Nvidia Geforce Go 7900 GS Windows 10 will not install because of compatibility, what should I do?

[Windows Central Question]

Dell Inspiron E1705 Notebook running WIndows 8.1 Pro with the NVIDIA GeForce GO 7900 GS graphics card

 

[Thomas Bradley]

Re: nvidia geforce go 7900 gs windows 10 will not install because of compatibility

I think it's strange that you're having installation failure problems on that laptop because on July 30th on my Dell Inspiron E1705 with the nVidia GeForce 7900 Go and 1920x1200 "wide ultra-sharp" display I did the Windows 10 "upgrade" to my existing Windows 7 Pro x64 system and it kept all of my data, software, and even kept track of my wi-fi settings/keys and booted to the upgraded O.S. with no errors or anything problematic other than it only installing generic display adapter and monitor drivers which left my laptop stuck at a max of 1024x768 which is a 4:3 resolution on the 16:9 display. After it finished the upgrade every hardware device in this old laptop actually works, not a single device manager exclamation point at all, although the generic display adapter driver it chose tends to suck and I haven't found a better one so far from microsoft or nvidia...
Even my front panel sound/transport buttons actually worked natively and had pop-up OSD indicators after the upgrade without me having to install anything extra to get them working!
I eventually got Windows 10 to give me 1600x1200 (which is still 4:3) and then let me zoom out to 100% from the like 250% giant text and icons it had chosen by default during the install, and it actually looks great although it's a bit laggy at times.
Since the upgrade the laptop even has my pre-existing ie11 and chrome installed with all bookmarks/favorites still intact in addition to having that new built in Windows 10 "edge" browser.

I really hope either nvidia or microsoft will decide to consider making a driver that'll work properly for this GPU since the laptop's grahics card can't be replaced with anything newer and otherwise this laptop seems to run Windows 10 Pro x64 just fine.

UPDATE: See post #8 below...

 

[Tool Man1]

Re: nvidia geforce go 7900 gs windows 10 will not install because of compatibility

I have the same issue but I have a home-built Desktop using a NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GS video card. Hopefully NVIDIA will publish drivers to Windows Update soon.

 

[Thomas Bradley]

Re: nvidia geforce go 7900 gs windows 10 will not install because of compatibility

If you have a home built desktop you really should consider getting any newer generation of video card since in addition to gaining windows 10 compatibility even the most basic and inexpensive new cards will likely outperform your 7900 anyway.
We don't have that option with our laptops. If I could do that to solve this problem on my Inspiron I definitely would...

 

[Tool Man1]

Re: nvidia geforce go 7900 gs windows 10 will not install because of compatibility

But I have three monitors so I need two video cards and each needs dual HDMI output. So a bigger investment that I am not willing to make at this time.

 

[Zulfigar]

Re: nvidia geforce go 7900 gs windows 10 will not install because of compatibility

But I have three monitors so I need two video cards and each needs dual HDMI output. So a bigger investment that I am not willing to make at this time.

Not true, you could use adapters, just need at least three ports.

 

[Thomas Bradley]

Re: nvidia geforce go 7900 gs windows 10 will not install because of compatibility

But I have three monitors so I need two video cards and each needs dual HDMI output. So a bigger investment that I am not willing to make at this time.

So if you have one 7900GS now, how are you running 3 monitors?
Most cards can only feed dual ports simultaneously even if they have 3 actual ports.
From the looks of things chances are very slim that you (or any of us legacy owners) are going to get what is needed from nVidia or Microsoft to make your decade old card(s) work with the brand new O.S. that they're offering you for free and with a 7900GS I'm sure you're not gaming on that system anymore which means the "big investment" you're referring to that doesn't need to actually be very big would also be far less than what the price of Windows would normally be if they weren't offering free upgrades for the next 12 months to existing users with real legitimate 7/8/8.1 Windows licenses...

In other words, spend around $50 - $75 total and get yourself a couple of identical new (somewhat current model) cheap basic graphics cards with the slot type(s), ports, and RAM/resolution specs you need for your setup which would then likely be Windows 10 supported right out of the box, install them, do the free Windows 10 upgrade, and call it done.

You can get a brand new basic version GeForce 8000 series or GeForce 210 series with VGA, DVI, and HDMI ports for like $25 - $35 brand new which gives you an HDMI port for monitor #1 and a DVI port that can be easily adapted to HDMI for monitor #2, then add a second of that same card and use its' HDMI port for monitor #3 and problem solved, and that's just with 5 minutes of browsing cards on newegg and I'm sure there are other inexpensive options available that are better than the incompatible 7900GS setup you're running now, and that's assuming you stick with nVidia stuff.
Granted the 8000 series is presently the lowest/oldest still supported nVidia chipset for Windows 10 but the 210 is more current and is also a big step up from your 7900GS setup by a lot.
Prices go up from there but compare the specs on even the basic $30.99 GeForce 8400 GS 512MB 32-bit or $31.99 GeForce 8400GS 1GB 64-bit and I suspect that either of those beats the performance of your 7900GS by far and at $28.99 each for a GeForce 210 512MB 32-bit and free shipping that's not even $60 bucks for the cheapest path to potentially solve your problem AND it still gets you better cards than the 7900GS that you have now!
Plus that's just newegg's current listings for low cost EVGA and MSI and ASUS branded basic nVidia cards and I'm sure there are plenty more tight budget options too.

I'm just sayin'...

Of course I don't know your motherboard model or slot type(s) and such but this "big investment" you're talking about for being able to upgrade your old machine from the legacy cards that are in it now really isn't so big of an investment after all and it definitely isn't very much to pay to get you into a free O.S. upgrade...

You've got the advantage of being able to upgrade your cards to something that meets the Windows 10 requirements and you can actually do it for very little money overall.
Those of us with laptops don't have such a luxury available to us at all and are truly at the mercy of nVidia and Microsoft with little hope at all...

 

[Thomas Bradley]

UPDATE!!!
I used the "Update Driver" button in the display driver properties window, selected "let me choose..." used the "have disk" button, browsed to where the NVidia Go 7 Series installer had unzipped all the driver files, chose the folder with all the .inf files in it, clicked the "open" button, saw a new list of all NVidia cards the installer was supposed to support, chose my laptop's card model, and then walked through the rest of the steps, waited through several long blank screen periods, then found myself at a proper 1920x1200 desktop with the NVidia display driver installed and the NVidia display settings panel installed and working properly, AND the Futuremark 8 score damn near doubled with no other changes besides the NVidia driver.

So it CAN be done after all, just not through the setup installer method like anyone would expect.
The 3xx.xx 7 Series desktop drivers all refuse to install for the Go 7 Series (laptop) cards through any process including this manual selection method. If you have a legacy Go Series card (laptop) you will need the 197.xx drivers from the nvidia website downloads area to make this work. Supposedly some gaming guys have used hacked .inf files to install much newer desktop driver versions for their Go Series laptop card but for now I'm not even going to go there...
I have no idea if this will work on 32-bit systems or not.
I also don't know if this works when upgrading from 8 or 8.1 to 10 as I had Windows 7 Pro x64 before I did the Windows 10 upgrade.

I hope this info proves helpful to anyone else with an E1705, XPS_M1710, or 9400 Dell laptop with the nvidia video card option, or anyone else too.

New info: Someone with a HP dv6000 laptop was also able to follow my step by step instructions for this issue that are located in a post on the nvidia forums and get their HP laptop working on Windows 10 too!

 

[Cryio]

Re: nvidia geforce go 7900 gs windows 10 will not install because of compatibility

Just saying, GeForce 8000 doesn't have support for Windows 10 either. They've been demoted to legacy support in W8.1.

 

[Thomas Bradley]

Re: nvidia geforce go 7900 gs windows 10 will not install because of compatibility

So he can spend like $3 more per card and get a pair of the 200 series cards instead although even the desktop version 8 Series cards do appear to have much newer drivers available that nvidia forum users say will install and work in Windows 10 although they may not be the latest/greatest version. Even the laptop version 8M Series (Mobile 8000 vs Go 7000) cards show up with drivers that can be installed for Windows 10, unlike the Go 7 series and older cards that get the same one and only ancient driver for XP/Vista/7 and nothing newer than 7 AND its' installer doesn't even work in Windows 10 but I finally came up with a work-around for the Go 7 Series that I summarized above and posted elsewhere in detail and others have reported it as working for their Go 6 Series cards and for laptop brands other than Dell too so they should also work for an 8 Series once you find a truly compatible driver version...

If you can't get a 8 Series (desktop) or 8M Series (laptop) card to be detected and load an nvidia driver automatically, and downloading whatever the absolute newest listed driver for your card is doesn't install in Windows 10 you can follow the summarized steps I described above or look for posts on the nvidia forum in the legacy section or the mobile section on how to manually install them.

The key is to find a driver that its' setup/installer runs through the whole install process but doesn't actually install itself because once you go through that process and reboot you'll have all the necessary files extracted and sitting in C:\Nvidia waiting for you to manually install with "update driver" from device manager...

 

[dutchyankee]

Dude you are awesome! I thought I had to trash my Inspiron 9400 with the Geforce 7900 Go, but your tip worked! I upgraded to Windows 10, downloaded the beta driver from Nvidia, pointed to the files as you said and bingo, perfectly fine resolution.

The Windows 10 icon in Windows 8 said, sorry your computer is not eligible to upgrade to Windows 10, here is a link to Dell to buy a new computer... Not so fast Microsoft!

Squeezing a few more years out of this golden oldie (2006)

Thanks!

 

[JohannesTh]

Re: nvidia geforce go 7900 gs windows 10 will not install because of compatibility

I took contact with Nvidia support about my G Force 7900 GS. (in a home built desktop) The answer was that Windows 10 will not work.
I asked if a new graphic card could be a solution an the answer was:" It might work or it might not work" They don't know it.
Regards, Jan Wijers

 

[Hounddoggy]

I did the same and everything seemed to work until I started loading up a few of my programs and the video would look all scrambled. (The same programs run fine under Windows 7). Hopefully Nvidia will come up with a fixed driver.

/-/ound...

 

[Thomas Bradley]

Re: nvidia geforce go 7900 gs windows 10 will not install because of compatibility

I took contact with Nvidia support about my G Force 7900 GS. (in a home built desktop) The answer was that Windows 10 will not work.
I asked if a new graphic card could be a solution an the answer was:" It might work or it might not work" They don't know it.
Regards, Jan Wijers

Since you have a desktop, unless your motherboard has an AGP slot which I doubt but it's possible, if your motherboard has a PCI-e video/graphics card slot you CAN upgrade your graphics card to a more current one and use Windows 10 but that's not necessary. Windows 10 WILL work with your desktop version GeForce 7900 series card. If you choose to replace your card (and gain better performance as a result!) nVidia might still be having driver problems with whatever newer card you choose but Windows 10 will still install and work on your computer with a newer "compatible" card.

Actually, before I updated to an actual nVidia driver my laptop's built-in nVidia Go 7900GS card didn't prevent or block WIndows 10 from Upgrading my Windows 7 and migrating all my programs and data to Windows 10 on that laptop. During the upgrade process it chose a generic Microsoft Basic Display Adapter driver for my laptop's old nVidia card instead of a decent driver and my laptop ran very slow. Once I installed the last official release from nVidia for my card my laptop got much faster in Windows 10.

So you can take their word for it and decide your desktop computer won't work on Windows 10 or you can try manually installing official nVidia drivers that are listed for your card until you find one that works with your existing card, or unlike those with Laptops you can replace your video/graphics card with a more modern one and use Windows 10 on your computer.

 

[Thomas Bradley]

I did the same and everything seemed to work until I started loading up a few of my programs and the video would look all scrambled. (The same programs run fine under Windows 7). Hopefully Nvidia will come up with a fixed driver.

/-/ound...

Sounds like either whichever video player you're trying to use doesn't like windows 10 or doesn't like your display driver version, or the specific driver you chose is having problems, your card is overheating, or you might have a bad ram stick.

Remember, just because something works in one OS does NOT mean it will in another... and just because it launches in a newer OS does not mean it's going to work 100% properly.
I've seen any of the above cause problems like that. The fact that it happens after you load multiple things initially points my thoughts to graphics memory/gpu thermal issues, system ram, or driver bugs but try a different player, uninstall the one that's not working properly first, and see if the problem continues.
Heck, if this is web videos, what browser you're using can also be problematic.
I've seen that exact same behavior in Windows 7 and Windows 10 when conflicting Adobe player and other 3rd party player codec's conflict...
I've also seen that bevahior with overheating nVidia 7 Series GPU's or bad system ram when the system ram usage reaches the capacity of the bad area of a ram stick...

Just because it worked in one OS doesn't mean it's not a hardware issue or buggy software in another. Windows 10 may be working your card harder than Windows 7 did and/or if you chose to use desktop drivers instead of Go version (laptop) drivers they could be running your card harder than it was intended and causing thermal issues with the gpu/graphics ram as the 7 Series (Go and desktop) were notorious for thermal failures when run moderately or run hard for extended periods of time.
My laptop experienced things similar to what you're describing when it was only 2 weeks old after some heavy World of Warcraft at max graphics setting and they had to replace the graphics card under warranty. Two years later my roommate's identical laptop started having similar problems after lots of gaming, and so did his Desktop PC with dual 7900 cards running SLI mode and a few months later with all the gaming we were doing my 7600GS did too.
I'm confident that you're having player software conflicts and/or nVidia driver issues but thermal problems are not out of the question. I hope not but it's possible.

The only reason I mention a possible bad RAM stick is because I've had the upgrade to Windows 10 x64 on my laptop since release date, I'm doing the usual web stuff, and I'm not experiencing those problems. You can run memtest x86 for a while and it'll either show you a problem or rule that out.

On a related note, a friend was telling me how Windows 7 uses/needs so much RAM that he had to upgrade from 8GB to 12GB with just firefox and chrome running with a bunch of tabs open. Many firefox fans will disagree but I guarantee you a Firefox memory leak was to blame and Chrome probably wasn't helping. I only have 4GB in my Win 7x64 desktop, I can simultaneously do browsing, multiple webmails, some youtube, some AA2 audio editing, and some Photoshop CS2 image manipulations simultaneously and I still haven't max'd out my 4GB RAM in Win 7x64 yet. Never been able to make it need virtual ram yet... I'm sure I could if I tried hard enough but just having a bunch of browser windows open and having them chew up 8GB of RAM and start needing virtual ram in Windows 7 x64 sounds like crappy browser and/or plug-ins/add-ons software bugs to me...

Best of luck in finding and resolving your issues in Windows 10.

 

[sholokov]

I have the exact same computer as yours. Also the exact same problem. Can you send a link to the location where you got that particular beta drivers from. I seem not to have any luck with what I downloaded.

 

[Thomas Bradley]

I have the exact same computer as yours. Also the exact same problem. Can you send a link to the location where you got that particular beta drivers from. I seem not to have any luck with what I downloaded.

Assuming you really do have the exact same model laptop with the same hardware options and you are upgrading an older existing 64-bit Windows version to the 64-bit version of Windows 10, this is the link to the genuine nVidia driver that works:
http://us.download.nvidia.com/Windows/179.48/179.48_notebook_winvista_win7_64bit_beta.exe
If you need the 32-bit version, which I have not tested because I have a 64-bit OS, it's here:
http://us.download.nvidia.com/Windows/179.48/179.48_notebook_winvista_win7_32bit_beta.exe
There are no official Windows 10 drivers, beta or otherwise, for anything older than the GeForce 8 and 8M Series nVidia cards.

Note that the installer will either fail with a "no compatible gpu found" or a "this isn't vista" error or it will act like it has fully installed and even prompts you to reboot but it doesn't actually install.
Once you've run the file and it appears to get you to the finish and prompts you to reboot or gives one of those errors, go ahead and reboot but it likely won't be installed and you must then go into device manager and use the "update driver" and "let me choose" and "have disk" options to browse to the folder where that driver package got unpacked and left behind during the failed install process and you should choose the right file for your card and then find your card in the list and once you've picked it windows will go through some steps and do a full installation of the nVidia drivers for your nVidia Go 7900GS card and the nvidia display control panel and then you'll be good to go.

Also note that a Dell Inspiron E1705 could've come with the cheap basic on-board Intel graphics, a certain ATI Raedon upgrade card, or the nVidia GeForce Go 7900 GS upgrade card so just because you have an Inspiron E1705 doesn't automatically mean you have the same laptop as mine.
Please verify which of the 3 graphics/video options your E1705 actually has because the nVidia drivers won't work if yours doesn't have the nVidia card.

 

[Andi H]

Hi there,
it worked well before the Windows Update installed Windows 10 Build 1151 (Threshold 2).
Now I get a blue screen (nvlddmkm.sys).
I tried to reinstall the 179.48 but the setup does not finish through compatibility issues.

Does anyone succeed with this configuration?

Insipron 9400 - Nvidia Go 7900 GS and Windows 10 (Build 1151 - Threshold2)

Thank you,
Andi

 

[Warren Perkins]

I have a home built (hand me down) NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GS with a Gigabyte P35C-DS3R and am having Windows 10 compatibly issues. I am a newbie and can't follow the driver update instructions in the posts. Are there step by step instructions somewhere or can I buy another video card (used) which will work? My demands are light for the graphics card and money is tight! Thanks!

 

[Thomas Bradley]

I have a home built (hand me down) NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GS with a Gigabyte P35C-DS3R and am having Windows 10 compatibly issues. I am a newbie and can't follow the driver update instructions in the posts. Are there step by step instructions somewhere or can I buy another video card (used) which will work? My demands are light for the graphics card and money is tight! Thanks!

Hi Warren,
I'm actually somewhat surprised that you're a noob who knows which graphics card and motherboard you have but are having trouble working through the process of using "update driver" to manually install a driver for your card. Although the wizard looks a bit different these days and some of the steps work a bit differently the driver update wizard's process hasn't really changed much since Windows 2000.

Since you have a desktop PC, not a "mobile" laptop the driver that you need to choose for your desktop card is different than the one I pointed users to in this thread as I wrote my posts for laptop users and although the card numbers appear to be the same there are differences in the graphics chips for laptops versus the desktop versions of these cards.

You should probably be able to download and install whatever the latest driver listed on the nVidia website for your 7900GS card is. That would be the "GeForce 7 Series" version which is for desktop PC's not the "Go 7 Series" laptop version that was referenced in this thread.

Windows 7 seems to be the last official driver release made available for your card so you should try that driver.
If you download that one and it says it won't install because it's not for your version of Windows, then after you've attempted to install it and the installation fails you can do a manual install (the "update driver" and "have disk" method) and point the wizard to the actual files that the driver setup unzipped and stuck in folders on your system and then the wizard should be able to make your card work.

You should also be able to google how to do an update driver procedure manually in Windows 10 and find a step by step (other than the proper file paths for the actual driver you're trying to install) and possibly even some youtube videos.

Because you have a desktop PC you can get a new card, unlike those of us with laptops which this thread was created for, and there are many dirt cheap new cards out there that will work in Windows 10.
I "think" anything GeForce 8 Series and higher is still supported and its' setup should install in Windows 10, or at least the 8000 series was the cut-off back when Windows 10 first became available to 7 and 8 users as a free upgrade last summer. I'm not sure if anything has changed with that in the past 10.5 months though...

As for replacing the card, yes you can also do that. Your motherboard supports PCIe x16 so cards are available for you.
Personally I wouldn't bother with used desktop cards because there are plenty of cheap new desktop cards running older graphics processor chips that will install in Windows 10. There are GeForce 8800 and Geforce 210 cards for like $30 - $40 USD brand new on Amazon and Newegg and likely Tiger Direct among other places with anywhere from 512MB to well over 1GB of video RAM and you can also find a few much nicer cards for not much more money than that. Just be sure your PC's power supply is capable of powering whichever card you choose. If you choose an 8800 or 210 it probably will work since you're using a 7900GS now and I believe the power demands are similar.