Updating 8600m gt Driver

Just got a new Dell 1520 with a 8600m gt and saw the topic about upgrading you drivers. Only problem my driver is listed as 7.15.11.43 under the device manager. I see people updating to 16x.xxx what am I missing? Doesn't seem right going from 7.xx to 160.xx

Thanks,

 

Drivers aren't numbered numerically by date, also, only the last few digits in the Device Manager are the name of the driver. Goto laptopvideo2go.com, there you can list drivers by date and popularity.

 

Right Click on your desktop and then click Nvidia control panel, then choose help then System info. You will find your driver number there. Also if you have problems upgrading you graphics with the setup, you have to go into the Device manager then select your display option and then update driver and so on theres some guides on that laptop2 go site.

 

Thanks,

Found out the Dell shipped with version 101.43.

 

Go to http://www.laptopvideo2go.com and click the drivers link at the top of the page.

Click on the 163.44 (or whatever version you choose.. those are the latest for Bioshock, and some have reported improvements). Download the driver and execute the file so it extracts to a folder. Do NOT run setup.exe, go back to the page where you got the driver and download the inf file, overwrite the inf file in the folder with the drivers. Now.. on Vista (and make sure you chose the Vista 32bit drivers when you downloaded), click on the windows button and right click on My Computer and select properties. Click on Device Manager in the top left hand corner. Find your video card and right click on it and update the driver. Click on "Browse my computer for driver software", and on the next page click "Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer". Click on "Have Disk" and browse to the folder where the driver files are that you just downloaded. You will see the nv4.inf file, double click on it and it will show your graphics card 8600m... click through the rest and tell windows to install the driver anyway when it warns you. Click finish when done...

That's all there is to it.. sorry that's not verbatim, if you need a guide with screenshots I'd be happy to make one but it will take me a day or two, just let me know.

Enjoy

PS: The reason you can't find the drivers everyone is talking about is because nVidia is slow about releasing drivers for the 8000 series laptop cards.. they still only show the 7000 series Go drivers on their website. So.. the good people at www.laptopvideo2go.com take the latest drivers when they are released (usually considered beta drivers because nVidia hasn't released them yet) and modify the inf file so that they work with the new cards like we have in the 1520's. The nVidia video cards all use the same driver for all of their cards, but nVidia just doesn't include all of the models in their inf file on a timely basis. So.. the proceedure above will get you going with faster video drivers. Oh.. and be sure to sign up to www.laptopvideo2go.com and thank them for all their hard work!

 

Thanks again Spliner,

I think I got it, the real problem was finding what version I already had.
With your guide though, I 'm much less worried about screwing something up.

 

spliner can u do a screenshot thingy i still can't understand how to install

 

I will post one tomorrow night, way too tired to do it at the moment. By the way the 163.44 drivers work great with Bioshock. Just bought it tonight, loaded it up and upped the screen resolution to 1280x800 and it plays great! That game is awesome by the way. Now I need to download the xbox 360 controller drivers for vista lol.

Havn't tried DX10 just yet though, but on DX9 it still has stunning graphics.

 

thanks for help mate. mine works fine now

 

Glad they worked for you. I got the Blue screen of death. I'll try another driver version later. Now I remember why I bought a console to play games.

 

Lv2go already has a installation/instruction guide with pictures.

Installation instructions(Vista)

Installation instructions(XP)

 

Thanks Kdawgca!

 

The BSOD is usually caused by incorrectly downloading the XP drivers instead of Vista.. I have done it by accident myself. Make sure the install you get is something like XXXX_vista.exe, otherwise you donwloaded the wrong ones.