Could anyone tell me how NVIDIA labels its drivers, and what each digit in that label means? Maybe it looks silly that I’m interested in those numbers, but the answer to this question might be a solution for my problem. And the problem is that I cannot install new drivers on my notebook, although the video card is in the list of supported ones.
I have a GX600 notebook with NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT (512 MB). OS is Windows Vista (32 bit). In the ListDevices.txt file that video-card is always present at the beginning of the list. But when I try to install new drivers, installation is always stopped with the following message:
The NVIDIA Setup program could not locate any drivers that are
compatible with your current hardware. Setup will now exit.
The last drivers that I have successfully installed were 185.81 (or to be more precise 7.15.11.8581). After that I have tried to install every higher version that was available for download, but without success. Today I have downloaded the latest drivers for notebooks - 186.81. Again in vain. So, I decided to take a closer look at files containing the drivers hoping that somewhere I would find labels telling they are not for Windows Vista 32 or something similar. And I have found something very interesting!
[185.81 *.INF]
; NVIDIA Windows Vista (32 bit) Display INF file
; Copyright (c) NVIDIA Corporation. All rights reserved.
[Version]
Signature = “Windows NT”
Provider = %NVIDIA%
ClassGUID = {4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
Class = Display
DriverVer = 04/28/2009, 7.15.11.8581
//------------------------------------------------
[185.85 *.INF]
; NVIDIA Windows Vista (32 bit) Display INF file
; Copyright (c) NVIDIA Corporation. All rights reserved.
[Version]
Signature = “Windows NT”
Provider = %NVIDIA%
ClassGUID = {4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
Class = Display
DriverVer = 04/30/2009, 8.15.11.8585
//------------------------------------------------
[186.03 *.INF]
; NVIDIA Windows Vista / Windows 7 (32 bit) Display INF file
; Copyright (c) NVIDIA Corporation. All rights reserved.
[Version]
Signature = “Windows NT”
Provider = %NVIDIA%
ClassGUID = {4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
Class = Display
DriverVer = 05/27/2009, 8.15.11.8603
//------------------------------------------------
[186.81 *.INF]
; NVIDIA Windows Vista / Windows 7 (32 bit) Display INF file
; Copyright (c) NVIDIA Corporation. All rights reserved.
[Version]
Signature = “Windows NT”
Provider = %NVIDIA%
ClassGUID = {4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
Class = Display
DriverVer = 08/19/2009, 8.16.11.8681
The last drivers I successfully installed have a 7 as the first digit in the drivers’ version label, and all others have 8!
Does anyone know why the drivers cannot be installed, and how the problem can be related to the version of the drivers?
Thank you in advance for your help!