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Friday 3 February 2012

Updating nVidia driver in Acer Revo RL100

Upgrading video driver for nVidia ION2 adapter in Acer Revo RL100 downloaded directly from nvidia website surprisingly leads to the installer failing with "This graphics driver could not find compatible graphics hardware" error. Funny, right? Turns out that video adapter can only be upgraded by the driver update downloaded from Acer website. However, driver provided by Acer is quite old compared to the latest version sourced from nvidia directly, and we all love to always have the latest and greatest drivers installed, right?

Fortunately there's a way to make the nvidia's installer think it is actually dealing with compatible hardware and proceed with installation.

  • Extract installer package.
  • Go to the directory where driver files have been extracted and find Display.Driver\nvae.inf file.
  • Open the file, find following sections and add lines:

[NVIDIA_SetA_Devices.NTamd64.6.0]
%NVIDIA_DEV.0A6F.01% = Section002, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0A6F

and:

[NVIDIA_SetA_Devices.NTamd64.6.1]
%NVIDIA_DEV.0A6F.01% = Section003, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0A6F

  • Save the file and re-run the installer using setup.exe launcher in the directory where driver package was extracted (don't extract downloaded package again, as it will overwrite changes above).
  • Installer will complain that driver is not certified blablabla - ignore.
  • Job done.
Point to note is that display driver updated using method above won't properly show as "nVidia Display Adapter" in Device Manager but more-or-less like that:


Credits

User sib321 over at nvidia forums.

14 comments:

  1. To fix displayed name in "Device manager" U have to:
    go to section [Strings] and add line:
    NVIDIA_DEV.0A6F.01 = "NVIDIA GeForce XXX"

    where XXX can by any name, but preferably your card model

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks alot for this tip! I google you everytime I upgrade my Nvidia driver :D

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi. Does this this technique still work with the newest drivers? I cant get it to work. I am right in thinking that you only add the lines outside the brackets, to the bottom of the list of devices in the corresponding sections?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Not sure to be honest. I did it as one-off operation and didn't even upgrade the driver ever since.

      Delete
    2. try the trick with new nvdia drivers for windows 8 and didn´t work. Any other posibilities to upgrade them?

      Delete
    3. I'm having the same problem with RL100 & Windows 8...
      Tries several configurations without success.
      Anyone got an idea?

      I've created tickets for ACER & NVIDIA support. Will post something here if I get answers :S

      Delete
    4. Any luck on a response from Acer or Nvidia on your open tickets? I have your same or similar issue - I upgraded my RL100-U1002 to Win8 pro last week - my 1080p LED HDTV (monitor) now has a cropped screen. Assume its an issue with the Win 8 64-bit graphics driver.

      Thx for your time.

      Delete
  4. Thanks. It was very helpfull. I was able to install the latest ION drivers 306.97 form 2012.10.10 using the given method.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Big thank you for this.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hi,

    Thanks for the post - I picked up a RL 100 on ebay and have installed Windows 8 - which works fine for my needs. I've paired it with a 32 inch flat screen TV and installed the 2010 driver from the acer website. Still not the correct resolution.

    I tried this technique on the latest driver from Nvidia, but no luck - I then tried it on an archived 2012 version - still no dice, although I got past the wrong hardware error it failed later in the install and had to roll back. Any chance you could post a ref to the driver that has worked correctly?

    Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Don't remember details exactly now, it's been way too long ago now. Sorry.

      Delete
  7. Just wanted to say that by following your instructions, I was able to upgrade my ION drivers to the latest 320.49 drivers on my Windows 7 Revo.

    Thanks again for this post...

    ReplyDelete
  8. It just worked for the latest version. Hope it solve the tearing issue.
    Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  9. It Worked for my Windows 7, but once I upgraded to Win 8 it won't pass through checking resolution stage and displays unable to install display driver.

    ReplyDelete