Acer Aspire 9300 - Windows 7 Drivers Needed

Question

I bought an Acer Aspire notebook with Vista several years ago. It's great laptop and has served me well since I have been running it. The thing is, since Vista was crap back then, I downgraded to XP Professional. Recently, I upgraded to Windows 7 and it seems to be running pretty good, except for a couple things... Namely, when I tried to run dual monitors, Windows setup couldn't do it. I then discovered that Acer hasn't released drivers for this machine for Windows 7.

My questions is: has anyone encountered this and found a work around? I tried loading the Vista drivers but Windows 7 said no can do. Are there anyways to finagle my OS into letting me install other than specified drivers? Basically, all I want is to be able to run dual monitors, so a fix for this would be great.

Thanks in advance.

NOTE: I just tried this procedure to no avail: Windows 7 on Acer Laptop

Does anyone know the best way to find out exactly what video card hardware I have? System in Control Panel is too vague, and so is DxDiag (DirectX tool). I need this info for Nvidia driver retrieval.

Solution 1

Do some reading on this site, they provide hacked drivers for many OS's and Nvidia

http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/drivers

Solution 2

That's obnoxious. Have you tried installing the drivers directly from the video card manufacturer's website? (Search for "device manager" and then look under "display adapters" to figure out your video card.)

In general Vista drivers should work on Windows 7. It may require a little bit of hacking - running the installer in Vista mode or extracting the drivers and manually installing the .inf files.

Comments

[Admin]

Did you try pressing the Windows key and P to see if it recognises the second screen?

[nicorellius]

Yes, and it doesn't. In the Display options, I can't get it to recognize either.

[nicorellius]

I tried running in compatibility mode but it didn't work. I knew it would take some hacking, but I' not sure I know exactly how to do that... I found the INF file, but not sure what to do with it?

[Stacey Hanson]

Go into device manager, right click on your video card under display adapters and click "update driver software". Click on "browse my computer for driver software" and then point it to the .inf folder. Option B is to right click on the .inf file and click "install" but the first method lets Windows pick the right .inf. My first suggestion would still be to go to the Nvidia website and find the driver for your video card though.

[nicorellius]

Yah, tried all this but still having compatibility issues. I am caught in between a rock and a hard place. My hardware doesn't have 64-bit drivers, which I need. Triyng other Nvidia hardware 64-bit drivers now (including from their website). Oh ya, there is no INF folder in the driver folder I got for VGA... Thanks for your help so far @ kispiox

[Zooks64]

According to Acer your machine doesn't support 64bit. You should be using 32bit drivers. You might give www.drivermax.com a try. They are great for finding drivers.