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An Early Christmas Gift for Old Geezers?


OlGeezer

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  Sorry if this is the wrong forum for this, but it's one of the few I could get "selected" in the Create menu. 

The Quadro FX 2500M 2010 Win7 driver worked OK on my latest M90 Win10 Pro x64, except for the same issue I had with a Go 7900 GS.  Memory leaks -- considered normal for Win7 and earlier -- became a serious issue because of Win10's CONSTANT compression / decompression of memory (a technique they obviously "borrowed" from the Android system).  Specifically, after an hour of heavy use, the display would lock up and take a minute to go blank and then fix itself.  Once it happens, you have to reboot, else the lockup recurs every 2 to 5 minutes.
 
To make a long story short, after a few days trying a dozen different drivers, by sheer LUCK I stumbled on what I believe is the ONLY solution.  This driver is not on Nvidia's site, nor on any manufacturer site, and does not come up on MS Update catalog with a regular search.  I can't find any reference to it on on this site, nor anywhere on the internet, except a few sites prior to 2016 that give dead links to what were probably incomplete versions.  The correct links are:
http://download.windowsupdate.com/msdownload/update/driver/drvs/2013/04/20525462_c9188d8cd4c54a0f0ed64a9e51791fc15350fa05.cab
for Windows Vista / 7 / 8 / 8.1 / 10 (32 bit)
 
and:
http://download.windowsupdate.com/msdownload/update/driver/drvs/2013/04/20525752_a849e18a177b21e2d348609936c2a96ffc9bcb80.cab
for Windows Vista / 7 / 8 / 8.1 / 10 (64 bit)
 
You can bring up this driver, dated 12/7/2012, by inputting the version #: 9.18.13.768 in the Microsoft Update Catalog search box.  You can also get it by inputting: nvidia preview.  So it is a "preview" not a regular driver update, and you can see some other distinguishing characteristics in the description.  E.g. Only English is supported as a language, and no supported hardware is listed.  Clearly, Microsoft has no desire to make this widely available.  I think they took Nvidia drivers from several sources and recompiled them to fix the memory leaks, and that would create obvious licensing issues.
 
So when you download, you will find a nv_whql.inf file with no less than 566 adapters listed, which may well cover every adapter made by Nvidia from April of 2004 to the driver date.  The original GeForce 6800 Ultra is there as well as the NVS 110 and several oooold nForce models.  It works perfectly with my FX 2500M as well as my Go 7900 GS (and fixes a few minor issues I had with my mod of the no-Go 7900 GS desktop version).  I honestly believe all these legacy cards could work under Windows 10 with this driver!  And for anything later than 12/7/2012 we have the archives here, and the search tool on Nvidia's site.  All bases covered.
 
Note that I force fed this driver with the "Have a disk" method, but I think the included setup.exe program should work.  I have the Nvidia control panel, which might be from remnants of other drivers I tried, though it didn't work right before this install.  It does have two NvCplSetup*.exe programs as well as a 3DVision_307.68.exe program.  (Note this isn't the same 307.68 driver posted in the archives, here, which only supports 31 Dell computers.)  I didn't see the PhysX program in the driver, or in Program Files and Features, which is fine with me, since my card is too old to support PhysX anyhow.  You might have to get PhysX from a separate Nvidia download.
 
It is WHQL signed, so no need to disable driver signature.  I'm downloading a few copies of this driver and storing in safe places, in case MicroSloth decides to pull the plug.
 
Regards,
Ol' Geezer
 

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No reaction to this SPECTACULAR find?  ;-}

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I think the reason this is the only driver that works for me might be my 1440x900 resolution displays combined with these old cards and Windows 10.  But it's clearly a DIFFERENT driver than any in the archives here, with different binaries as well as support for an enormous number of cards, so it should be added if you want "each and every driver known to mankind."  Also, If you put KB2836964 in the update catalog search box, several more drivers come up that provide similar support for Intel and ATI adapters produced before 2013.

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