Nvidia GE7600 Driver Disables HDMI Audio

[Guest Larry Rogers]

I own a DV9000 Series HP notebook. It as a GEForce Go 7600 video card in it running with the driver from 2007 (the year the notebook was purchased) that operates HDMI audio perfectly, but unfortunately is extremely slow on the video front which is problematic for use of Windows Media Center.

When the driver is upgraded to any driver more recent than 2007, the video operates fine and is faster, but the HDMI audio gets disabled. The updated drivers do not provide any way to enable the audio on these machines, although they apparently do on others. HP admits there is a problem with the driver, and says a fix is on the way, but NVidia support says they never heard of the problem.

However, the problem is described numerous times on both of their forums. And it is a problem on all DV9000 notebooks with an HDMI port, and possibly the DV6000s as well.

NVidia support has sent me down a few rat holes as has HP support, but the problem remains and is simply described. The 2007 driver works fine with HDMI Audio, but install any other driver and HDMI audio stops working.

I have observed this problem under Windows XP Home, Windows Vista and now Windows 7.

Any clue anyone could provide as to how to fix this problem would be greatly appreciated.