(8800m gts)nvidia driver crashing under win7

hey guys,
yesterday i formatted my harddrive and installed windows 7 on my gateway p172 s fx. before i had windows vista but i thought it was time for something new. i never had any problems with the laptop i couldnt fix myself, i play a lot of games but the video card never had overheating problems. (only overheating problems i had with the processor but that was easily fixed by undervolting and cleaning). now after installing windows 7 i went to laptopvideo2go and downloaded some random driver, version 280.28, which was probably a bad idea, since after that i experienced a screen freeze (like 10 minutes after the restart). i didnt do anything except downloading drivers and installing software, so i dont think the video card was overheating. i uninstalled the driver and the software that came with it and downloaded the newest driver from nvidia.com that was recommended to me. i got additional color-errors, screen freezes, black screens and some blue screens, so i uninstalled it again. i installed the driver from gateway.com, i think it was a 173 version or something else really not up to date. after the driver crashed and recovered a few times it worked until i tried watching a youtube video which resulted in a bluescreen. now running on VGA driver. i can now watch youtube videos but i kinda want to also be able to play games on my laptop again.
i have tried to find someone with the same problem on this forum, i googled the problem but i only found heat or game related problems or problems that prevent the video card from working at all, so i am not sure if it has something to do with windows 7, a wrong driver i installed that screwed up something somewhere or my video card just dying (please tell me its not).
has anyone had similar problems when switching to windows 7? or does it sound more like i screwed up here?
please help, i appreciate it.
oh and sorry about spelling errors, i have read like 500 pages of forum entries in the last hours...

 

i now used the driver sweeper, then installed the 195.81 driver, got a blue screen after logging in -.-

 

Came here from google, have the same problem but using a 8800 GTS (not mobile). Waiting for a driver update.

 

And what's wrong with Windows 7 default graphic driver for your system?

cheers ...

 

the default graphics driver is the "standard vga graphics adapter". it runs videos but no games.

 

hm i tried 5 different drivers, none of them worked...

 

still laughing

I was curious as to how you installed win7; retail disk? I'm still using Vista but tempted to do a clean install on spare drive when time permits..and i find a deal on W7pro DVD.

I use a DRiver copy via USB on my road machine as it is already W7HP and has the keys for it.

Odd that your having video driver issues, nothing else?

 

I just installed 64-bit Win7 Home Premium (OEM fresh install) on my P6860fx, and I'm using the latest nVidia whql drivers: 280.26

No problems thusfar with the gpu, ran a couple games just to test, have not experienced any display/gpu-related issues, temps seem fine. Even installed nVidia system tools 6.06 to overclock the 8800M GTS, it all works like it did in Vista, except the speed changes do not want to auto-apply when I do a cold boot. Gotta go into the nVidia control panel to o/c each time I restart the laptop.

 

I'm on Win7 x64 Ultimate on my P7811-FX using driver v280.26 and I am having no issues. Mine was a clean install using the drivers on Gateway's website and later updating via Windows Update. Video driver came straight from nVidia.

It sounds like that random driver you installed borked some registry settings and driver sweeper won't help you fix those. There are other things (changed volt settings, OC, etc.) that can go wrong when installing modded/beta/wrong drivers, but I won't go into that here. I'd recommend reinstalling Win7. It will be quicker than waiting for someone online to help. Make sure to format the drive again. Then install the whql driver from nVidia. If everything works, you will know what the issue was... Let us know how it goes.