7800 GO Sli problems :( Gericom Hollywood XXL

[Pands]

7800 GO (x 2) (pretty sure its nv4_W830_SLI)

Gericom Hollywood XXL

Hi !

Firstly, Apologies for posting as i really dont like to bother but this is a last resort as im really stuck now

Basically My laptop runs in SLI using the drivers that came with the laptop in XP (84.14)

The problem im having is that games are starting to not run very well due to the drivers being so old

ANY drivers ive tried (and ive tried ALOT) both from here and from random googles never ever let me enable SLI regardless of the version or OS....for whatever reason SLI is only an option with the 84.14 drivers which Gericom provided at point of sale. There has been no update from Gericom since then in the sense of VGA drivers

So what i want to ask is why can i not get ANY driver to run with SLI other than the 84's ? Ive used modified INF's both on vista and XP, no change. The INF for my current working drivers is attached, please if any one has any suggestions or if anyone can make a working INF file which will work with a recent driver realease in either XP or Vista id be extremely greatful. Ive pretty much tried everything i can think of now...ive read up on here, read guides...nothing

Thankyou :)

84.14 NVAR file

[Andrew55]

I think this problem sounds vaguely familiar. Have you tried any drivers from the 17x.xx series onwards?

[Morris]

what I wold do for last resort, is take your original inf, find out your device id and the name add it to the new drivers ORIGINAL inf yourself, doing that, you keep the stock settings of the driver without the altered inf someone made on here for everyone's use.

[Andrew55]

Yes, good suggestion. To add to that, you may like to try the 177.92 or 178.13 drivers.

[Doug2h]

Comparing your inf to mods from here the "AddReg = SLIEnable_AddReg" is not being apply for the mobile catagory most cards fall under. Everything else looks pretty standard.

[Pands]

Hi :)

Thanks for the responses so far everyone, much appreciated

Ill give your suggestions a run in a few hours and let you know how its gone

AS for trying 177 + drivers, yea ive tried :) Ive tried so many versions hah :P

Thanks again guys

[Pands]

Hi again

Just tried above suggestions, nothing...

Editing the NV4_disp.inf results in the drivers not being installed. Possibly because the 84's are NVAR and the newer are nv4_disp ??. Tried renaming files ect, same thing

Any suggestions feel free, thankyou so far everyone :)

Andy

[Bronnster]

Watching this thread as well. I have the same issue. I hope we can get a workable solution.

My previous postings:

http://forums.laptopvideo2go.com/index....ost&p=90575

Edited October 28, 2008 by Bronnster

[Bronnster]

Success! :) Well, not much but a noticeable improvement. Sorry, no benchmarks. I upgraded to this drver: http://forums.laptopvideo2go.com/index....showtopic=13715 from 84.26 and I've kept my sli option working. The new driver is 94.22ver. Not much of jump up but none-the-less an improvement. If anyone's willing to try an even higher one and has success, plz post. Thx :)

Edited November 1, 2008 by Bronnster

[Pands]

Hey again

Cheers for the info mate, much appreciated!

Tried the 2 drivers youve posted, neither allow an install :) Which is stupid as my 7800 GO is listed in both INF files. Aaaah this is so rubbish

Thanks again mate, hope you have more luck than i did

[Bronnster]

Ahh, no luck for me. :) I went ahead and installed (clean) the driver (176.09) and after the 'black screen' issue, rebooting, I had a new driver installed. Yet, when I went into the options panel, I had no SLI settings under 3D settings where it should be. So, back to the 94 version. At least its better than 84.26 :) Will check back to see if any solution come about in the future. I'm sure there are a few of us Clevo model M590k/Hypersonic AX9/Alienware maLX owners with GO 7800 GTX SLI cards who'd like to upgrade with the SLI option still available. As I had said, No problem installing the new drivers, it's just they don't have the option to enable SLI.

[Bronnster]

These suggested solutions were specifically directed to users with systems running XP because Vista systems had no problems with updating drivers.

Grey728 option: {note: this was posted in '97 so when version 169.04 is referenced it was the newest driver from Laptopvideo2go at the time of post}

It involves downloading and installing the latest drivers along with the modified .INF file from LaptopVideo2go, but seems to solve the problem of the Black Screens with an easy fix:

1) Download the driver you want along with the modified .INF, and replace it (I used the latest 169.04 XP 32-bit "Crysis Demo" Beta drivers).

2) Uninstall old driver, reboot (preferrably use Driver Cleaner Pro in Safe Mode).

3) Install new driver BUT when it goes to install the second card (i.e. The 2nd Continue/Stop installation prompt), STOP THE INSTALLATION FOR THE 2ND CARD.

4) Reboot.

5) Navigate to the Device Manager and notice the second card is uninstalled. Update it's driver by manually selecting the driver folder for the one you just installed.

6) Reboot.

7) Voila!!! Successfully installed drivers.

Guyver1 option: {note: this was posted in '97 so when version 169.04 is referenced it was the newest driver from Laptopvideo2go at the time of post}

1. copy your Alienware 94.22 drivers into a folder on your laptops hard drive ( for example C:\Drivers\Alienware 94.22

2. download the latest driver version for XP 32bit from these forums (169.04 for example), create a new folder on your hard drive C:\Drivers\169_04 . Double click the file once downloaded to unzip it and specifly the new 169_04 folder as the unzip location.

3. in this new 169_04 folder there will be 2 files: nvapps.xml and nvwsapps.xml. Copy them and paste them into your new C:\Drivers\Alienware 94.22 folder, it will ask you if you want to overwrite existing files, SAY YES.

4. goto Add/Remove programs in windows control panel and remove your nvidia drivers.

5. reboot laptop.

6. (optional) download Driver cleaner Pro or any other nvidia driver 'cleaner' and reboot your laptop into safe mode (to boot into safe mode, when you turn the laptop on keep pressing F8 until you get a menu system, choose safe mode or safe mode with networking). once you get into safe mode, run driver cleaner to clean out the remaining files and registry entries.

On this note I've never really found any need to do this as the uninstall process works perfectly fine, some people do however seem to get problems if they dont use a driver cleaner.

7. reboot into windows normally and cancel the 2 pop up windows saying that windows has found new hardware, just press cancel both times.

8. goto your C:\Drivers\Alienware 94.22 folder and run the setup.exe and install the drivers as normal. you will now have the 94.22 drivers but with ALL the SLI profiles for all the latest games from driver version 169.04.

9. Ignore any game telling you your drivers are out of date

I have used Guyver1's option (94.22 driver with xml update) because Grey728's option did not work for me. I have been able to get newer drivers with modded inf to work but at each attempt, the NVidia control panel does not show an SLI option and this is the crux of my problem with new driver installs. Having 2 cards in my system yet no option to enable one of them defeats the purpose of a new driver update.

Edited November 1, 2008 by Bronnster