Yesterday, fresh installed Windows 7 Ultimate 32 onto my 8 year old Packard Bell EasyNote H5.

Wonderful at first. Speeded most things up, including web access.

For some reason, the initial install only loaded the bog-standard Microsoft VGA driver for the SIS graphics processor i.e. no AGP driver enhancements. I wasn't initially bothered by this as pictures were being rendered fine. However, there was a limitation, in that Google Earth wouldn't run in Direct X mode without an AGP driver and as a consequence was necessarily running in Open GL at a painfully slow rate.

I set about remedying this by installing the latest Windows 7 SIS driver selected by the Driver Detective application. But it wouldn't install saying it couldn't find a suitable package - even though I could see a folder marked AGP and conyaining W7 components in the download.

So gave up there and went back to the Packard Bell website for the original XP driver. No joy. The machines so old that they no longer formally support it. So, I managed to get an equivalent Geforce driver suitable fo that graphics processor off of the web. It installed and ran OK. Switched Google Earth to Direct X mode and re-started it. Ran fine.

But from then on, I started getting random BSDs (4 since yesterday), so, from past experience with graphics cards (ATI) causing the same problem, I assume that the Geforce AGP graphics driver is to blame.

AGP graphics and Google Earth ran fine on the previous XP installation.

Is there a way foward ?

Nick

Edited 10 July, 201115 yr by Clunkclick

Is there a way foward ?

Nvidia driver on a SIS gfx chip ?????

No wonder it's bsod'ing

It was an outside chance sort of effort.

I suppose I'll just have to wind the driver back to bog-standard VGA until I can find a copy of the SiS driver that works with W7.

Nick

I've had this on older laptops before. More often than not it turns out that the video chip isn't compatible with Win 7.

I don't think any of the older SIS chipsets are supported by Win7, you maybe able to get a Windows Vista driver to install (assuming there is one of course).

I don't like driver detective, it gives quiet unpredictable results and I have seen a number of PC's rendered unusable by the drivers it recommends. I always just visit the HW manufacturers website and download the latest driver (in this case SIS) and take it from there.

Just looked in the W7 Device Manager. The driver entry for Display adapter says NVDIA Geforce FxGo5100 - This device is working properly !!!!!. I suppose all that means is that the driver interface is working OK on the W7 Core side of things. Doesn't imply that the driver is working correctly on the SiS graphics chip side of the driver, or does it ?

The BSODs have now stopped ! I wonder whether this has updated.

Nick

http://w3.sis.com/download/

Just because it say it working doesn't mean it is, The above link is for the DL page at SIS, have a look and see if theres anything there that will work

HTH

The graphics chipset needs to be directX compatable to work with win7 properly......so thats stuff about 5 to6yrs old.........that's what I found out when I upgraded mine.....did you download the win7 compatability report programme?? as this lets you know if there will be any problems!!