Need Help - nVIDIA drivers not installing under VISTA

Need some assistance here. I recently had a HDD outage and recovered some of the parition info and did a clean install Vista. I was able to install all the drivers except that of the nVidia drivers. Everytime I start the nvidia driver installation file - SETUP.EXE from the support CD I get the following error message:

" nvidia couldn`t find any drivers that matches your hardware"​

I tried with the driver set that is available in myHive under Vista as well. Same result. I already posted this on the owners forum and tried some suggestions there. Please help as I am at my wits end here. Thanks.

Also, when Vista boots with the nVidia gfx option it loads the STANDARD VGA DRIVER as the driver for the nVIDIA card. I tried uninstalling this driver and it says restart machine after which if I do restart the same damn driver reinstalls itself. Also Vista is recognizing the nvidia card as

" NVIDIA - 8 BIT, 14MB RAM"​

Please help. Thanks.

 

d/l it and install it from there

 

From where? - I already tried with the drivers available under myHIVE and also under support.alienware.com. They are both giving me the same error message.

 

That's the strange part. For me the CD-based drivers also failed with a similar message but downloading them off AW support worked fine.

 

Thanks for the update. Maybe I need to try that again. But did your Vista also preload you to Standard VGA Drivers that just REFUSE to uninstall????

 

Well, it always does. Vista needs *some* driver in order to be able to display an image on the screen, so if one isn't installed it will always install those standard drivers. However, when you run the NVIDIA installer it should install over those drivers and then Vista won't have to reload them again. The problem you're having though is that the NVIDIA installer refuses to install.

My suggestion would be to uninstall those standard drivers, then choose not to restart, and then start the NVIDIA driver installation (with the downloaded drivers). I really don't have any idea whether that would fix it, but if Standard VGA drivers are removed it may help the NVIDIA installer figure out the correct drivers (but as I say, it's not usually necessary to do that)

 

Thanks for that GRB. I tried uninstalling the standard VGA driver and it says machine restart required. In this interim if I select say RESTART LATER and try to put off the restart and try installing any device driver after that it just says that there is still one pending restart.

Also, what you say makes sense. I never had to remove and standard MS drivers before getting the new device drivers to work. This is the first time I am experiencing STUBBORN behavior!!!!

 

Well I really have no idea at this point then. Maybe some other options just to try would be running the uninstall/install in Safe Mode, or maybe try a BinaryGFX cycling (switch to integrated, restart, switch back to dedicated, restart, then try installing)

 

Thanks for all the help GRB. Really really appreciate it. But have tried the repeat switching between internal and external gfx as well. No avail. Guess I have to go and try to force install the driver in safe mode. See what happens then. Thanks for all the help again.

 

Yeah, again I'm just putting out ideas. No idea if they'll work.

 

Right now I am glad that I have a few ideas to try out Keeps my mind off the fact that I just lost my HDD and now my GFX card wont work!!!!

 

That error message means the INF file associated with the nVidia driver is not compatible with your mobile graphics card. I don't use AW graphics drivers period. I suggest you go to LaptopVidoe2Go and download the appropriate driver for your graphics card along with the modified INF file and you should then be able to install the driver without any problems. I have done this several times with updated drivers using the modded INF files and had no problems. No need to remove the old driver before install either. Very simple.

 

only the AW-drivers work fpr the 8800M GTX in the m15x. Therefore the advise to use the drivers from LaptopVideo2Go isn't very helpful as they will make the graphic card to run in Stealth Mode all the time. So far there has been no solution for the problem and the m15x users mustn't use other drivers than those fromt he AW website.

 

Also, I don't think getting modded INFs will help the installer find the graphics card (since that action is hardwired into the executable)

 

Thanks for all the replies. I was somehow able to get the drivers installed yesterday but guess what - now the gfx driver is being listed as 8400m GS and worse all details of the onboard RAM are being listed as 0MB. I ran the system requirements lab device detection control and guess what - that detected the card properly. Dont know what is up with up Vista. Guess another reinstall is required

 

I had the same prob... since the drivers that came with the dvd doesn't support the 8800m gtx... why? I don't know, they are simply not mentioned in the infs... so I downloaded the 167.55 from an aliendl.alienware.com link(europe myhive links didn't work) and it runs fine now...

 

GRB, extract your .inf files (drivers) and email them to Saba.

Saba - you force Vista to use that file, instead of running the .exe

that should do it

 

Yeah, I was thinking of doing that. Where are those files located?

 

Why not just download it off the AW site?

 

He said he downloaded the installer from the site but it still didn't detect his card

 

First of all thanks for all the replies. I really love the help I get from people here. LOVE THIS FORUM.

An update to this issue - I managed to get the drivers installed - But this was not until I had reinstalled Vista again completely from scratch and then installed nVIDIA drivers ahead of everything. In detail - I installed Vista - Then the motherboard - chipset drivers and bfore restarting the computer I installed the nVidia drivers that I had downloaded from the net. Phew! - Now it recognizes my card. I could also get the onboard installed. So am good now. Maybe this was a crazy vista thing or the gods just thought I had to endure some pain!

I hate this. Lost more than an hour doing the whole install thing again.

 

Vista not so bad, must have been someone thinking that you need some pain...

 

I actually hacked into your computer and messed up all the drivers you downloaded so that I could waste all your time. Hehe

Just kidding. Glad your issue was resolved.