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General FAQ - A MUST TO READ BEFORE POSTING QUESTIONS


sn0wl

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Q [ Which drivers can I use on my computer and how to use Modded INFs? ]

Q [ Is there a more recent driver that supports my NVIDIA driven Laptop? ]

Q [ Is there a more recent driver that supports my NVIDIA Go card? ]

Q [ Is there a more recent driver that supports my GPU? ]

Q [ Is there a more recent driver that supports my %put in your Laptop manufacturer% laptop? ]

Q [ Is there a more recent driver than the one supplied with my Laptop? ]

Q [ Is there a more recent driver than %put in any version numer%? ]

A [ YES :) We provide all and any NVIDIA graphic card drivers ever released or leaked starting with driver version 27x.xx. These could be official NVIDIA drivers or inofficially ones. Please read drv_quickstart.gifForceWare Updater's Quickstart Guide ]

Q [ Which drivers are best for my computer? ]

Q [ What is the best driver for my NVIDIA driven Laptop? ]

Q [ What is the best driver for my NVIDIA Go card? ]

Q [ What is the best driver that supports my GPU? ]

Q [ What is the best driver that supports my %put in your Laptop manufacturer% Laptop? ]

Q [ Which one is the fastest driver? ]

Q [ Which driver has the best Image Quality? ]

Q [ Which one is the most stable driver? ]

Q [ Which one is the driver which has best OC capabilities? ]

Q [ Which one is the best driver for %put in Game name%? ]

Q [ What is the recommended Forceware/Detonator to use with my Laptop? I need advice in what works best. ]

A [ Do not ask "what's best" because this question cannot be answered objectively. Each and everyone has their own view about what's best in a certain areas. The best is what works best for you! So obviously there is no general answer on your question. Everybody has different priorities, needs and wishes.

Q [ According to this page you have to uninstall older drivers first. Question is why? ]

A [ The reason behind uninstalling first is just to ensure the desired files are installed properly. It's the catch-all whether you are downgrading or upgrading. There are times when files are mis-matched among versions. Which obviously could cause issues. ]

Q [ What can get broken? Why doesn't installation do it automatically or at least warn me/refuse to install before uninstall? ]

A [ Some versions do automatically uninstall previous versions. I am leaning towards saying Dell releases do this. Why it isn't standard? I would guess to say not uninstalling allows a driver rollback but OEMs do testing and ensure proper drivers therefore they would provide the automatic uninstall.

Sometimes (not always) using setup.exe will uninstall a driver first and then install the new driver after a reboot. This doesn't happen often, but this should be the prefered way to install a driver.

So best method is to uninstall first before installing the new driver, it also pays to use something like Driver Cleaner to remove the files that Uninstall doesn't (most of them) ]

Q [ Where am I allowed to post? ]

A [ We feel that both guests and members should be allowed to post. However, to help us reduce the recent influx of SPAM we have limited who can post where.

Members are allowed to reply in News & NVIDIA Drivers and can post anywhere else except the Archived sections.

Guests are allowed to post/reply only in Discussion & Support section at this time.

UPDATE: After our Forum Upgrade -knock on wood- SPAM is not existant anymore, so Guest posting is allowed everywhere again. Guests can also start topics everywhere, except in the News & NVIDIA Drivers section and the Software Tools, Utilities & Customized INFs section. This also applies to members for obvious reasons.

Members in contrary to Guests have the ability to upload pictures like error message screenshots or files like the NERD logfile. ]

Q [ What is a modified/modded/Pieter's INFs? ]

A [ An INF is installation script for drivers, basically an old-school Setup.exe. We modify the INF in order to allow any NVIDIA driver version installed on any NVIDIA GPU driven laptop or Desktop PC system, because NVIDIA driver (were and) are always unified aka they natively support all NVIDIA video cards. Only the INF is crippled due to support agreements with laptop manufacturers. More info here. ]

Q [ What is "Detonator", "ForceWare" and recently (2008) introduced "GeForce"? ]

A [ Marketing, same as "driver". ]

Q [ Where do the "Detonator", "ForceWare" and "GeForce" drivers come from? ]

A [ Officially released from OEMs like Toshiba, Dell, Sony, ACER as stated in each driver version topic, or directly from NVIDIA. ]

Q [ From Nvidia's site, it seems the latest driver version is 56.72. So how can you guys have 6x.xx versions? ]

A [ OEM/ODM releases, FTPs, leaked at other IT newspages, 'BETA' releases ... ]

Q [ When installing the driver, should I point to the NVDM.inf or the modified INF? ]

A [ If you replace the original INF with Pieter's modified INF ('modded INF'), the only thing which matters during upgrade using the Windows 2000, XP or VISTA 'Have-Disk method' is the directory WHERE the INF is located in as Windows will search all existant INFs for the correct DEV_ID and SUBSYS_ID. What might be important to avoid confusion during the selection screen (if you are unsure with the specific name of your laptop's GPU) is, that there is only 1 INF -namely the modified INF- existant in the driver directory. ]

Q [ Why is it necessary to modify the drivers to get them to work on any mobile GPU (ie, why can't I just download the driver straight from Nvidia's site)? ]

A [ Official NV site drivers (to be specific: only the INF) does not support any mobile GPUs (exceptions occur). All the dirty work has to be done by OEMs. But as you can see in the drivers section of this forum, there are also a bunch of leaked drivers with mobile INFs in it. ]

Q [ Who wrote the original INFs? ]

A [ NVIDIA, OEMs are just doing the specific changes. ]

Q [ Are any of these drivers at all official? They won't crash or screw up my PC will they? ]

A [ Yes, the drivers are official (means written by NVIDIA). We don't tinker around with .DLL hacks in order to keep stability and compatibilty. The INF is made by us to support mobile NV cards. And No it will not harm your hardware. However some driver releases (not the INF) are known to cause BSOD for some laptops. ]

Q [ What is this whole INF file thing? ]

A [ INF includes all information in a special format to successfully install ANY driver with the correct settings on a Windows based PC. ]

Q [ What exactly is the difference between older and newer drivers? ]

A [ Old drivers contain less code and less support for newer cards. With the addition of bugfixes, enhancements, new features and support for newer cards bugs may lay within the code. ]

Q [ What is the difference in OEM (e.g. Dell, Toshiba, Sony) drivers compared to that of the drivers NVIDIA releases? ]

A [ The main difference between an OEM driver and the NVIDIA drivers is the modification of the INF file. Also, when an OEM/ODM releases a driver a few other irrelevant files may appear (nvgfx.dll, the catalog file and any relevant help files). Otherwise the releases are the same. No other code is changed to allow for mobile support. This does not mean all drivers will work with your laptop. Mobile cards are technically the least supported pertaining to bug fixes due to issues that arise from various laptops.

OEM drivers can also be WHQL certified. ]

Q [ Why are modified drivers never WHQL certified? ]

A [ Any minor change in the INF file results in an invalid check. Thus any modified driver will never be WHQL certified. You should then wait for any releases from the manufacturer of your laptop if this is of concern to you. ]

Q [ Why is ForceWare 61.71 dated 17.06.2004 and 61.80 16.06.2004? ]

A [ The driver was built on the day the date that the files/INF states. The last number represents a minor revision or bug fix. 61.80 in this case does not include the bug fix that created 61.71. This fix may not be seen until 61.90 or later. ]

Q [ How come a 156 is more recent than a 163 ??? ]

A [ We suspect NVIDIA has their driver developers working parallel on different driver series. Also NVIDIA recently has made huge changes in driver version numbering scheme and without proper documentation it's almost impossible to tell the logic behind it. The 156.xx & 16X.xx were are updated recently. On the other hand 158.xx is 4 months old and development has apparantly stopped. 100 series is abandonded too, i think. ]

Q [ Are your drivers different as i noticed they are always a lot smaller compared to the NVIDIA releases, TweaksRUs modded drivers, Station-Drivers.com or GURU3D. Some files must be missing or what's the deal here? ]

A [ All drivers you'll find at LaptopVideo2Go.com and on other sites are (and will be) after the extraction binary compared exactly the same same. The size difference you will notice -regardless which driver version- is due to our packing method... optimized for NVIDIA drivers... and therefore always smaller.

No files are missing... Far from it :)

Since the very beginning of this site we invest a lot of time in the background analyzing new releases from different kind of OEMs/ODMs and updating our driver packages constantly with new (mostly notebook manufacturer) INFs, MultiLanguage files etc. .. which results in the most complete and compatible drivers that only we host - even compared to NVIDIA's original releases.

Have a look into the driver threads: at the top you'll find all relevant information to each releases... done with our processing tool NVAIO or NVPnP which analyzes, 7-ZIPs and uploads all of the drivers we find. Automatically. This is why only in our releases you find working NVIDIA game profiles... other sites -and even NVIDIA- not only recently had problems properly packing this file :P ]

This FAQ is compiled from the answers of Teraphy and ®®®.

Edited by sn0wl
updated
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