Vista and Nvidia drivers?

[Dreamstalker]

This is a fairly recent (as in literally started the other day) issue with my Vista HP laptop. I'll be playing a game (nothing intensive, just a puzzle game), and every so often it will freeze, flicker to black, give me the Windows desktop for a split-second, then continue with the game.

Upon exiting the game, I'll get that error-dialog bubble with "nvlddmkm display driver has encountered a problem and has successfully recovered". I will also get the bubble while surfing online, except the display doesn't do anything to indicate a problem.

The error appears to be related to the graphics drivers and the fix is to download the newest ones from NVidia.

However, upon trying to install the latest drivers, I'll get: "The NVIDIA Setup program could not locate any drivers that are compatible with your current hardware. Setup will now exit"

So, apparently Nvidia doesn't recognize it's own hardware. Lovely. My laptop's graphics card is the Geforce Go 6150.

Any ideas? I'm also trying to figure out what caused this to start, and can't get an answer to that one.

[RichS]

You'll have to go to HP and see if they have the updated graphics driver for your laptop. nVidia's reference driver doesn't work on laptops - they specify the laptop OEM's provide support and drivers for the graphics chip on the laptops the OEM's make.

Fortunately, there's some websites that modify the INF of the reference driver so they can be used on laptops. Some are even modified a bit to increase performance! I've had good luck with drivers from omegadrivers.net, but I took a look and he's just started work on nVidia Vista drivers.

In my searches, I found this site. They appear to have the latest nVidia Vista driver, but I can't make any promises because I've never tried drivers from them (I don't have Vista, and my laptop has an ATI Mobility Radeon 9600). But it's either that or wait (and if it's like my experience with new drivers from OEM's, and wait, and wait... ) for updated drivers from HP.

It's a bit better with ATI - they provide Mobility drivers as long as your laptop's on their compatibility list, and it passes their software test. Thankfully, mine does.

[LostMyMind]

Wow, HP don't follow Nvidia standards. Another reason for disliking HP computers.

I just checked Nvidia website, they don't have drivers for Geforce Go 6150. The normal Geforce drivers will not work for Geforce Go. And Nvidia only has drivers for the 7800/7900 Geforce Go. I would download that one just in case it might work. Other than that, you'll have to call HP up and complain to them.

[tollbaby]

I have an old Lancer video card (which apparently runs off an Nvidia driver) and since I reinstalled WinXP Pro, I can't get a new stupid driver, so my video card is currently running SANS driver, which means i'm stuck at 800x600 resolution and can't play any games. Moot point since I fried my motherboard though LOL

[Dreamstalker]

Upon further research, my mom's HP laptop which is the exact same make and model (thus same vidcard) doesn't do this. Which leads me to believe that the game is the culprit...but if that were the case, I would only be getting the error in-game. The only real way to test that is to install the game on mom's lappy and see if I can duplicate the problem, which she doesn't want me to do so I won't.

Guess my next step is to contact the game publisher on the offchance they have other customers with this problem, and/or try reinstalling the driver from HP's site.

(another occurrence, though predating the game problem, is a yellow line across the screen on OS boot...that's likely a pure driver issue)

[LostMyMind]

No, during booting the drivers are getting loaded. Depending on how far into the booting process the driver will come into play. If you're getting the yellow line just after the booting is complete. Then it's possible, otherwise you might have a minor hardware issue.

Not all hardware issues are "disabling", I had a bad motherboard that lived and worked just fine (for what I was using it for) for years.

[Shabo]

I was getting that issue with my Radeon vid card in WXP. I know, a little different, but my problem ended up being the vid card starting to go. After I put in the new one, no more problem! Yay! I would run whatever tests you can, and keep an eye on your current game. If at any point, the game starts freezing up your entire computer, it's probably the vid card. Good luck!

[squall]

The problem here is not the game you are playing. Your video card alone is probably fine. It is a combination of Vista and nvidia's hardware. This is a very common problem believe it or not. It only happens on Vista and usually only on nvidia Geforce cards, no matter what the manufacturer or model number. I believe it is a driver issue on the part of nvidia in that their drivers. If you use and ATI card, you will not encounter this problem. If you are in XP, you should not encounter this problem even with nvidia hardware. Try running Windows energy screensaver. Chances are, it will crash like your game does. If you were running Windows Vista Ultimate, Dremscenes would crash as well. I had this exact problem on my system. I had to reinstall Vista for an unrelated reason. The problem went away after that, but I've heard of the problem occuring suddenly after months of normal use according to other people. It is not hardware failure as many brand new and repeated installs have not solved the problem for many people. As yet, the exact cause is unknown. What is known is that it only happens in Vista with nvidia video cards. I believe it to be an issue of imperfect drivers and incompatibility with Vista. The default windows and nvidia forceware drivers both have the same problem, I've tried uninstsalling and reinstalling all of them. There are three things you can do: Reformat the hard drive and install Vista again (may not fix it), Reformat and install XP, or buy an ATI card. This is the exact reason I dual boot XP and Vista, on two different hard drives. XP is safer for gaming at the moment.

[sld72382]

I have an 8800GTS which is a pretty high-end card, and the first set of Vista drivers were a bit buggy. I since download the latest ones and they've been tons better.

[LostMyMind]

squall, it's a laptop. Can't exactly swap out the video card And since she has been getting a yellow line through the screen during boot up. I'm leaning towards a hardware issue than a driver one.

As far as laptop go, ATI have been worst for me. As far as desktop go, I won't install an ATI video card. Way too many issues with ATI, for me anyway, the average user probably won't have the same issues.

[RichS]

I'm leaning towards a hardware issue than a driver one.

Yeah, definitely a hardware problem.

Way too many issues with ATI, for me anyway, the average user probably won't have the same issues.

ATI or nVidia, I haven't had a problem, well, until recently...

ATI released new Catalyst 7.6 drivers. Downloaded the one for my kids' computer and my Media Center HTPC, and went to download the Mobile Catalyst driver.

ATI requires you to download and run a verification program in order to download and use the Mobile driver. Did that as always, and came up with an error just as it was getting ready to download the driver. Searched for the error code in Google, and it was a generic error that happens when the file can't be found on the server.

I e-mailed ATI explaining the error, and I got back the generic "we don't support laptop hardware" e-mail. That prompted me to do a little more searching, and I eventually found how to download the driver from their site without the verification software. Apparently, the link the verification software is trying to download from is wrong.

Just got done installing the drivers today without a problem, and the picture looks sharper on the HTPC.

[squall]

There is nothing wrong with your display mechanism in the laptop. It is the fact that it runs on a nvidia geforce engine, and runs on the Vista operating system. Your hardware is fine, just try it in XP if you even have that option. The problem is with Microsoft and Nvidia not coming up with a solution to running on Vista. Hardware related? Only in Vista. You can't blame your card alone, lay the blame on Nvidia and their forceware drivers, and Windows imitation drivers. Compatibility and imperfect drivers are the issue. As far as XP is concerned, it is not an issue of hardware. Break it down to what makes hardware run on your OS....drivers make them run on your OS. Nvidia uses one size fits all drivers on different brands of Nvidia cards all across the board in 7 series ond 8 series on a certain OS. Of course ATI does too, but ATI and Windows seem to be doing something right. Whether you use Geforce 8800 or 6200, desktop or PC, you use Asus or el cheapo brand, a huge amount of people are having this problem. The thread on the nvidia forum about it is over 60 pages long. I would say to anyone who has a desktop, if you don't care about SLI and you want want good gaming in Vista now, your best option is ATI. I want to leave the option open for SLI, so I use a en7950 Geforce card, Asus. To work around the problem, I dual boot into XP and Vista. XP for gaming, Vista for everything else.

[Andara Bledin]

I've never had a laptop, so I've never had to deal with all the fun issues that go with video card support on them.

I do know that with my desktop, I will never get another Radeon card. My last one had game-breaking issues with every single online game I attempted to play, and there were a total of 5 of them. I replaced my card at the same time I replaced my motherboard and am never going back.

^-.-^

[Dreamstalker]

M$ apparently shoved out a LOT of Vista updates sometime last week, and one of those seems to have fixed the issues I was having. I also just think I need to buy a cooling pad; while the HP doesn't overheat to the point of locking up like the Inspiron used to, it still gets warm and starts acting wonky.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

M$ apparently shoved out a LOT of Vista updates sometime last week, and one of those seems to have fixed the issues I was having. I also just think I need to buy a cooling pad; while the HP doesn't overheat to the point of locking up like the Inspiron used to, it still gets warm and starts acting wonky.

I know . . . my laptop has been downloading them left and right. Much easier to get those updates downloaded when you have broadband as opposed to dial-up.

Luckily, I haven't had any video driver issues . . . my Dell has the ATI Catalyst - so far so good.

*knock on wood*