Vista and nvidia geforce 6150

I just installed Vista (mostly to get Aero and because it only cost $9 through my university) but windows doesn't use my graphics card that came with my hp dv200z. Does anyone know how to deal with this? I checked nvidia's site and downloaded the driver but it didn't find my graphics card on my computer.

I would really appreciate any help ya'll could offer. Thanks.

 

There should be a driver available for the 6150 from Windows Update(98.15). Alternatively you can download the latest drivers from Nvidia and use the modded inf(you can mod the inf yourself if you so desire) from laptopvideo2go. One more option is to download the driver from HP's support site which is the oldest version(97.5).

 

Thanks. The HP driver did the trick. The aero effects are pretty snazzy. Hopefully it won't eat up my battery. ;]

 

It doesn't really have any effect on battery life, but the reason i turned Aero off was because it was constantly using CPU. dwm.exe in task manager constantly jumps up n' down, thus adding it's share to Vista's already greater CPU usage over XP, and with higher CPU usages comes increased fan noise.

 

Huh? Doesn't a higher CPU usage eat up your battery quickly? What are you trying to say?
Increasing fan noise even worse. That means lot of heat(refer to CPU power consumption again), and will eat up your battery like a hunger beast.

 

I think he meant that running Aero was causing the higher cpu load, making the fan run more.

EDIT: Rockharder, never mind. I'm confused about the "It doesn't really have any effect on battery life" statement too. It just took me longer to catch it. lol

 

When you're running Vista with Aero on, then it is logical the battery lasts less, yes. But i've seen so many people say that, even with Aero on, the battery doesn't really last that much less in Vista than it did in XP. Some even report that they get about 20 more minutes of runtime in Vista. I guess the type of GPU you have has a lot to do with it too.
But whatever the case, things certainly are as not as bad that they could be called a 'hunger beast'.

 

True, but if Aero is causing the cpu spikes you mentioned, this would affect battery life.

 

Those CPU spikes are too small. It jumps up n' down between 0-5%.

Anyway, here is a thread that discusses just that - the Vista battery thing:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=120571