Laptop video drivers, and the horrors within.

bent

Hi there, basically yesterday I tried updating my drivers for an nVidia 7600 Go! card (for a laptop), and anyone who has ever owned one may know the brain numbingly horrible support for it (for some reason nVidia doesn't update the drivers for it so it's left down to whatever company makes your laptop) and the pain of third party drivers. I tried installing some from laptopvideo2go.com (a particular driver which apparently worked really well for someone else with the exact same laptop as me, for statistics it's a Rock Pegasus 665) and they worked a charm up until this morning, when I tried playing the orange box. I got an 'engine failure' error and then my screen became covered in thousands of little dots, and now I get absolutely nothing on my display until the windows log in screen (so I can't enter safe mode or recovery mode) and when I've logged in nothing is displayed properly and the screen constantly turns itself on and off.

So... any ideas? I have to go out right now, but I'll be checking on this thread later today to update accordingly.

1.8ghz Centrino Duo Core
256mb nVidia 7600 Go
1 gig RAM

Firebrand

If you're not getting a boot display before entering Windows that's not a driver issue. Did you flash the video BIOS? Otherwise it sounds to me like some piece of hardware has failed and needs to be replaced.

bent

I'm not sure what flashing the video bios entails exactly, I don't really have any level of expertise in tech support. I'll try booting from a ubuntu cd later, but in the meantime I think the laptop's still under warrantee so I'll organise a trip to their support shop, if the problem sounds quite serious.

Is it possible for a faulty driver to completely screw over a piece of hardware? Like I said the screen is sort of flashing on and off, seems like it's become loosely connected or something. I haven't had any knocks to the laptop or anything, it's been sationary on my desk for god knows how long.

Your avatar is making me nostalgic, goddamn I loved that game.

-Spitfire-

I'm terribly interested in this thread because I seem to be having a similar problem, but with my desktop computer. I had just moved into a new apartment and the computer was on the floor for a month or so (since my old desk was too big/heavy to bring and I didn't have another one yet. When I did get the desk and moved the computer a few days ago, it wouldn't start properly and just kept cycling to the windows login screen, switching itself off, and starting over.

After a day of playing around, I got into Windows itself, but as mentioned in the original post, nothing is displayed correctly and the screen flashes on and off every time I try to do something. The display picture also "crackles" and twitches around the edges as though there is a transmitting cellphone near, but there isn't.

The computer did give me an error message saying something was wrong with my video driver, which I think might be a GeForce somethingorother, but might be an nVidia (I'm at work now and I'm not really sure, it was put in there several years ago). I didn't actually change anything at all other than switching it off, moving it onto the desk, and re-plugging it in.

How bizzare - though somewhat comforting to know I'm not the only one having this problem!

Iceman.USAF

omegadrivers.net

Use them, love them. They make Knights of the Old Republic work. They make FEAR run. They are awesome.

Also, they make my ATi Mobility run amazingly well. Try them out!