GeForce Go 6100, lack of real nVidia Control Panel

Last week I was provided with a Compaq Presario F730US laptop for work.
It has Vista Home Premium as the OS. The video system is a GeForce Go
6100, actual manufacturer unknown. It has 64M of onboard/dedicated RAM
and shares 223M of off of the system RAM. The display properties says
it's driver version 7.15.10.9815, dated Feb 27, 2007.

I'm trying to set some options like I have on my XP Pro desktop, which
uses a GeForce 8500 GT, but try as I might, I cannot find the settings
panel. On the desktop system, I right-click on the desktop and select
"nView Properties" and I get an nView Desktop Manager which lets me
configure all sorts of things including Window Control, things that
happen with mouse actions, a zoom/magnifier window, some display
effects, etc.

The closest I can come on the laptop is "NVIDIA Control Panel" from the
desktop right-click, but that "control panel" only has for display
controls, Multiple Displays. And there are no multiple displays. It
is set to a single display, the one built into the laptop lid, and I do
not foresee ever changing that. The only other option in this control
panel is to alter the 3D settings, which is not what I want to do (and
don't understand anyway).

Are these settings I'm looking for get removed because this is a
laptop? Because this is Vista? Because it's a Compaq? Is it broken?
Or are they hiding somewhere else? Or something else?

--
Jeffrey Kaplan www.gordol.org
The from userid is killfiled Send personal mail to gordol

"A poem: a story in meter or rhyme." "Ah. 'There once was a man from
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(Amb. Delenn and Cmdr. Sinclair, B5 "The Gathering")

Jeffrey Kaplan wrote:

> Are these settings I'm looking for get removed because this is a
> laptop? Because this is Vista? Because it's a Compaq? Is it broken?
> Or are they hiding somewhere else? Or something else?


All of the above. I doubt very much you can use a non-Compaq driver for
your video chipset. Compaq(HP) drivers specifically tailored to your
laptop model. nView might be specifically disabled for that reason. Only
Compaq knows.

Compaqs typically use "recovery CDs" instead of individual driver
installations, further hindering the stand-alone upgrade process,
however if you see a nvidia driver offered for the geforce-go chipset
and you have the recovery disk handy and you have no critical data you
don't mind losing on that drive, see if it will install.