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Update drivers for Nvidia 8600m Gt on the Inspiron 1720

270 points posted to Inspiron products by ali3n8 Feb 14

Hello,

As many 1720 owners that game well know there is an issue with the current drivers for the 8600m GT in vista 32bit edition. The following error is received when trying to game or use anything application that is graphically intensive "Display driver stopped responding, but has successfully recovered". Apparently this is a major issue that nvidia has acknowledged and has fixed. When will dell get on the ball put out a driver update for this card. I spent very good money for my machine love the performance but when it come to game time its pretty much hopeless. Before anyway says anything I am a Systems Engineer and know my way very well around a pc. I have tried every solution possible to fix this issue. DELL please update your drivers so I can enjoy the machine I purchased.

ah1f
Feb 14
Funny thing I don't get these mesages with my 1721 with integrated ATI playing BF2 and BF2142. If DEll would offer more options it would be easier to put together a system that works.
lugo02
Feb 14
Is there any reason why you can't directly download the updated drivers directly from Nvidia? After all Dell dosen't acutually write the drivers, Nvidia does.
ali3n8
Feb 15
I would like if a Dell. Rep. could respond to this and give an insight if dell is aware of this issue and what they are doing to remedy it. And if so how can we get this issue addressed what would be the proper procedure?
lugo02
Feb 15
ic your point... You should speak with Dell support
ali3n8
Feb 20
That is the error that all received when I researched this issue. Dell support is no help all they do is suggest you to download the drivers from their site. What they dont understand is the drivers are the issue. Can we get an answer from a dell rep if there is a driver in development. And also please all other 8600m GT users comment on their experiences. The only way we can get this fixed is if we scream loud enough.
ali3n8
Feb 21
Citroentech, have you spoken with dell support? If so what did they say to you Im curious.
theankh
Feb 21
I just ordered a refurb 8600m to put in my 1720. I may have it tomorrow. I have had ALOT of luck getting past this issue many times with other laptop drivers on Dell Inspirons and Latitudes, just not this exact card.

It should just be a matter of grabbing the latest known drivers from somewhere other than...
Extract the actual driver files from the installer. (I use WinRAR, usually.) Do NOT run the installer. Just rem where you extracted them to.
Open Device Manager and bring up the properties of the 8600.
Click on the Driver Tab, select the Update Driver button.
Select Browse my computer for driver software.
Select Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer.
Click the Have Disk button.
Browse to the NEW extracted driver files. Click OK.
Select Card from list.
Next, etc...

If the above doesn't work for you, I'm sure I can get it working when I get my card in...

Best of luck,

Ankh
theankh
Feb 22
Well, the video card didn't make it today, so I guess I'll have to wait to tackle this one directly... I was hoping to post a certain resolution tonight. bummer...

Anyway, if you try the above, it should work. Post any results.

Ankh
jamburg
Feb 24
I am having a similar problem with my 1720 with a 8600M GT. I cannot run Gears of War because Dell is still giving an outdated driver for download. The game keeps telling me to update my driver and when I do I notice it is quite old. They are still in the 150 versions when nVidea has already posted several new updates in the 160s. I spoke with customer support, but they just keep trying to get me to update my driver from the support website, which is useless since it is OUTDATED. I also could not update directly from nVidea like I prefer since they redirect me to Dell every time I try to get the driver or if I downlad the non-mobile card version it will not install. I cannot believe Dell would be this negligent in not updating a driver for a critical component like a video card on a new computer line with a new operating system like Vista.
ali3n8
Feb 25
So i have made the call to dell support and they cant tell me a thing. I had to finally convience them there is an issue to get them to send me a new card. Im hoping that maybe I received a card from a bad batch and that hopefully a replacement will solve it. Im keeping my fingers crossed I will keep you guys posted. In the meantime the only solution that I have found that works for me is rolling back to xp. Ive been gaming and using graphic intensive apps all weekend without a single crash. I can play my games at the highest settings not even a pause. There is definitely an issue with the vista drivers nvdia has fixed it for their direct consumers. Why cant dell do the same and keep up on its products. I am surprised that we have yet to hear from a rep from dell about this issue. Im sure tech support has received alot of complaints about this. I will be straight up once I receive this replacement card im going to restore the system to the out of box state. If at that time I still experience issues you can expect to receive a complaint from the better business bureau, Im fed up with you guys charging us for a machine and then not coming out with a solution when the product is obviously defected or does not perform as advertised.
jshoo97
Mar 3
hey guys im having the exact same issue with my video card and was wondering if dell has a update on the verizon that is going to be on the website soon? if not should i call dell and ask for a new video card?
jshoo97
Mar 5
hi me again i have jus recently talked to a dell tech and after 1.5 hrs of talking and daignosing he directed me to microsoft to download a patch that i already have.....lol but yea, i showed to the dell tech this blog and he keeps assuring me if there is a driver update out there from nvidia they would have it on their website but im very skeptical of this because when we went to the nvidia website to try to download a driver from them directly he was telling me to download a desktop driver for my video card. as we all kno a laptop driver will have a m at the end for mobile where'as a desktop version will not, so i had to correct him and tell him that this is a desktop driver not a laptop one. so hopefully this will help anyone else out there trying to figure out what to do with their 1720 and maybe convince them that calling a dell rep really isnt a helpfull option if anyone has a resulution for this plz post it
krilin31
Mar 14
I asked a friend who happens to be an executive at NVIDIA about this issue because I've had the same thing happen to me in HL2 on a 1520 with a 8600M and this is what he told me verbatim:

"The problem with playing games on laptops is that they're normally much more complex from a power-management standpoint. They take a lot of time to fully test/qual before shipping. Because of that, the OEMs don't like to ever release driver updates because they don't want to pay for a full qual cycle.

There are some sites out there which take current graphics drivers and modify the .inf files to add lots of laptops back in. That will make the driver show up as uncertified (any change invalidates the hash for the windows logo checksum). If you have Vista 64, you can't even load unsigned drivers without some registry hacking."

When it comes to NVIDIA cards and variants, he's always been right on the money for me in the past. So, yeah. There really is no hope from an official driver update or hotfix standpoint for laptops. I've checked out some areas for the 3rd party drivers (thank god I'm not running Vista 64) and it seems that Omega Drivers at least does NOT have laptop support on their current version of the NVIDIA Vista drivers. So either wait for them to release a new driver or find another 3rd party website which currently supports laptop cards. I have yet to find one, but that's the option I'm currently pursuing.

As an addendum; my friend gave a fix for DESKTOP users. Here's what he said:

"I recommend you go

http://www.nzone.com/page/home.html< grab the item listed as HOTFIX: Windows Vista
Plus the latest drivers from their or nvidia.com. It should only help. I haven't played any halflife 2 in a long time, but it's a key title so should be well supported. Also, make sure you have the latest patches for the game itself."

I tried all the hotfixes that sounded pertinent -- my exact problems came up in the descriptions of what the files were supposed to fix -- and when I tried to install them it said that the updates did not apply to my system. Who knows. Hopefully this helps some of you. It seems like Dell will always drop the ball on this and NVIDIA's policy on mobile drivers won't change.

Hope this helps someone.
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