Using the real Nvidia drivers

Anyone know how I can use the real Nvidia drivers, not the crappy Dell ones. If I try the Nvidia ones, it says something along the lines of 'could not locate any drivers that are compatible with your hardware' when installing, and when I search on the Nvidia site using my laptop model name and card, it says that you must use the Dell ones for 'hotkey functionality, resume features' and various other things I don't give a **** about.

The reason I want them is obviously for the hotfixes etc. I just bought Bioshock and it doesn't even work without the latest Nvidia hotfix. I have an Inspiron 1720 with an 8600M.

Thanks a lot, Jack.

 

Download the latest drivers from the NVIDIA site as normal, extract the files into the usual folder e.g. C:\NVIDIA\ but do not run the setup. Instead go to device manager, right click on the graphics adapter and update driver, select the option where you can choose the driver yourself and then do "Have Disk", now select the folder you extracted the files to and hey presto a list will appear with Driver inf's. Just select the one that relates to your card and your good to go.

It will automatically install the other software with it just like you'd run the Installer

This trick is particularly of use to those using Windows Vista X64 Edition as the OEM CD never detects the correct Graphics Card to begin with.

If your unsure what I mean here is a guide to "Have Disk" using Vista (32/64 bit, there is also a link to XP "Have Disk" in here):

http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=11997

This should sucessfully install NVIDIA drivers onto your Dell PC

HTH, Chris.

P.S. Rate me if it's useful!

 

The Nvidia driver distributions can't find your hardware because their INF configuration files deliberately omit most mobile GPUs so that the OEM (Dell in other words) can more closely control driver compatibility. With that said, there is no problem 99% of the time.

What you need to do is go to http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/drivers/vista and grab the latest (as of now, it's 163.75) - anything higher than 163.44 is needed for Bioshock. You also MUST download the "Modded INF" file, which is simply the original nvidia config with the M-class GPUs added to the list.

Once everything is unarchived, you need to manually overwrite the original INF file in the driver archive with the MODDED one. The standard SETUP application will then read the modded version, and install successfully.

Bioshock works great on the 8x00M class GPUs with anything higher than 163.44. See my post http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=2474450#post2474450 for details. Good luck!

 

Thanks guys, works well now. So why is 163.75 newer than 165.01?