8 year old dv7-1250ep with Win8.1 - GPU driver and/or BIOS update?

[user12454412]

Greetings!

I joined the forum for this issue in particular, which has been haunting me to some degree for years and its magnitude increased with a clean install from win7 x32bit to Win8.1 x64bit, last week.

So, as stated in the title, I'm running an old notebook. I managed to maintain it in decent condition over the years and I can (could) run most recent games and software with it. My CPU is a compal 30f4 and my GPU a GeForce 9600M GT.

Ever since I got this laptop, I could never install new GPU drivers. EVER. All of them crashed, gave me BSOD's, or worse.

I wasn't the only one with this issue, but it was never officially adressed by any of the entitities that should have.

Yes, I'm doing clean installs, with clean registry. Safe mode and not. This has been going for years.

Thing is, with the new OS, I can't find a single driver that works, (my old backup driver is a 32bit!), not even ones suggested by the Nvidia live support.

Im not expecting anyone to find me a working driver in a jiffy, as from what experience tells me, with this product I need to somehow, somewhere, find a single version that works and stick to it. However, I've been trying to find one for over a week now, since I upgraded my OS; and NOTHING works (I'm aware there are many more versions out there).

I never considered upgrading the BIOS because I'm not that confident in my computer "savvyness" to deal with unwanted consequences, but I noticed there's a upgrade here, from my current BIOS version (HP F.25, 23/12/2008) to HP F.2D Rev.

So, to wrap it up: firstly, do you think I should upgrade my BIOS, with guarantee of zero official support, or that it could solve my GPU driver issue? Even though that BIOS update if for Win7?

Secondly, is it safe  to try out drivers from places such as this (laptopvideo2go), this (oldapps), or this (guru3d)? Should I try some forceware?

Here's to hoping someone can save me from the Microsoft Basic Display Driver.

Thanks for your time!

Edit: words and such.

[Huffer]

Had a hard time finding the specs but it is an Intel T9550 cpu and is the old nVIdia 9600M GT video. 

It was originally designed for Vista. I hate to second guess, but what drivers have you tried to install for the video? 

This one?:

https://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/73216

I think you need the BIOS flash since it seems to fix a fundamental issue with 64 bit operating systems, but I am hesitant to tell you to try the flash from Windows 8.1. 

I think you ought to put Windows 7 64 bit back on it and try to build it back from there after the BIOS flash. I actually used to have one of these models years ago and it always worked well for me. 

[WAWood]

@user12454412

Sorry to hear about your problems with drivers ...

You'll get different opinions from different folks, so here are mine:

1)BIOS -- HP makes their BIOS updates OS-version specific, so if the update you want to use is for Win7, and you are NOT running Win7, then most likely, it will error out when you try to run it.

2) Drivers -- When new versions of HP PCs include new hardware, then installing a newer OS on an HP PC than the one it came with is going to end up with problems like yours, because even if there were newer Win8x drivers, if those are for different hardware, they would not work with your PC.

Have you tried installing a driver using Compatibility Mode?  Sometimes, only sometimes, that will work when trying to reuse older drivers with newer OS versions.  See this link for details:  http://ccm.net/faq/24611-installing-a-driver-in-compatibility-mode-in-windows-7

Let us know if that helps.

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

Hi, @user12454412

Try manually installing the W7 x64 graphics driver from your notebook's support page as follows...

Download and save, but do not run this driver.

This package contains the NVIDIA GeForce 9200M GS/9600M GT Video/Graphics Driver for the supported notebook models and operating systems.

http://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp41501-42000/sp41543.exe

Download and install this free file utility.  The 2nd file at the top of the page is for 64 bit.

http://www.7-zip.org/

After you install 7-Zip, right click on the graphics driver file you saved.

Select 7-Zip from the list of items on the menu.

Have 7-Zip Extract to: and let it extract the file into its folder name (sp41543).

After 7-zip does that, go to the device manager, click to expand the display adapters device manager category.

Click on the Microsoft Basic Display Adapter.  Click on the driver tab.  Click on Update Driver.

Select the Browse my computer for driver software option, and browse to the driver folder that 7-Zip created.

Make sure the Include Subfolders box is checked, and see if the driver installs that way.

Then restart the PC.

[user12454412]

Thanks for the quick responses!

I meant motherboard sorry, yes the CPU is Intel.

So, if I understood correctly, I fundamentally approached it wrong from the beggining - I should have upgraded from win7 x32 to win7 x64, then updated the BIOS, then moved on to win8.1 x64?

It makes sense, but still... I had this problem with every driver version released a bit later after my retail version, even before a BIOS update was released in 2012.

There are similar situations referred on this very HP forum, with no solution other than the one I used even before I found that: stick to a stable version you find and don't update it.

I should have mentioned all those drivers, without exception,  install without problems: except once they do, I get blackouts, rarely BSODs and more oft than not complete freezes, forcing me to force shut it. Some are more stable, but always crashing in the end.

I'm about to give up on trying more driver versions - yes, for 9600M GT and even using DDU and clean installs.

I will try updating the BIOS though, and hopefully come back to report in 😛 I was reading up on it just now.

Edit: I realize it's an old system, with old hardware, and that's why I said i don't expect a proper full-fledged solution, so to say - It was a gamble either way, but I figured it was finally worth a try since I'm not seeing myself purchasing a new rig anytime soon. I was just hoping someone with one of the laptops in the series with the same issues managed to find way to solve the issue, and remember it.

Edit 2: @Paul_Tikkanen: I tried installing the old driver from the HP website and where running the instalator didn't work well before, doing it manually seems to have done so, at least for the last 10 minutes. It's running without crashes or artifacts.  I'm going to work soon, but will test it out when I come back!

[Huffer]

If force installing the video driver per @Paul_Tikkanen

works for you I think we are done here, right? 

[user12454412]

Yes, it appears to be stable. Thanks for your help, Paul!

I will keep looking for a later stable driver, but the thread can be marked as solved.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.