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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.

Posted by Dawid Lorenz at 10:30
Labels: , , , , ,

13 comments:

  1. Unknown10 June 2012 at 13:18

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

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous27 October 2012 at 12:23

    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. Dawid Lorenz28 October 2012 at 20:49

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

      Delete
    2. Anonymous30 October 2012 at 18:29

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

      Delete
    3. Unknown10 January 2013 at 16:04

      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. Unknown6 February 2013 at 00:17

      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
  3. Greg22 November 2012 at 08:31

    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
  4. Anonymous13 January 2013 at 08:03

    Big thank you for this.

    ReplyDelete
  5. 60milesmile30 March 2013 at 11:59

    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. Dawid Lorenz1 April 2013 at 20:58

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

      Delete
  6. Unknown30 June 2013 at 21:12

    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
  7. Alberto Vivancos Sanz4 July 2013 at 15:29

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

    ReplyDelete
  8. Unknown5 July 2013 at 18:58

    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

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