Finding a win7, 64bit compatible version of an old nVidia driver...

[cjmdjm]

So, to make a long story short, I have a computer I'm supposed to fix for a friend. It gets lots of graphics artifacts, black boxes, colored dots, etc. It has an Asrock motherboard (an unusual board with both AGP and PCI-E) and a GeForce 7900gs (AGP).

After much reading, I have determined that this is a solved problem . Its a driver problem on Asrock boards with nvidia AGP graphics cards. The solution is to install a (very) old version of the nvidia drivers (forceware 97.52). This is described by user Brainwashed here:
http://www.sevenforums.com/graphic-cards/14519-wonky-screen-corruption-problem-6.html#post316770

But I am having trouble finding and installing a win7, 64bit version of this driver. I know one exists, because in the very next reply in that thread, user Vighi says he found one for Vista64, and it worked (he has win7). But he doesn't give a link to it.

I tried to find one on my own with google. I found this one:
v97.52 VISTA 64bit | Nightly Build - LaptopVideo2Go Forums

But its on a laptop video website, and might be for a laptop video card. Its also a "modified Inf" driver, whatever that means. Anyway, I ran the setup file, but it wouldn't install. In safe mode, it said it couldn't find a driver compatible with my hardware. In normal mode, it says I have the wrong operating system, that it won't work with a 64bit OS.

Thoughts? Its really frustrating having identified the problem, and found a solution that almost everyone says worked for them, but not be able to make it work myself.

Thanks guys!

 

[zigzag3143]

You can use the vista driver if you install it in compatibility mode

Right click the installer>properties>compatibility>chose vista.

 

[cjmdjm]

You can use the vista driver if you install it in compatibility mode

I just tried this. It said "setup could not find a driver compatible with your current hardware, setup will now exit." This was in vista service pack 2 compatibility mode, running as administrator.

That was with the 97.52 vista64 driver I found on laptopvideo2go. But this computer is NOT a laptop. So I tried a 97.46 vista64 driver I found on guru3d. (They have a 97.52 driver, but its x86). Same problem, same error.

Thoughts? Thanks guys.

EDIT: that laptopvideo2go driver listed the graphics card (GeForce 7900gs) on its list of compatible cards. See link in my OP.

 

[cjmdjm]

I had another thought. If the geforce 7900gs is incompatible with that particular driver (it shouldn't be), I do have a geforce 6800 laying around I could try. Would that help? Any other thoughts?

Thanks guys.