Issue with upgrading Intel Video Driver (I6400)

Got a Inspiron 6400 (not mine, just on loan to me from work till my Toshiba gets back from Toshiba . It has the GMA950. I tried to upgrade the video card driver by downloading the drivers from Intel Direct, but I get a error.

"The driver being installed is not validated for this computer" etc.... This must be a dell thing huh? I installed the latest version of the drivers from Dell, but they are much older then the ones that intel has. Is there any work around/hack to get by this?

 

Thats odd...when I searched Dell's website they say it has the GMA945GM


Maybe this one is correct?

 

Yeah that's the one I am trying to use. I really think it is something dell does to it's laptop's, so you can only use "Dell" drivers.

 

Are you going through the setup program or just updating the device driver in device manager?

 

I tried both ways.

 

I think the problem is because DELL lock their drivers. You can't upgrade to an Intel driver from a DELL driver. I had this problem with my previous Inspiron 630m, and seen the same issue with an E1405. I got around by reformatting windows. You can install Intel driver on a clean installation, and afterwards you can upgrade with any Intel release.

I think the restriction is put in the installer; I don't know if this works (cos I have not tried this myself), but you might be able to trick the installer if you do this:

Download and extract both Intel and DELL drivers
Replace the files in the [DELL driver]\Win2000 folder with [Intel Driver]\Graphics
Then run DELL installer
It might work (try this at your own risk)

 

PhoenixFx that makes sense to me in terms of a clean install vs not. That may be the only to install the Intel ones. As for your extract/replace theory I don't believe it will work because the information that it is a Dell driver or Intel drive is located in the INF files themselves meaning it should still come up with the same error as before.

 

Well, you could be right. But I still believe that there is a way to bypass DELL's restriction. I'm sure dll ,exe, sys and other driver files are not individually checked, most probably only very few files are needed. So if we keep only those and replace the others, it should work. However there is always the chance that this kind of messing around can lead to a system crash.