac customers usually pay more for good reason.

Anyway, thank you for your input.

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