Game stops in Vista

I have tried to find info on the forum for this but it always seems to be for different graphics cards etc so am unsure of applicability to me. If already covered my apologies. I'm unable to run the gold edition on my new HP Pavillion dv9428nr, nVIDIA GeForce Go 6150 graphics card with the most recent driver ver 7.15.10.9815A build date 2007-05-10 (though in device manager it shows as ver 7.15.10.9815 build date 2/27/2007), AMD Turion 64x2, and Vista Home Premium (2006). I have had a lot of difficulties with this unit, google sketchup crashes for instance. It goes through the opening screens but when it actually gets to the 1st game screen it flickers oddly and doesn't do anything. If I "alt+tab" back to the desktop and then go bck to Gal Civ the screen is featureless, no images at all. In Task Manager the program still shows as running. I have been told both that it is a video driver issue but that because the graphic card was modified for the HP dv9428nr that updates must come from HP not nVidia and I have gotten the same driver file through 3 different searches. I have also been told it's an incompatibility with Vista. Have all latest updates and still no joy. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

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kryo

Join Date 05/2003

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though in device manager it shows as ver 7.15.10.9815 build date 2/27/2007

The Vista release drivers and those from early last year had a bug in them causing the problem you're experiencing. nVidia leaves it up to laptop manufacturers to redistribute drivers for their machines (which they rarely bother to do), even though the stock ones work fine if the installer is simply modified to accept them.

This particular issue was solved in the 101.41 release in March of last year--if HP doesn't have those or anything higher, you can find them at laptopvideo2go.com instead. Their latest Vista drivers should do the trick.

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OK, although I know where to get the version and build date how do I find the release? Also Nvidia said their updates won't work on this card as it's been modified for HP. Went to laptpvideotogo.com and am utterly mystified on how to find the right driver for my machine.

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kryo

Join Date 05/2003

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Try the driver download here.

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I don't bloody believe this. IT WORKS!!!! It not only solved my Gal Civ problem but also the lockup on starting Google sketchup, I've only been after HP for 3 months to fix these problems, lots of emails and chat's online and you show me the fix in an hour. Why the H.ll can't they do this?

THANKYOU

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If your experience trying to get HP to fix anything was at all like mine, it's because they either can't bloody understand what the problem with their products could possibly be, or just refuse to admit it. At one point I told them straight and to the point that video drivers that are well over a year old are going to cause problems, they just completely ignored me and said I needed to "clean up my computer to improve perfomance." Boy was I tempted to tell them that it was (at that point) a brand new computer and the only items that needed to be cleaned were the tons of useless garbage programs that they send out pre-installed on everything...

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