3dmark 06 gives weird results after switching drivers

Hi all,

I have a 8800m GTX, and the driver that came with it was the 167.44 version.
I ran 3d mark and some games in stock drivers before I decided to update my driver, just to see how much more performance I could get.
So heres my score with 3d mark 06 and 167.44: 9362 3dmarks
I thought this was about right, cause I have the X9000, but hadnt overclocked it yet.
So what I did now was install the 174.74 drivers, about which I read many good things.
I did the following:

1. Uninstall programs: Nvidia display driver
2. Reboot in safe mode
3. use driver sweeper to fully remove any remains of the driver
4. Reboot in normal mode
5. Use "have disk" method to install 174.74 (with modded .inf)

Here is my problem: I have tried some games, they all seem fine, but I can really not see much improvement. Then I tried 3d mark 06, and the score I got was exactly 9000. So thats 350+ less then with my stock driver. I thought something must be wrong, so what I did was I tried some more drivers, using the same method. 174.33, 167.62, and finally I went back to 167.44. All throughout, im always missing around 350 3d marks. - - Even as I went back to my stock drivers, im still missing those marks. - - What did I do wrong? How can I fix this, and get the settings back that I had previously? System restore is not an option im afraid. I just dont understand how I could lose those marks even when I went back to my original driver.

It came to me that it could have to do with the NVidia control panel. However loads of the settings in there are to advanced for me, as in I dont know what they would do. I have tried change it to "performance" just for 3dmark, which didnt do anything.

Hmm yea, what else could it be? Is there a way I could isolate the problem to be with 3dmark? Too bad I dont really remember framerates of my games before, when I still had the original settings/drivers. It doesnt seem that there anything changed with the games though, as said they run alright.

ah and if it helps, I have VBIOS version .14 and Vista 32 bit home premium

All help is welcome

Falcon

 

try 169.04
also just reinstall the driver normally

 

Why can't you use system restore? I was having the same problem (except I couldn't get anything besides 174.82 to even install properly) and never got the same scores I got when I first took my laptop out of the box. In fact things started crashing and freezing and I was sorry I ever thought I could tweak things.

So I ran a system restore and Installed my drivers from the disk that came with the laptop and my scores went back to when I first got the laptop.
Unfortunately it never regained its pre-tweaking stability and I still have had a few instances of freezes and crashes. Sometimes I kick myself for screwing around with things.

 

My system restore was disabled when I got it, and I didnt notice it was (lol).

 

How about reinstalling vista from the dvd that came with your laptop?