Resolve the issue of Nvidia’s latest win7 driver not working due to the signature!

Discussion in 'Windows 7' started by canonkong, Jul 1, 2023.

  1. canonkong

    canonkong MDL Junior Member

    Jun 26, 2020
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  2. James Bond 007

    James Bond 007 MDL Member

    Nov 16, 2010
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    I just tested it on Windows Server 2016 myself, and you are right. The driver itself can be installed in Test Mode, and works in normal mode. The Nvidia Control Panel did not work, presumably because it is not compatible with Windows 10 1607 LTSB / Windows Server 2016. Well, at least the RTX 3050 card will still work on these operating systems, just that no settings can be changed.

    I assume this will work with other Turing (GTX 1600 / RTX 2000) and Ampere (RTX 3000) series cards in a similar fashion.

    To say I am surprised is an understatement. When Nvidia says "DCH drivers are supported on Windows 10 1803 and later", this certainly does NOT mean the driver itself will not work on older versions of Windows 10.

    Thank you for all your help. I have certainly learned many new things with these tests.
     
  3. pm67310

    pm67310 MDL Guru

    Sep 6, 2011
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    You can restorelegacy control panel with nvslimmer ( nvidia slimmer utility )
     
    Stop hovering to collapse... Click to collapse... Hover to expand... Click to expand...
  4. olo320i

    olo320i MDL Novice

    Aug 17, 2016
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    #51 olo320i, Oct 22, 2024
    Last edited: Oct 22, 2024
    My card is 3070ti and i though that driver for Windows 7 should work. I can install it by forcing from device manager but after restart it doesn't work.
     
  5. James Bond 007

    James Bond 007 MDL Member

    Nov 16, 2010
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    Yes, the 3070 Ti should work with Windows 7 x64 (that is sufficiently updated). In particular it should work with the last WHQL driver 474.11.

    However, this is on condition that you have installed some prerequisite updates on Windows 7. Namely Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (KB976932) and the two SHA-2 updates KB4490628 and KB4474419. Do you have these updates installed on your Windows 7 installation ?

    What error messages if any do you see if you try to install the 474.11 driver directly (not using Device Manager) ?
     
  6. Filipe Tolhuizen

    Filipe Tolhuizen MDL Junior Member

    Aug 20, 2023
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    Have you tried enabling test mode on your Windows Vista? This is also required for Win7 due to the lack of WHQL signature on these latest drivers (this is what this topic is all about).
    I understood that he's trying to mod the driver to work with Windows Vista.
     
  7. James Bond 007

    James Bond 007 MDL Member

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    #55 James Bond 007, Oct 23, 2024
    Last edited: Oct 23, 2024
    It seems I might have misunderstood. You are saying that you attempted to install the Windows 7 driver on Windows Vista and it did not work, right ?

    If this is so, then I have already said above, I don't think it will work. The drivers for Windows 7 most likely require Windows 7 dependencies not present in Vista. And as you have already seen, even if you manage to force the driver install it won't work. Test mode won't help either if the driver itself does not work with Vista.

    There was never a Windows Vista driver written for the later Nvidia graphics cards and so I believe, as I said above, your chance of success will be very slim.

    The likely reason why the Windows 7 drivers for RTX 3000 series can be modded to work on Windows 8.1 is because the drivers already support Windows 8.1 and RTX 3000 series, even though Nvidia artificially blocked the driver install on Windows 8.1 for RTX 3000 series cards.
     
  8. olo320i

    olo320i MDL Novice

    Aug 17, 2016
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    Yes this is the point. I can install windows 7 driver in Vista after editing .inf file. But after restart i have yellow triangle in device manager and it doesn't work. Same problem was on Windows 8.1 and now when Canonkong provided edited file I can fully install w7 driver and everything works. So maybe the same solution could unlock w7 driver on Vista.
     
  9. Filipe Tolhuizen

    Filipe Tolhuizen MDL Junior Member

    Aug 20, 2023
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    I'd first try enabling testing mode under Vista to see if the drivers work. If they don't work with testing mode enabled, they're not compatible with Vista at all.
     
  10. James Bond 007

    James Bond 007 MDL Member

    Nov 16, 2010
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    I have long suspected that for some time, Nvidia only released one driver package combining the desktop and mobile support. Case in point : I attempted to download the 475.14 driver separately for the desktop and mobile cards from the Nvidia driver site. What I found was that the driver files, 475.14-desktop-win7-64bit-international.exe and 475.14-notebook-win7-64bit-international.exe, are exactly the same size (622490976 bytes). And when I look inside the driver packages, the files also seem to be the same.

    So I am reasonably confident that the Nvidia drivers for desktop and mobile GPUs are basically one and the same package.

    I have found inside the nvbli.inf and nvlai.inf files respectively from the 475.14 and 474.11 (the last WHQL driver) driver packages the IDs of the RTX 3000 Laptop GPUs :
    and
    So supposedly these mobile GPUs are also supported on Windows 7 x64 using the 475.14 and 474.11 driver packages.

    Does anyone here have a machine with these mobile GPUs and are running Windows 7 x64 ? If so, does the patch provided here works to install the 475.14 driver ?

    I won't be surprised if the patch does not work with the mobile GPUs, however.

    Since the 475.14 driver does not have additional hardware support compared to the 474.11 driver for the mobile GPUs, I suppose one can just fall back to the 474.11 driver when running Windows 7 x64 with the RTX 3000 mobile GPUs.