Hi,

this must be the third time I am attempting this with various versions of either vista or w7.
Technically I could use this barely with the integrated standard vga compatible drivers coming with vista and w7.
However, video acceleration, opengl, etc. are not available and make the whole windows experience much less enjoyable.
The guides posted here have somewhat helped me so far.
I am using a Dell latitude d505 with the troublesome 855gm/gme chipset. Now, with the help of this thread I managed
to get the driver to stick somewhat. In safe mode for example the driver does show up as intel 855gm, however, booting
w7 normally with or without driver signature enforcement does always cause a crashdump (bsod) referring to ialmnt5.sys.
No matter what I do I cannot seem to get past this issue.
Funnily enough I could even get the intel installer itself to execute under compatibility mode but this also just resulted in
the same issue.
I also tried disabling the integrity checks via elevated command prompt. Again, no change.
It is starting to look next to impossible to get this to run properly here, in which case i would have to revert to XP
Any ideas?

Update:

I have no idea what I did differently this time, however, my 855gme now shows up every time, along with the standard vga graphics adapter.
Interestingly, windows only uses the standard vga adapter and stops the 855gme and puts the yellow triangle next to it. There does not seem to be a way that I can convince W7 to use the 855gme now that the driver actually sticks somewhat without bsod-ing everytime I install it.

Ok, another discovery - and a very interesting one at that!

Apparently you can export the 855GM intel driver from a working version of Vista using DriverMax and then import it to Windows 7. Neat eh?

I just created a restore point and imported the 855GM driver using DriverMax and now have a fully functional 855GM driver with no errors reported in Device Manager:



More info on the link below (including a link to d/l DriverMax), and see the comments on the same page for the zipped Vista driver:

Windows 7 and the Intel 855GM Video Driver "Solution" « Virtualization, Windows, Infrastructure and all that “stuff� in-between

Have fun peeps!

Yup, the DriverMax version works, but not really:
Try viewing a DivX movie, or just assess your Windows performance. I bet you anything your computer will hang completely, with you having to do a hard reset.
So far, it seems, we're stuck.

Last time I tried to assess my windows performance with the XP driver my system hung - so no change for me there.

I don't think this was supposed to be a perfect solution, but it's certainly a damn sight easier than messing about trying to force the XP drivers to work.

Did you get DivX playback with the XP driver?

No. That's where I'm at.
I'd be happy leaving it at that, since I use that little laptop as a netbook, I don't use DivX playback, but when I had it running for a while, it had hung itself, and I can't have that.

Thanks to AurtherDent for this solution. I'm using an Inspiron 510m as in the main artcile, and had the same problem of being stuck at 640x480. I've dual booted with XP, and although I have Vista machines, I didn't want to go through the rigmarole of installing/reinstalling etc, so the posted file was very useful.
I had the same issue with the active buttons being inaccessable in Drivermax, but before resorting to RD I managed to get through the stages by trial and error with a combination of the tab and arrow keys and the enter button. I now have full 1400x1050 resolution. Not tried much yet, I'm not fussed about aero and won't use it for videos, it's just a spare laptop I'm using for practicing with XP on (studying for MCP) and seeing what 7 is like.

I've tried a few different methods but haven't had success:
1) DriverMax driver import from the downloaded zip. This resulted in BSOD after reboot. Had to restore to last restore point.
2) Downloaded install package from Dell for the 700m for Windows XP (Vista not available), and ran it with Windows XP SP2 compatibility. This resulted in a black screen after reboot and new driver detection.
3) Update driver and point to the win2000 folder that was extracted from the Dell package. This sometimes came back with a black screen and other times just didn't do anything.

I ended up with seeing the video chipset shown as 855gm, but couldn't get the resolution to change - max stayed at 1024x768.

Keeping my fingers crossed for official drivers (not likely?) or other methods to try.

Thanks.

Sorry it didn't work 700mOwner. At least 1024x768 isn't so bad - I had 640x480!

I'm never sure if the Compatability feature really works for drivers - I tend to think of it more for running older programs, and even that doesn't always work. The driver is after all the interface bewteen hardware and OS, so needs to suit the OS as best it can.

Here's hoping fo another solution.