Windows 7 - HELP!! Same problem as many. Graphics card wont be detected!!

SO i just upgraded from vista to Windows 7 on my Laptop and now my g.c. wont be read like alot of others. Ive tried going to nvidia and find a drive but none work. they keep saying there is no card that can be found and all that fun stuff so if any one can help me id appreciate it.

MY SPECS
Gateway FX Laptop
Model # P6831
Proc Intel core 2 duo t5550 @ 1.83 GHz
Video card i know its a Geforce 8800m but dont know if its GT or GTS

Have you checked BIOS to see if the card is enabled?


Ken J

No i havent checked that out. I will do so right now. Thanks

Ok First 2 suggestions would be use manufacturs specs get the seriel do some reaseach on what that maker put into that particular build

Then after you have found this informantion out proceed to check if they have updated drivers available through them

Since windows can't detect or figure it out they should have a moded driver for the win 7 that would be most likely the only steps you can take besides

getting links to possible nvidia software drivers that run on win 7

Yet one more issue may occur if it isn't any win 7 update you're going to have to make do with a vista driver that would be somewhere in the ball park note you won't be doing any more updates for that driver for a while

also suggest if you do gain the driver and detect this system flash it right away and make sure you mark it for future install issues

Almost for got this as well if you upgraded from vista to this platform that might be you're issue there too always do a clean install never upgrade ok i said enough so i hope what i have said works for you

ok so i just looked in the BIOS setup and i have no idea what im looking for. Now i didnt see anything about a graphics card on there.

ANd yes i did do a fresh install of windows 7. I formatted my HD and did it that way. I have looked thru gateway and nvidia all of yesterday and downloaded many drivers. none worked. i will keep at it to try and figure this out.

did you try the auto-detect feature at the nvidia website?
did you check gateways website?

yeah but in the bios you would have to go under chipset and check if you have a installed and a onboard it might be conflicting you need to disable something cause something is making it clear that it has another display to use besides the 8800mm

Im sure if you turn this feature off in the bios that would resolved and it would inform you that you need a driver

sometimes onboard graphics will disable a installed card cause i doubt you really be able to look at anything respectivly if it wasnt a dedicated graphics already there

nvidia reference drivers in a lot of cases won't install on laptop versions of Nvidia GPU's due to licensing with the laptop manufacturers (same goes for ATI/AMD mobility GPU's) and other reasons, and require the INF to be modded in order to be installed (either manually or getting them pre-modded). For pre-modded drivers the best to look for nvidia based GPU's is here,

Drivers | drivers for mobile cards and laptops | laptopvideo2go.com

or if you want to do it yourself you can use something like this (not sure how well it works with the latest drivers),

NVIDIA MobilityModder

or if you know or can find the correct DevID for your particular GPU, add it to the INF yourself.

Laptop manufacturers sometimes alter the device ID of their graphics adapters, so that generic drivers (such as those downloaded from nVidia drirectly) won't recognize them.

One thing to try: download and install the Vista drivers:

NVIDIA Video Driver version: 7.15.11.6746

They ought to work. Once the graphics card is recognized, you may get newer/better drivers through Windows Update.

I vaguely recall that's what I did with my laptop, which contains an nVidia 8200M graphics device.

+1 for all that, you can find the DevID by looking in Device Manager, open Properties of the Yellow !, Detail tab, Hardware Ids dropdown: