Any hope for M17x R1 with nVidia and Windows 8?

Well this has been a very bad computer week... first my computer was shutting itself off... fixed that by removing the CPU fan and cleaning out all the dust that had built up... then my right 260M GTX's fan is making noise... now I've upgraded Windows 7 to Windows 8 using the installer and it keeps freezing due to WDDM not being up to 1.2 - tried removing all NVidia drivers to no avail. I know 1.2 compatible drivers are coming next week but this is literally my only entertainment that I have... no TV or anything.

I WOULD go back to Windows 7... only problem... I just found out my BDROM combo died. It just clicks when I put a disc in (motor must have burnt out) so now I'm hosed if I can't figure this out.

Any ideas?

 

you can dl the windows 7 software and instrall it on the USB drive.

Check the forum here called Windows OS

http://forum.notebookreview.com/win...-7-download-links-just-like-vista-before.html
Google Window 7 USB Tool

it takes the ISO file you download and makes a bootable Win 7 USB drive

 

In a perfect world I would do that but I don't have a USB key and I can't keep it stable long enough to do everything. This sucks. The upgrade advisor said I was good to go on hardware compatibility >_<

 

Grab yourself a cheap one and get windows 7 with SP1 integrated from here instead
http://forum.notebookreview.com/win...-digitalriver-windows-7-sp1-13-languages.html

 

I don't have that option available.Im in the middle of nowhere Louisiana. I did find a work around though. If you enable hybrid sli windows' default video driver doesn't know its nvidia supported by the wddm it was using. I have been using it to watch videos for a bit now. No more wddm freeze and it gives me time to wait for an external burner and the official nvidia 1.2 release. Win win. Should work for anyone with hybrid sli.

Well it looks like we are at NVidia's mercy when it comes to driver support for our machines... I grabbed the 302.71 from laptopvideo2go and, like all other verde releases, it doesn't support the M17x without a modded INF... well it doesn't support it with the modded INF either. I opened up the modded and original INF files and the old way isn't going to cut it anymore. There is now a subsys requirement and on top of that it appears to be obfuscated in some way. When I initially tried to install using the modded INF, it would immediately fail after one screen flicker. I added 0862 for the 9400M using the new format in the unmodded INF file and the subsys as reported in Device Manager and it flickered once, did about 10 seconds more installing, then flickered again and said it failed.

Looks like Microsoft changed the way hardware is handled or NVidia changed something. I'm going to look into it more but if we don't get Windows 8 support I am never buying anything NVidia again.

 

The thing with drivers is that indeed the 2xx series are not supported in the reference drivers any more.

Second, the 302.71 is not nvidia official driver.

See my post here to install the 301.42 driver and enjoy

 

Do those drivers work on Windows 8 Release Preview? I was under the impression that only 302 series will work on Windows 8 RP while 301 works on Consumer Preview.

I ended up getting an 8GB stick from my dad and I installed Windows 7 on a spare partition... I set the system up as described in the Owners Lounge for a clean Windows 7 Ultimate install right down to the original 2010 nVidia driver release Dell did. Unless I have some issues I am going to leave it alone. So far, so good. Now I just need to open the whole thing up and figure out what is going on with my fan and work on getting this thing overclocked again.

 

I would have never taken the chance and overwrote my main partition to got to Windows 8. Windows 8 has so many issues it does not even need to be in a release candidate version.

 

Meh, I'm impatient and wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I already had a second partition ready to go and needed to reinstall 7 anyway I just didn't realize my optical drive had gone out. Either way I was going to reinstall Windows 7 and the second partition is 320GB of my total 500GB drive so its not a huge deal. Now I have a nice handy USB key to install Windows 7 from instead of fussing with optical media.

Microsoft really should have a warning though when it runs the compatibility check about nVidia chips not having WDDM 1.2 driver support though. I didn't really have any issues with Windows 8 besides the lack of graphics support. I was getting used to Metro and everything. Certainly is faster than Windows 7 once its booted up that's for sure.

 

i had 2 weeks w8 in my r1 and works fine, but my steering wheel logitech g25 not works properly, not drivers yet for w8 ( logitech gaming software), now i have w7 another time.