Standard VGA/GeForce Go 7900 GS

I recently got my hands on a Toshiba Satellite P105-S9339. As it was second hand I totally wiped the hard-drive and then installed Windows XP and upgraded to Win 7 Enterprise 32bit from there. Everything has been working peachy... except for my graphics card. I assume I have the default GeForce Go 7900 GS that came with this model, however my device manager lists my display as the Standard VGA blah blah blah.

I've tried updating my drivers using nvidia's site. The most recent driver would install, however upon reboot I would get a black screen after the Windows loading little four-coloured box screen. Turn off, reboot, then I'm sent through the boot up repair which will only fix problems if I system restore to the last known good settings... and goodbye drivers.

From poking around the net the black screen seems to be a rather common problem...?

I used the windows update and the driver there also caused the black screen.

I've now tried to install older drivers, but I get errors telling my that the system can't find the 7900 GS hardware, so installation is canceled. I would assume it can't find it because I have no drivers an it reads as VGA.

I'm just getting a bit frustrated. Is my video card shot... do I need a specific driver?

I just want to be able to watch my .mkv files without them being upside down and mirrored.

acrooks, welcome to the Seven Forums.

Surprised you managed to get them to install at all considering the age video card in it and make of the laptop itself, also the reason that they won't work for you after a restart. Toshiba is one of those that won't for whatever reason allow for the use of most reference drivers on their computers (Sony and Panasonic are two others I know of that do the same thing).

Now with that said surprisingly Toshiba does have a Windows 7 driver available for it,

Model Content Page

select Windows 7 32 bit and driver to find it. It is an older driver version, but then again it is also an older video card that will get little to no benefit from the newer drivers. Give it a try and see if things will then work as they should.

I downloaded the Toshiba Drivers. Yet again on restart I got a black screen. I booted into safe mode and the display now read properly as the video card, however, that doesn't do me much good if it won't boot all the way normally... heh.

pebbly said:

Hi acrooks, welcome to the forums , try this driver NVIDIA DRIVERS 179.48 BETA even though it is for win7 I installed it in compatibility mode on my XPS M1710 for win vista

I'm running Win7, so the fact it's a 7 driver is fine. However, none of the drivers straight from nvidia's site will install. They all say that the hardware is not found and kick me out of installation.

I'm wondering if this has anything to do with the problem,

I totally wiped the hard-drive and then installed Windows XP and upgraded to Win 7

as it was s step not really needed if you used an Windows 7 upgrade disk,

Clean Install with a Upgrade Windows 7 Version

Also this could be a factor,

As it was second hand

It could be that the video card is damaged and the problem doesn't show up until the proper driver is installed for it, as the card will work differently with the generic Windows driver over the proper one. Didn't happen to run the laptop while it had XP on it did you, or was it a straight install XP and upgrade to 7? If it was a straight upgrade might be worth starting from scratch with XP, get all the necessary drivers installed (chipset and video at a minimum) and see if it still happens.

Pebbly, sorry to say but reference Nvidia drivers (and ATI/AMD for that matter) will never install on a Toshiba laptop (or Sony) without modding the INF to include the proper device IDs. As far as modding Nvidia drivers at least you can get them from here,

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

that in most cases will install on any laptop regardless of who it was made by.

severedsolo said:

Out of interest, have you tried the Vista Driver that Toshiba have linked on their site? Model Content Page

You'll need to uninstall the old drivers you've already tried first (NOT standard VGA). In fact... you should be doing that anyway.

Also, do NOT download the BIOS update that's also listed on that page. Unless you fancy flashing your BIOS, not really recommended though.

Tried this. Yet again, a black screen at boot, but in safe mode the card is seen properly.

Didn't happen to run the laptop while it had XP on it did you, or was it a straight install XP and upgrade to 7? If it was a straight upgrade might be worth starting from scratch with XP, get all the necessary drivers installed (chipset and video at a minimum) and see if it still happens.

I ran it for a few hours in XP before the update. Didn't do any driver downloads at that time. XP seemed to be working fine. Considering the age of the system I'll likely roll back to XP and see if things work alright there. I'm really only concerned with having my videos play and being able to use the internet and Word... so going back isn't too horrible a deal.

I'll try a roll back and driver install in XP and then upgrade first though.