Q4OS Forum

32-bitter

Member

Registered: 2018-02-21

Posts: 18

Q4OS Software Centre nVidia Drivers

I had Q4OS Orion running well on a Dell Inspiron 8600 laptop for about a year until last night when it appears the video card failed. I transplanted the hard drive with Q4OS into a spare Dell Inspiron 8600 and everything works except for one issue.

The main difference between the two 8600 laptops is that the defective one had a Radeon 9600 128MB video card and the spare 8600 has an nVidia GeForce FX Go5200 64MB video card. I tried installing the nVidia drivers from the Software Centre but I keep getting a message saying that no nVidia card is detected even though the video card is correctly listed in the Hardware Device Manager.

Why aren't the nVidia drivers installing? Is it because Q4OS was previously running on a Radeon 9600 and there is an entry somewhere which prevents the nVidia drivers from being downloaded and installed? Or is the GeForce FX Go5200 so old it isn't supported by this driver package?

I suppose the next logical step would be to do a clean install of Scorpion but I would be annoyed if I ran into the same problem.

Dai_trying

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2015-12-14

Posts: 2,992

Re: Q4OS Software Centre nVidia Drivers

What I would do is run a Live-Cd to see what drivers it picks up and if it seems to work ok with what the live-cd uses then try installing the same drivers. A fresh install is another alternative and is likely what I would try if I couldn't figure out the problem and that could also be done from the Live-Cd so it wouldn't be a wasted download.

32-bitter

Member

Registered: 2018-02-21

Posts: 18

Re: Q4OS Software Centre nVidia Drivers

Thanks Dai_trying.

Well, I did a clean install of Scorpion on a spare hard drive and no luck with the nVidia drivers. The GeForce FX Go5200 video card was still not recognized by the nVidia installer. The default driver that Q4OS installs is listed in the Hardware Device Manager as "nouveau".

The nVidia drivers installed on a desktop computer with a 6000 series card last year so I don't know whether the 6000 series cards are the oldest the driver package supports or if there is a Dell proprietary thing going on. Either way the display looks good as it is with the Q4OS nouveau driver.

Dai_trying

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2015-12-14

Posts: 2,992

Re: Q4OS Software Centre nVidia Drivers

If your system works ok with the built in driver (nouveau) then I would stick with it, I use the logic "if it aint broke don't fix it"