Video Drivers

Hey all, quick question.

When I try to install video drivers from the Nvidia website, I get a message saying I have to use drivers from the Dell website. Does anyone know if there's a way to use the Nvidia drivers instead? I'd prefer to not have to wait for Dell to bring out their version of each nvidia driver release.

Thanks.

 

Find a way to extract the drivers from the installer and manually update the drivers through your device manager by pointing it to the .inf.

If you can't find anything to extract the nvidia driver archive (their executable) you should be able to download and use uniextract.

 

Awesome, thanks for that, i'll give it a go and report back.

edit: worked! thanks

 

Awesome! Glad I could help!

 

Could you please give a quick run through of what you did, also are the latest nvidia drivers decent? have you gamed on them yet? cheers

 

Well, I can guide you through the most of it.

First download the driver (obviously)

The current right now would be "260.99_desktop_winxp_32bit_english_whql.exe" assuming you would be running Windows XP. It would instead be "260.99_desktop_win7_winvista_32bit_english_whql.exe" if you are running Windows Vista or Windows 7. This is also assuming you are running 32bit. You get the idea.

Make sure you have some kind of extraction software such as Winrar, uniextract, 7zip, etc.. I am using Winrar as I write this tutorial.

Find the file you just downloaded and right click on it. You should see a bunch of Winrar options. Click on the one that says "Extract to 260.99_desktop_.....

Now you should have a folder with the same name as the file with all of that files contents in that folder.

Make your way to your device manager. There are several ways to do this if you don't know how already.
(1) Start->Control Panel->System->Hardware->Device Manager.
(2) Hold the Windows key and while holding it press Pause, click the Hardware tab and Click on Device Manager.
(3) Right click on 'My Computer' on the desktop, click properties, click the Hardware tab, click on Device Manager.

Once in the Device Manager, find Display Adapters and expand it. Double click on where it shows your video card and it should bring up a properties box. When it does, click on the Driver tab and click update driver.

When it asks to automatically search for new drivers, say no or click on advanced search or I will select a driver... blah blah blah

If you are using Windows XP, you can, step-by-step, click no to search online for drivers, click install from a list or specific location, click search for the best driver in these locations: and checkbox only 'Include this location in the search' and select the folder where the inf is for your nvidia driver. In XP's case, it would be located in "260.99_desktop_winxp_32bit_english_whql\Display.Driver\NV4_DISP.INF".
In windows Vista, I don't have a Vista machine in front of me right now so I can't guide you through that one, but most of the steps should be very similar. Vista is nice because all you have to do is select the base folder and tell it to search all sub-folders so you don't have to go on a scavenger hunt for the INF!

If all goes well, it should automatically find that the driver in this folder is newer and update it for you. :yes:

 

Yep that's pretty much what I did. In Windows 7, rather than searching for the .inf file manually it came up with "Nvidia 425m" in the list once I pointed it to the folder containing the drivers, and I just clicked that.

Although now i've noticed that even though it said the installation was successful, my system still shows the old 259xxx driver installed.. hrm..

 

snap, maybe try going into the hardware manager and delete/remove the old 259xx driver, reboot, and then point it to the new 260xx driver?
Worth a shot.

 

Yeah that was gonna be my next step when I get home from work.

I'll let you know if it works. Thanks.

 

Cheers!
Is it worth upgrading? All games are working for me, would it improve performance?

 

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It really depends. Will it improve compatibility? Usually it does, but sometimes newer drivers implement newer features. If games support using those newer features, the game can wind up putting more stress on your video by rendering those better quality effects and cause it to run slower. Like I said, it all depends.

The only true answer is to install it and try it for yourself and see how things go. Take notes on how your current driver is performing with a few specific games and try those same games again after updating the driver. That's the best way to tell the difference.

You should be able to revert back to the older driver if you really have to. Windows XP, Vista & 7 back up the old driver and you can click the 'Roll Back Driver' option to go back to the driver you were using which is pretty nice.