Larry's INFs for Dell 5150/5160

[eric_craven2005]

The Decoder it appears is FFdshow...I dont know how to assign the Nvidia Video Decoder.

[LSudlow]

Ah! I was wrong in assuming you were using the nvidia decoder. I'm not familiar with the ffdshow decoder, but I'm sure it has a similar page of options. Try right-clicking on its tray icon and see what you can find. Or it may show up under the options in your media player.

Maybe someone who is familiar with ffdshow can jump in here.

[eric_craven2005]

The thing is that I dont know how to change the decoder to be Nvidia one, as I have Nvidia Pure Video decoder installed, even more when running "Windows XP Video decoder checkup utility" says that the installed MPEG-2 decoders, the Nvidia one appears as Preferred decoder. Obviously if the file is not MPEG-2 then maybe it does not use this decoder. Any idea how to change this?

Thanks

e

Edited June 13, 2007 by eric_craven2005

[eric_craven2005]

Ok I think I have found the solution to the diagonal line problem when watching fast changing video images (based in Larry's previously described solution.

In the computer there are two acceleration settings; hardware acceleration settings (Desktop--> Properties--> Settings--> Advance--> Troubleshot). Here you need to move the Hardware acceleration slider to None in order to solve the problem.

The other acceleration setting is a video acceleration setting in the Player (which in Windows Media Player is located at: Tools--> Options--> Performance Tab, here we dont need to change the Video acceleration Slider which would be set at Full.

It works for me and it does not matter of which Video Decoder you are using (Nvidia, FFdshow,...).

Cheers,

e

[LSudlow]

Thanks, Eric... Basically all three solutions do the same thing by removing hardware acceleration from the video decoding process.

When Microsoft added HD capability to DirectShow, the Windows video processing component, something changed and became slightly incompatible with the Go5200 GPU (and probably other older GPUs as well). Fortunately, we have plenty of CPU cycles to make up the difference.

Thanks for your research on this!

:)

[®®®]

To easily edit/change the merit (priority) of DirectShow filters there's only one tool i know of which fulfills that task:

DSFManager which can be downloaded here: http://www.softella.com/dsfm/download/11D40316/DSFMgr.zip

Try playing around with it and set it to 00200000 which is 'don't disable the decoder, but use if no other decoder is able to play that content'.

[eric_craven2005]

Thanks

[GratefulGuest]

Hi there.

New to the forum, but really appreciate all of the effort that has went into it.

I was curious if anyone could help me with some of the features on the new Nvidia Forceware 94.24 driver.

I have an Inspiron 5150 and have been using the last downloadable drivers from Dell, released back in 2004. I have this laptop connected to a television via an S-Video connector and tend to use it to watch videos directly on the TV. With the last Dell drivers I was able to set up the tv as a dual monitor then play the video on the television by setting it up full screen on the laptop then closing the lid. The video would play full screen on the tv and the laptop's display wouldn't be used at all. I really enjoy the latest 94.24 driver and, thanks to all of the work that has been done here, I'm able to on this laptop. My problem comes in when I try to set up the television the same way I used to with the previous driver. I have set up the tv as an external monitor, played around with it in dual mode, clone, etc and have yet to find a way to show videos on it with the laptop closed. I reinstalled the previous drivers and it permitted me to use my tv set as I am used to. I will be looking through Nvidia's site for assistance but seeing the wealth of knowledge that I've found in here I thought I would simply ask if any of you have had some of the same issues and if there is any work around.

Thanks a bunch for all of your good work!

[LSudlow]

What happens when you close the laptop? If the external screen goes dark try removing the following line from my inf:

HKLM,"System\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers\LidCloseSetPower"

Then reinstall.

To get the existing line out of your registry, you'll need to uninstall your present driver first.

[GratefulGuest]

Thanks for responding so quickly.

The television set I'm using has a blue screen when it perceives no signal is being received. When I close the laptop the tv reverts back to that blue screen, however, the audio still comes through fine and when I open the laptop the desktop appears back on it.

In your opinion, do you feel that altering the INF as you suggested in the previous message would resolve the problem?

Thanks so much for all of your help.

[LSudlow]

It's very possible. Here's a little history that might explain what's happening:

In the "old days" of laptops, closing the lid automatically turned off the LCD's backlight to save power. When Windows XP SP2 was released, something changed and prevented that from happening. Someone (we can't take credit) discovered that the line I gave you does pretty miuch the same thing by killling the monitor signal when you close the lid. From your message, I suspect it may kill the signal to external monitors as well as the LCD.

I'll be interested to hear your results. Remember you need to clean the existing setting out of your system by uninstalling the driver the the Windows Control Panel's "Add/Remove Programs."

Good luck with it!

[Guest Guest]

I've been modding my own infs straight from the Nvidia site and just reciently found laptopvideo2go.

I have a Dell 5150 - 3.2 P4, 1.5 GB RAM, 64MB Video. A38 and the dell video driver

I use the Dell driver for speed. I play movies, games, watch TV and only put on a new driver to play games like Battlefield 2. Which used to run fine.

Reciently it seems as though my computer keeps getting slower on everything. I blow out the dust every other week but it doesn't seem to help anymore. I figured that using too new of a driver was causing my slow down when I played BF2. Even when I run older games the computer gets slow and choppy. For example when I play Empire Earth 2 the opening Nvidia logo video is very choppy (not that old but KQ6 and SQ5 on Dos Box are slow too).

I guess I had a couple questions. I tried blowing out the heat and it had no effect so could there be a driver problem?

I reinstall new ones in safe mode and don't switch too often. Every couple months or so I switch to a newer driver and keep it for a few weeks before going back to the latest dell one.

When I mod my infs I just add a line for the 5200Go and copy over all the reg 5200 settings.

I saw on the old thread that the 5150 has a 852 chipset and you optimize for that one.

CPUZ once told me that I have a 855GME would that be a problem if I used one of your infs?

Do you have any reccomendations?

Thanks

[LSudlow]

Welcome, fellow 5150 modder!

My inf is optimized for speed, so it may be worth at try. (Don't worry - there's nothing in there that's at all dangerous.)

I'm optimizing for Intel chipsets in general, not specifically the 852 or 855, so you should be okay on that point.

It sounds like you're already aware of the two most likely culprits: heat and bad driver versions. The 5150 is one of the most overheat-prone laptops ever produced and regular cleanings of the cooling fins are a must (as you already know).

The fastest and best driver for the 5150 is still version 67.66. The only reason to use something newer is if a specific game requires it. (I'm using 84.98 for Oblivion.) Nvidia left our poor Go5200 behind long ago. the last driver version that supported our version of PowerMizer was 71.44. (72.14 has a higher version number, but it's six months older than 71.44.) More recent drivers will run on the 5150, but they are badly optimized and will run slower than the earlier drivers.

If you do drop back to 67.66, 71.44 or 84.98, uninstall your present driver first (in the Windows Control Panel's Add/Remove Programs). And use a driver cleaner to clear out any remaining junk.

If you're running a version that includes PowerMizer, make sure it's set for max performance when on A/C power. (My inf does this automatically.) The default setting is for a balance between performance and battery life, which means it's clocked down a bit. This may be where you're losing some speed, especially if you're running a driver that lacks PowerMizer controls.

Good luck with it, and feel free to ask any questions.

[Guest Guest]

I tried both the 67.66 and 71.44 with the nv4_disp inf and seem to have come across the same Blue error as others have.

It seems that any sort of video being played on my computer triggers the crash resulting in the blue error message with the infinite loop and junk.

Did a clean install with both, tried to turn off VMR and even the Sideband but neither worked.

I seem to get the crash even when I have only one video playing.

I have noticed that videos streamed through the internet cause a crash within a few min.

If I play them from my HD with WMP I can usually make it throu several without a problem. In fact it seems to be almost random. Moves seem to crash after the half hour mark to 40 min.

There is always a high pitched tone right before the computer completly freezes and the blue screen appears about 2 min later.

Using multiple displays seems to work but after my computer started crashing I switched back to single view to test different settings.

I rolled back to the latest dell driver just so I could watch a couple episodes of Stargate and it seems to be working fine.

Has someone come up with a solution to this problem that I might have just missed within the forum?

I do have the A38 Bios.

[LSudlow]

Yikes! I've never heard of anyone having problems with 67.66 or 71.44 - both are usually ideal for the 5150.

The Dell driver is 67.42 (I think), which is virtually identical to 67.66 and should work well for you.

[Guest Guest]

I gave 67.66 one mroe try this time booting into safe mode and uninstalling the old driver

Rebooted into safe mode to install 67.66 and did a normal restart

That seemed to do the trick.

Diver has been working fine for a day now.

In fact I would say that my computer is working better than ever. It is been a year since I was able to watch the intro to Empire Earth.

I was even able to add another computer opponent and still get better performance.

Thanks

[LSudlow]

That's good to hear. Thanks for getting back to us!

[LSudlow]

August 7, 2007 update:

- Added new power-saving tweaks to enable automatic slowdown of the FX Go5200 core and memory clocks when there is no processing going on. This greatly enhances cooling and battery life with no performance hit at all. Thanks to member Jesper for this truly great find!

As always, please let me know if something doesn't work as it should.

[kane81]

Tad off topic/not

I'm trying out Vista and find that I cant wake the 5150 laptop from standby via usb devices such as mouse or mce remote (works in XP) however pressing the standby button wakes the pc.

Ive set the "allow this device to wake" and enable usb power to ports on standby, but no go. the mouse has a little power when in standby, but wont wake, just flicker red as if only half powered.

anyone have the same issues?

could it be a nvidia driver issue?

also

I've posted a topic here asking for help on 1366x768 - please let me know if you have got this res working and how thanks

http://forums.laptopvideo2go.com/index....showtopic=14408

Keep Up The Good Work LaptopVideo2Go and Larry! Cant wait for vista native :)

[kane81]

^

Horray! 1366x768 Fixed!

A reformat worked!

Seems like there was something in my old system that stopped custom resolutions working....

when in dobut clean install!

[Guest mitch]

Hi Larry, first of all many thanks for this forum and the time and effort you have put it to it all.

I've been using your inf with 67.66 on xp pro for a while a while now (5150, Go5200, 64) and have now gone for a vista ultimate dual boot.

I would like to stick to the faster drivers but can't seem to get them to give me aero (i'm not bothered about transparency etc I just don't like the 'basic' feel)

I've tried numerous drivers and inf combos and found that 97.34 with pieters inf gives me this but I don't feel its running as well as it might? The new control panel also limits tweaking?! I'm not too bothered about the gaming aspect on the vista side just wanna have some eye candy I guess!

Is there any way I can use 67.66 in vista with more than just the vista basic theme?

Cheers!

[LSudlow]

I've never had any luck getting Aero to work with 67.66. Give 84.98 a try - it's an excellent driver, though not quite as fast as 67.66. Try both Pieter's inf and my nv4_84_disp inf. If Pieter's works and mine doesn't, let me know and I'll add the needed lines.

[Guest mitch]

I've never had any luck getting Aero to work with 67.66. Give 84.98 a try - it's an excellent driver, though not quite as fast as 67.66. Try both Pieter's inf and my nv4_84_disp inf. If Pieter's works and mine doesn't, let me know and I'll add the needed lines.

Thanks for the fast reply, i've given 84.98 a go with both inf's and get the same result with both, Blue screen. It seems to hang on nv4_mini.sys.

I made sure to uninstall the previous drivers first and tried it a few times, any ideas?

[Guest William Bell]

Larry

I'm new to this forum but have been lurking for some time. I just wanted to say thanks for all your efforts you have helped many, especially us overheated 5150 users.

I have two 5150's both identical, but have installed Vista Ultimate on one. Config as follows

Intel P4 2.8 HT

1 GB RAM

120 GB HDD

nVidia FX Go5200 64MB

I was wondering what your opinion of the best driver to use for Vista. I have heard of people getting 3.2 (Vista Experience Benchmark for Graphics) or higher with only the 64mb video card in Vista.

If you do recommend a driver do you have a moddded inf? Download link?

Also whats the best score you have seen with 64MB Go5200 in Vista?

Thanks in advance for all your help with these questions.

[LSudlow]

Mitch - the nv4disp crashes have happened to several users and I haven't been been able to track it down.

For both you and William, for now I would use one of Pieter's Vista modded infs. I haven't yet tried it, but the brand new 163.44 driver is getting good reviews from most people.

I really do intend to make some customized infs for the 5150/5160, but am stuck with XP for now due to some work apps that aren't compatible with Vista. There are really only a few differences between Pieter's infs and mine, which you can change yourselves if you feel like experimenting. In his NV3x_SoftwareDeviceSettings add the following lines:

HKR,, D3D_16579523, %REG_BINARY%, 01,00,00,00

HKR,, D3D_18078188, %REG_BINARY%, 95,82,37,28

HKR,, D3D_23132857, %REG_BINARY%, f4,45,88,7c

HKR,, D3D_30913648, %REG_BINARY%, 01,00,00,00

HKR,, D3D_40792312, %REG_BINARY%, 01,00,00,00

HKR,, D3D_52971801, %REG_BINARY%, 00,18,2c,3c

HKR,, D3D_54082152, %REG_BINARY%, 00,1c,ec,3c

HKR,, D3D_60461791, %REG_BINARY%, 47,67,41,08

HKR,, D3D_88481200, %REG_BINARY%, 04,00,00,00

HKR,, D3D_94118636, %REG_BINARY%, 00,00,00,00

HKR,, D3D_98764205, %REG_BINARY%, 00,00,00,00

HKR,, D3D_QualityEnhancements, %REG_BINARY%, 14,00,00,00

HKR,, UseIntelCompat, %REG_BINARY%, 01,00,00,00

And modify the Overlay lines as follows:

HKR,, OverlayMode2, %REG_BINARY%, 50,00,10,00

HKR,, OverlayMode3, %REG_BINARY%, 01,05,40,01

HKR,, EnableAGPFW, %REG_DWORD%, 1

HKR,, EnableAGPSBA, %REG_DWORD%, 1

Most of my other tweaks are either very minor or are already included in his modded infs.

Let me know how this works for you. I may put it up as a beta Vista inf, based on your results.