Unable to install Nvidia drivers on my HP laptop.  

Hello everyone, I'll start by including my specs

Windows 7 Home Premium x64
Intel Core i7-2670QM 2.20GHz
8GB Ram
Nvidia geforce 630M, with an Intel(R) HD Graphics 3000.

I purchased a dv7-7063ea laptop around 3 months ago. Everything was running smoothly until the middle of July, when I finally got around to playing Diablo 3. I have a frame rate of around 30-40, but this drops sharply to 5-10 whenever I'm in combat etc. This does not change regardless of my settings in game or on my Nvidia control panel. I can turn everything down to the bare minimum and never get above 40 fps. Plenty of other games such as League of Legends are locked at 60 with everything maxed.

I've asked around the official D3 forums and this is apparently a common issue, which everyone seems to have fixed by installing the 3XX official Nvidia drivers. I went to do so, to be told that the driver could not recognise my hardware. Looking in to it some more I was told I would need to install the driver from my manufacturer's website. Upon checking up on this, I found I was using the latest version available from HP (295.93). While my Nvidia control panel continues to notify me that my driver is out of date, I am unable to do so and this issue keeps popping up on any graphics intensive games (and recently Magicka as well ).

Is there any way that I can get around this? I've made numerous attempts to contact HP support but after giving them this amount of time without a response I've given up as they are quite frankly useless. I hoped reinstalling W7 would have the desired effect but it has not. Apparently it's to do with my BIOS, which I generally have no knowledge about.

Thanks in advance for any light you guys can shed on my situation. I've attached a dxdiag should it help speed up the process.

Two little words as to why the reference Nvidia driver won't install despite supporting the GT 630M in your laptop, switchable graphics. Directly from the supported products page of the latest Nvidia driver,

Exceptions:

1. Notebooks supporting Hybrid Power technology with Intel chipsets are not supported by this release.
2. The following Sony VAIO notebooks are supported: Sony VAIO F Series with NVIDIA GeForce 310M, GeForce GT 330M, GeForce GT 425M, GeForce GT 520M or GeForce GT 540M. Other Sony VAIO notebooks are not supported (please contact Sony for driver support).
3. Fujitsu notebooks are not included this release (Fujitsu Siemens notebooks are included).

Yours falls under number 1, which basically leaves you at the mercy of HP to come out with an updated driver or finding a modded one that will work with switchable graphics..

I was afraid of this situation... I may have to look in to returning this laptop in that case. I have absolutely no hope of HP ever updating their drivers, since this one is over 2 months old now.

IanDrexP said:

watch out since HP cuts customer support when your warranty expires.

That's not really anything to worry about, even having got an extended warranty (albeit a free one) customer support is non existent from HP anyway. Thanks for the concern however :3

No promises but if you haven't tried it give this a shot,

Notebook Drivers

It is supposed to work with Nvidia laptop graphics, but no idea if it will actually install on one with switchable graphics.

IanDrexP said:

Another customer loss for HP hahaha why not try custom building a rig? =)

I required a laptop for university (which I start in a little over 2 weeks) and this seemed like a good idea at the time.

Also I downloaded the 306.02 beta driver and it installed without a hitch. There's only a slight improvement, but it's a start. I might try and downgrade to a previous beta driver to see if that's any better.

Gonna go ahead and mark this as solved as I've managed to install a later version of the nvidia driver. Hopefully the full release of 306+ will solve these problems for good.