v196.86 Windows 7/Vista 64bit | Dell Mobile

[Compusmurf]

Wow. This actually did fix the latency spikes on my Toshiba Qosmio. Thanks Dell! hahahahaha

[d3v]

Your problem has nothing to do with this driver specifically, so can you open a new thread please.

No need.

This'll be the last post for this one.

I posted in here as it was the installer that set the issue in motion so, imo, it was relevant, as I don't generally have any issues at all [except one thing that has stumped me, caused by safedisc] and all driver releases, when installed, have been fine for me.

It happened once before, with 195.62 - ironically, as I have something to add about that before I shut up.

It is 195.62 which I am using now, although it didn't install at first, when I was going through old driver versions trying to find one that wasn't failing any more.

One of the VGA drivers appears to be supplied by nV. I have seen at least two slightly different namings for the VGA driver and two for the monitor driver - excepting the "Non-PnP" one, which would make three.

When attempting to uninstall the basic VGA driver (with one of the names I have seen it given), an nV uninstaller splash would pop up! I was expecting a basic Windows uninstall.

At some point last night, Windows confused itself and stopped siding with the cycle of failed control panel installs followed by automatic VGA installs.

It went against the VGA driver and demanded I download an nV driver.

It then downloaded 195.62 (which I hadn't been able to install at release or during this situation) and tried to install it itself.

It failed twice.

It then succeeded.

But...

I still can't install a driver of my choosing.

So the driver I am now using is the one where I first encountered this same issue. How odd is that?

I couldn't install it then, now and Windows took three attempts when it tried, after demanding I use this one.

I still have the same locked installation issue as before, but the cycle now goes like this:-

Using 195.62 -> trying to install any other driver fails at control panel -> installer says system needs reboot for driver rollback -> reboot rolls back to VGA -> Windows flags this and reinstalls 195.62 in place of it.

"Administrator" means nothing any more :S

Right, I've said my piece.

Thanks for the time.

Nobody follow up this post please. If you have some bizarre epiphany that you'd care to share on the matter, you can PM me.

[Guest cessna]

using this driver on my 8600m gt 5920g , weird core memory and shader clock shows in gpu -z. running little bit hotter than before,

[Guest tekmunki]

Dell Precision M6400 w/ Quadro 3700M ; Results in same blue screen error during driver install and subsequent reboots. Using both driver installer methods.

[Guest AluminumHaste]

Haha.

"Kid"? I'm truly flattered.

You couldn't be more wrong.

How about: "short-tempered aggressive disabled [but not recognised] middle-aged bloke - not living with either of his Mums".

Oh! and I ain't fat.

I'm a wiry and skinny guy but not in the "looks weedy" sense. I'm a mountain biker with scars to show.

I have other major problems and I don't need a build up of irritations like this tipping me over the edge and spilling over into real-life.

You don't want to know why.

Just believe me when I say I am a victim of a cowardly violent crime which went unpunished and am now myself a reflective product of this "society" (which may eventually partially reap the spoils of what it sows one day) who is getting increasingly frustrated with slack-arsed firms these days.

Anyway...

What has my nationality got to do with this?

We're not really known for screaming and whining like babies over here.

At least I don't know any blokes like that.

Sorry if I upset you with my textual outpouring of my general temperament.

I needed to shout, to vent.

Be a little smarter than to think any words I posted were directed at anybody here.

If you read you'll see I didn't actually ask for any help.

I was merely venting, as I don't think anybody knows the definitive cause of this yet and nobody from nV seems to be stepping forward even though it is quite a common complaint.

A simple Google search will find many floundering punters with the same affliction.

This has happened several times and I am somebody who tweaks, tweaks, tweaks, so am not completely naive when it comes to fixing stuff.

I haven't yet come to terms of the imposing Vista-isms of Windows 7 so, as a staunch XP Pro x86 user who held out, I expect nasty surprises occasionally.

Sorry to use this forum but it is a relevant place.

It's not so much the one driver as, when the damage is done, you end up in a forced VGA loop that you can't break with other drivers.

edit: [to the guy before me]

Yes, I already tried those things.

I don't use System Restore. I saw it in the early days of XP and it broke stuff more often than not with its half-a-backup system. If you tweak a lot I can only see it breaking other things that weren't broken. Besides, I am a power-user and hogging resources like that, for something that doesn't seem to do a good job, is just not an option.

Thanks though.

God you are annoying.

I had this issue, turns out that using a Driver Cleaner broke the Windows Driver Store, and when I went to install the driver, Windows found one already installed that it deemed "better" and tried to install it from the Store. Problem is the driver cleaner cleared out the store, but Windows cannot recover from that error, so the Nvidia installer just gave me a message that the system has not been modified.

I tried running sfc /scannow and Windows found the error but was unable to repair it.

I ended up having to search Microsoft.com, take ownership of each nvidia related driver store, delete it, remove it's schema (or whatever it's called) by manually taking ownership of it etc etc etc, it was a pain in the arse (look I swore and spelt it correctly even). The good news is that I was able to install the new drivers and everything is back to normal, whew.

That was a lot of work, I really don't like the winsxs setup that Vista and Win7 uses. I understand why it's vastly superior to XP's "DLL Hell", but when it's f*****, it's f*****!

Good luck.

[Guest Stephan]

Where can I find the 3D Vision-driver?

[d3v]

God you are annoying.

Thanks. Glad to be of service. :)

I had this issue, turns out that using a Driver Cleaner broke the Windows Driver Store, and when I went to install the driver, Windows found one already installed that it deemed "better" and tried to install it from the Store. Problem is the driver cleaner cleared out the store, but Windows cannot recover from that error, so the Nvidia installer just gave me a message that the system has not been modified.

I tried running sfc /scannow and Windows found the error but was unable to repair it.

I ended up having to search Microsoft.com, take ownership of each nvidia related driver store, delete it, remove it's schema (or whatever it's called) by manually taking ownership of it etc etc etc, it was a pain in the arse (look I swore and spelt it correctly even). The good news is that I was able to install the new drivers and everything is back to normal, whew.

That was a lot of work, I really don't like the winsxs setup that Vista and Win7 uses. I understand why it's vastly superior to XP's "DLL Hell", but when it's f*****, it's f*****!

Good luck.

So it took all my antagonistic attitude to get an answer which makes sense to me. I can be pedantic as ###### when I feel something is wrong that shouldn't be. [it goes with my general temperament these days. It's not by choice. I'm damaged. I'll leave it at that. I apologise.]

A genuine thanks for this.

It sounds totally feasible - but horribly like what I was avoiding by avoiding Vista.

I was one who stuck with XP and knew it very thoroughly. I never really suffered "dll hell" but I realised it was an issue for many.

I realise Win7 is a Vista core re-work and I am really new to this. One one hand it's an awesome OS but on the other it's this fight that I am not up to yet. Especially since there is no repair install to use as a get-out-of-jail-free card for some screw-ups. Every time I risk things with this OS I know I am potentially facing another RoboCopy session, backing up my AppData and files, and a reinstall. Not something I'm happy about having to do at all. I ran XP optimally for years and only had a couple of close desperate calls which almost resulted in a reinstall.

Oh well, look like the Windows-knows-best irritations are here to stay.

I'm going to look up these "schema"'s and "stores" to see if I can learn something.

Thanks again.

[Guest AluminumHaste]

Thanks. Glad to be of service. :)

So it took all my antagonistic attitude to get an answer which makes sense to me. I can be pedantic as ###### when I feel something is wrong that shouldn't be. [it goes with my general temperament these days. It's not by choice. I'm damaged. I'll leave it at that. I apologise.]

A genuine thanks for this.

It sounds totally feasible - but horribly like what I was avoiding by avoiding Vista.

I was one who stuck with XP and knew it very thoroughly. I never really suffered "dll hell" but I realised it was an issue for many.

I realise Win7 is a Vista core re-work and I am really new to this. One one hand it's an awesome OS but on the other it's this fight that I am not up to yet. Especially since there is no repair install to use as a get-out-of-jail-free card for some screw-ups. Every time I risk things with this OS I know I am potentially facing another RoboCopy session, backing up my AppData and files, and a reinstall. Not something I'm happy about having to do at all. I ran XP optimally for years and only had a couple of close desperate calls which almost resulted in a reinstall.

Oh well, look like the Windows-knows-best irritations are here to stay.

I'm going to look up these "schema"'s and "stores" to see if I can learn something.

Thanks again.

Here read this: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd919234%28WS.10%29.aspx

[Guest AluminumHaste]

Okay run an elevated command prompt and type in: pnputil -e

This will list all driver stores by inf file. You can then use pnputil to remove each entry that refers to Nvidia. For example;

oem21.inf has Nvidia as it's manufacturer, so I would remove that one. Etc etc. You may have to take ownership of the driver store entry before you can delete and I can't remember how to do this.

[Guest laptopNut]

I am using the mobile GTX 285M with Windows 7 X64.

So far, these are the only Drivers for me that rival 186.81 WHQL and give me smoother performance with GTA IV. I will do further testing but it appears to have solved the graphical glitches issue I was getting with DX10 in BFBC2 as well. I will test more later, temps are also fine.

[Guest cessna]

installed fine for 8600m gt , but it messed up my whole win7, went back to previous drivers, but games look not same to me as before,fps are fine though, maybe u guys havent noticed it, check if you are having any kind of texture blurred, glitches, or any kind of color saturation, DO NOT INSTALL THESE ON YOUR LAPTOP. it will mess up your whole gpu, even without u noticed,

[d3v]

Here read this: http://technet.micro...28WS.10%29.aspx

Okay run an elevated command prompt and type in: pnputil -e

This will list all driver stores by inf file. You can then use pnputil to remove each entry that refers to Nvidia. For example;

oem21.inf has Nvidia as it's manufacturer, so I would remove that one. Etc etc. You may have to take ownership of the driver store entry before you can delete and I can't remember how to do this.

Awesome heads-up on this.

Genuinely, many thanks. :)

[Guest ARGH]

Sager - D901C - GeForce 8800M GTX SLI; instals fine but BSOD when attempting to enable sli. i have tried i think almost all your 196.xx series drivers and they all BSOD whenever attempting to enable SLI.

[GaryHook]

These drivers are kick arse for bad company 2, maxing everything out at 1920 * 1200 with 60 + fps

Edited March 14, 2010 by GaryHook

[Guest mrvirginia]

On the news post, Galdere wote "I am very impressed with this driver. I was having to use an older one because of stuttering on some games. That problem has gone with these, FPS are up and everything seem that little bit snappier with it.

I did run into problem which requires a change before installing. I was experiencing a BSOD on boot every other time using the previous driver's INF which was annoying, so I edited the original inf instead of using the replacement and changed the hardware ID number to my own. There has been no problem since.

It is fairly simple to do this as long as your GPU is included already (see the link above) and well worth it IMO. If you are already using a Dell or Alienware then you don't need to do any of this it should just work. Extract the driver and open up the nvdm.inf file in the installation directory. Scroll to bottom and find out the device ID for your card, for example mine is "060C" for my 8800M GTX. Scroll up near the top and find the other section that has this, for example "%NVIDIA_DEV.060C.01% = Section008, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_060C&SUBSYS_019C1028". Next you need to open up device manager and go into the properties for your display device. Go into the details tab and select Hardware Ids. Note the number after "SUBSYS_", for example mine is "05731558". Finally replace the part in the INF that for me is the "019C1028" to what is for me "05731558". Save the file and run the setup and you should be in business.

Also this installed a small Dell "hotkey driver" in the start up so I just removed that. You can use many progs to do this, for example CCleaner." End

Read his post over at Notebookreview, but thought I would post here. I wasn't getting constant BSOD, just the initial one on install. However, performance sucked in games (dropping FPS) and 3Dmark06(lost 450 points) from previous driver, which was the HP one recently posted. So I made the change to the stock .inf, and everything is rocking. FPS and 3Dmark score back up, temps fine.

Which leads me to my point. ALL OF THE 196.xx drivers have given me issues, and I'm beginning to believe that LV2Go .inf is the culprit. Not due to poor writing, but there is something in the original driver that is not being accounted for in the current series of Pieter's .infs. Or members hybrid versions of the same. Problem is, it's about 50/50 getting errors from following the previous driver posts. If Pieter's rig isn't having problems, well you can't troubleshoot if it ain't broken, know what I mean? I could be wrong, it's only a theory, but the HP driver and the Dell driver loaded fine on my HP HDX.

This is not a bash post, because I truly appreciate all the work done on this site. Only mentioned to raise awareness to a potential issue. Like I said, don't even know if he can fix it if it isn't happening to him (or whoever the particular .inf author is). I just know I don't have the know-how to sort through it. I know how to add my GPU to a given .inf, that's about it.

"Scroll up near the top and find the other section that has this, for example "%NVIDIA_DEV.060C.01% = Section008, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_060C&SUBSYS_019C1028"."

i'm not getting this at all. where is this part "DEV_060C&SUBSYS_019C1028" in the .inf file???

i know that's not for my specific card, but i don't even see SUBSYS in the .inf file.

my card is this NVIDIA_DEV.0618.01 = "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M"

so this [DEV_0618&SUBSYS_02A21028] NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M is what i should be looking for but that's only in the first post within Information FIles. any help would be greatly appreciated. thanks!

[hovercraftdriver]

"Scroll up near the top and find the other section that has this, for example "%NVIDIA_DEV.060C.01% = Section008, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_060C&SUBSYS_019C1028"."

i'm not getting this at all. where is this part "DEV_060C&SUBSYS_019C1028" in the .inf file???

i know that's not for my specific card, but i don't even see SUBSYS in the .inf file.

my card is this NVIDIA_DEV.0618.01 = "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M"

so this [DEV_0618&SUBSYS_02A21028] NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M is what i should be looking for but that's only in the first post within Information FIles. any help would be greatly appreciated. thanks!

Pieter posted a new .inf. You shouldn't have to do anything now, as your card is listed. Just download the .inf, put it in the unzipped driver package and follow normal uninstall/install process.

[Mister Virginia]

Pieter posted a new .inf. You shouldn't have to do anything now, as your card is listed. Just download the .inf, put it in the unzipped driver package and follow normal uninstall/install process.

so the inf file from the site? that's the one i used and i still got BSOD. it installed fine, rebooted. then i logged in, BSOD.

[Galdere]

Make sure you've tried the new updated INF from this site first.

If you can't find "SUBSYS" at all anywhere in what you are trying to edit then you aren't editing the original INF.

Search for "DEV_0618&SUBSYS_". There might be four for a 260M, for Win7 and Vista, and for 2 versions of the card.

[Mister Virginia]

Make sure you've tried the new updated INF from this site first.

If you can't find "SUBSYS" at all anywhere in what you are trying to edit then you aren't editing the original INF.

Search for "DEV_0618&SUBSYS_". There might be four for a 260M, for Win7 and Vista, and for 2 versions of the card.

thanks guys for trying to help.

when opening the nvdm.inf file, either the one from LV2G or at the beginning of this thread, i'm searching for "SUBSYS" and am not finding anything. i know what i'm supposed to change and what i'm supposed to change it to, i just can't find the string of text that i'm supposed to change lol. i am supposed to be looking in the nvdm.inf file, correct?

[Guest MyLoWRiDeR]

Let me make sure I have the correct info. The following systems & GPUs are having BSODs:

Sager - M570RU - GeForce 8800M GTX

Sager - M571RU - GeForce 8800M GTX

HP - HDX 9494NR - GeForce 8800M GTS

Dell - Vostro 1500 - GeForce 8600M GT

Asus - G72GX - GeForce GTX260M

If you have a system not on this list and it is having issues please post it. (BRAND - MODEL - GPU - LAST WORKING OFFICIAL DRIVER VERSION)

I have a Asus G72 with 260M GTX and the driver works for me. I seem get to a speed boost..im getting a fps of 212 with everything maxed, however using some settings such as 16xQCSAA Anti-aliasing caused some color glitches for me so i just use 16CSAA..but other than that it works.

[Guest MyLoWRiDeR]

I have a Asus G72 with 260M GTX and the driver works for me. I seem get to a speed boost..im getting a fps of 212 with everything maxed, however using some settings such as 16xQCSAA Anti-aliasing caused some color glitches for me so i just use 16CSAA..but other than that it works.

the game im talking about is Counter Strike Source

[zipper]

The modified infs don't use subsys part at all so they should work with every card as long as the card is included into the inf - and every card except very new and possibly cards with so far unknown IDs should be there.

[hovercraftdriver]

i'm searching for "SUBSYS" and am not finding anything.

This section does not exist in the .inf you are referring to, so there is nothing to change. Your card is listed, I checked last night. That section may exist in the original Dell .inf, I can't remember. Simply place this LV2G .inf in your driver folder. Make sure it REPLACES the other .inf, as sometimes they are not named the same.

[Mister Virginia]

This section does not exist in the .inf you are referring to, so there is nothing to change. Your card is listed, I checked last night. That section may exist in the original Dell .inf, I can't remember. Simply place this LV2G .inf in your driver folder. Make sure it REPLACES the other .inf, as sometimes they are not named the same.

well guys, thanks again for all the replies. i was using the .inf file from LV2G. i actually deleted the original .inf file that comes with this driver and then pasted the modified one into the extracted folder and got the BSOD after installing, rebooting, and attempting to log in. so i suppose add my laptop to the list of ones that are still getting the BSOD with this driver. very unfortunate, as i was hoping this was going to keep the Just Cause 2 demo from locking up on my system.

Asus G60VX-RBBX09 nVidia GTX 260M

i hope NVIDIA releases official ones for this card soon. one from '09 isn't cutting it.

Edited March 16, 2010 by Mister Virginia

[Mister Virginia]

does it matter that i removed the Physx drivers with Driver Sweeper?