Geforce GT 330M driver update for Vostro 3700

This is one of the video chips nVidia would rather you forget it made.  It is of the generation well known for faulty engineering -- and in a sense, it's almost amazing it survived this long.

However, it IS supported by nVidia's latest drivers, which should work just fine with Windows 10.

Most of these chips have long since gone on to the electronic scrapyard, as they were well known for failing at relatively early age.

When you say the display will be a little off, do you mean VGA resolution of 640 X 480? This isn't tolerable.

Everyone should call and write Dell that has a Vostro 3700. I called and after a couple of transfers ended up talking to someone supposedly on the Vostro team. Due to the India accent, she was very hard to understand. I could not get a straight answer if they plan to update the hybrid GeForce 330M driver or not. I suspect they have no plans to do so.

Since we can't email technical support, I emailed customer service. I encourage you all to do so. We need to make it more difficult not to upgrade the driver thanto upgrade it. I did work with NVidia. They have upgraded the GeForce 330M for Windows 10, the issue isn't with them, it is with Dell.

I also have a Vostro 1700. Driverscape seems to have separate Intel HD drivers for that model. I'm going to try to upgrade that one next. That is older than the 3700. 

These 3700s are only 4+ years old and cost $900 - $1200. We need to push them to upgrade these drivers. I have been buying, recommending, and configuring  Dell machines for friends, family, and co-workers for years. This will change if they leave us hanging on these Vostros for Windows 10. 

"However, it IS supported by nVidia's latest drivers, which should work just fine with Windows 10." : unfortunately it is NOT supported by these latest drivers on the laptops that use a Hybrid Power Technology, like my Dell Vostro 3700...

I think calling/writing to Dell won't help: They want us to buy new machines! Besides, I think Dell is just a hardware company and subcontracts software. So they do not want to pay for the new driver for the Vostro 3700 graphic card. 

I am sure many of us having such an unfortunate experience will not buy a new PC from Dell !

It appears that Microsoft no longer indicates that the graphic card is not compatible.

According to Microsoft Windows 10 should work now. I did not see any change in the graphiccard drivers though. Maybe Microsoft made changes in Windows 10??

Did anyone install Windows 10? Any problems?

Update: I installed W10 this weekend. Microsoft created a kind of solution for the problem. After installing graphics only works with Intel HD graphics, resolution is OK.

The NVDIA card is not visible anymore in the system, Microsoft ignores it and it is not shown in the configuration. Due to this HDMI is no longer available.

For me this is a problem and therefor I removed W10 and went back to W7.

DELL: please help us!! Update the NVIDIA drivers please! As far as I am concerned this is my last DELL if they cannot solve this (little) issue.

It is simply incredible and totally inacceptable that Dell does not provide the necessary support for this. All affected users of a Vostro 3700 should from now on treat Dell the same way they treat us - boycott!

Several users in this thread indicated a solution that worked for them.
The one from fdosil worked for me on a Vostro 3700 and I thank him for that.
In my case, the drivers I got reinstalled from Windows 7 are version 8.16.11.8999 dated 24/05/2010.

If solutions stated above don't work for you, here are some hints.
No ready-cooked solutions, but settings to look at in your computer.

One user described that in his case the nVidia controller disappeared.
That has probably been the case when he toggled power management settings to "Energy Saving".

That makes the nVidia controller disappear from the Device Manager.
(Sorry if my wording for some settings is not 100% correct, I use a French system.)
This will give you an operational computer without black screens and such, but also without the more powerful controller, of course.

To get the nVidia controller back, you have to toggle power management to "DELL"
(Control Panel ->Hardware and Audio -> Power options) and reboot. And you mlght have your black screen back as well. Just reboot again until you are back in.
If that doesn't work, enforce shutdown by the power button.
This will oblige Windows 10 to do a repair or give you access to advance startup options.
A soon as you can, either through the command line (Admin) option (right click on the Windows/Start menu icon in normal Windows operation or in the command line window when you have advanced repair options), type "bcdedit /set {bootmgr} displaybootmenu yes" (without the quotes) and hit Enter.

You should get a confimation message saying "Operation succeeded."

Optionally, also type "bcdedit /timeout 5".

These two commands will allow you to get back into your system at any time in Safe Mode if your black screen persists. When you start or reboot, the system startup menu will appear for 5 seconds (the default is 30 seconds, which is a bit long and which is the reason for the second command but you can leave that one out if you feel so). While this appears (for 5 or 30 seconds), you can hit F8 and then chose Safe Mode with or without networking.

Once back in you can at least download drivers and/or try different power settings to get back to a normal operational state again.
Then you should be able use fdosil's aforementioned method and that should work.

Also, once you have a working solution, deactivate the automatic driver updates from the manufacturer:

Control Panel->System and Security->System->Advanced System Settings (on the left)->System Properties->Hardware->Device Installation Settings.

Tick the second radio button (No, I prefer to chose manually) and, underneath that one, tick again the second radio button (Never install drivers from Windows Update).

Also uncheck the last check box (Automatically obtain information and applications from the device manufacturer).

This will prevent any future update destroy your well working solution!

The energy management is definitely the key to the problem (and the solution).
If, prior to upgrade to Windows 10, on your system the energy management was set to "High performance" or "Dell", your nVidia controller is probably much more often triggered than with the other settings and perhaps Windows 10 then uses a default power management scheme which proves to be incompatible with the inherent "high performance" or "Dell" settings". Try them out.
As a matter of fact, on my system, this setting was "Dell" and I had problems.
Once I had moved back to "Energy saving", solved the driver issue with fdosil's method and rebooted a couple of times in between and after, I was able to move energy management back to the "Dell" mode again and it still holds!

Also, when you right-click on the nVidia Hybrid Graphics Icon in the task bar and click "How to Configure graphics modes," you will have in-depth information about the different settings.

Maybe some of your settings inherited from Windows 7 are not compatible with Windows 10 and you might be able to get back to a workable solution by changing something in there.

Now, I agree that it is a shame that DELL has no intention to do something about this.
But, they are not the only one: I have already met similar situations on HP and Samsung laptops.
The latter case is a Samsung laptop from 2013, originally issued with Windows 8 and no way to upgrade to Windows 10...

I just found GT 330M windows 10 driver on a windows 10 driver website. This website claims that this driver is available for windows 10 from NVIDIA itself.

http://www.windows10drivers.com/nvidia-geforce-gt-330m-driver/

I haven't tested yet. I was just searching drivers before upgrading my laptop to windows 10. If anybody has already updated his machine to windows 10, please let me know whether this driver works with windows 10 or not.

Now, there is a new driver for Dell Vostro 3700, done by NVIDIA in november 2015. Try on :

www.nvidia.com/.../en-us ;

For my laptop Dell Vostro 3700n , my problem is now resolved and i can work with 2 monitors.

For the people still facing problems, this driver worked for me (Vostro 3700, Windows 10):

If this was really a dangerous link, perhaps Dell could stand behind the $1000 laptops they sold all of us with Vostro 3700s and create a Windows 10 driver for us. If not, I can guarantee you that after many personal Dell purchased and dozens of Dell purchases based upon my recommendations, I'll never buy or recommend another.

IMPORTANT: I'm not responsible if you corrupt your BIOS but there is another method to recover the BIOS and i've tested this modded BIOS.

Hi, i've found a method to make latest Nvidia drivers work on Windows 10.

This method is a custom BIOS that gives you the possibility to DISABLE the hybrid graphics to only have the Nvidia card. 

Here is the download link: http://forum.notebookreview.com/attachments/a12moddos-zip.134301/

To make your FreeDOS USB, download Rufus: https://rufus.akeo.ie/downloads/rufus-2.8p.exe

Install:

1. Create a FreeDOS bootable usb key

2. Place all files you've downloaded before in the root of your bootable USB key

3. Boot on your USB

4. Tap Go and wait 6 min then reboot your PC

5. Enjoy all new options inside the BIOS

Disable Hybrid Graphics in BIOS:

1. Boot and enter te BIOS

2. Go to Chipset and select North Bridge: http://image.noelshack.com/fichiers/2016/20/1463370000-img-4408-5228.jpg

3. Select Hybrid graphic and choose Non-Hybrid: http://image.noelshack.com/fichiers/2016/20/1463370010-img-4409-5226.jpg

4. Save and reboot

5. Download official Nvidia drivers from Nvidia website for the 330M

6. Enjoy!

In case of corrupted BIOS (you'll need another PC to put some files on a USB key):

1. Format a USB key

2. Download this: http://forum.notebookreview.com/attachments/v3700recobios-zip.134242/

3. Copy the Winery70.hdr in the root of your USB key

4. Power off your PC and remove AC adapter and the battery

5. Plug the USB key

6. Hold the END key and plug the AC adapter yyour computer should ask to install the original BIOS

7. Accept and wait for the flash and reboot

8. Reboot your PC and it should boot normally.

I can confirm this solution works, I downloaded the BIOS file from the original thread at forum.notebookreview.com/.../

threads/vostro-3700-a12-bios-fully-unlocked.787733/

Important: before flashing the modded BIOS you have to make sure your current BIOS is Dell's A12, if you hadn't done it before then flash A12 BIOS before anything else, later flash the modded BIOS.

^ there is more information about the whole process, everything is clear and your GT330M will work properly allowing you to upgrade to Windows 10.

If anyone still has this hybrid graphics problem, follow the instructions in that notebookreview thread. You only have two weeks until Windows 10 upgrade is no longer free!

All the BIOS flashing is done from Windows and should be no problem, but there is also a recovery method in case a problem occurred, read the whole thread, it is worth it, this laptop is old but still pretty good and easily upgradeable.

forum.notebookreview.com/.../

threads/vostro-3700-a12-bios-fully-unlocked.787733/

Vostro 3700, Samsung SSD 850pro 512gb, i7 640M, 8gb ram, intel ac7260 wifi 5ghz+BT 4.0, 2tb Seagate HDD

Thanks a LOT!!! This really works and solves old and nasty problem with 330m on 3700. Dell must(!) reward this work!