NVidia Geforce4 4400 AGP 8X in Windows 7

I have a 5-year-old Dell 400SC server with a Linksys USB wireless adapter and an Nvidia Geforce4 4400 AGP 8X video card. I wanted to try Windows 7 on it.

Everything seemed to work fine (after I gathered drivers from Dell and Linksys) with the exception of the AGP video card. The card, according to manufacturer, is not supported in Windows Vista.

A little digging (well, a lot of digging) on the Internet turned up this blog, which helped me out.

Apparently some versions of the NVidia drivers will semi-work in Vista, and therefore by extension, in Windows 7 as well. I downloaded the Forceware Version: 81.98 driver and manually installed it. Afterwards I even installed the Nvidia Control Panel plug-in by running under the compatibility mode for the installation.

Well, the installation actually took several back-and-forthness, but eventually I did end up with a semi-working video card in Windows 7. The max resolution is only 1280x1024, less than the 1600x1280 resolution the card can display in Windows XP, and I had to tweak a setting in the display control to set it to use the Card Rendering instead of Monitor Rendering.

But it's still better than having to buy a new graphic card...

Install Samsung ML-1740 driver on Windows 7

The Samsung GDI driver for ml-1740 et al. is packaged in an .exe file from the Samsung download web site. http://org.downloadcenter.samsung.com/downloadfile/ContentsFile.aspx?CDSite=US&CttFileID=1291152&CDCttType=DR&ModelType=&ModelName=ML-1740&VPath=DR/200701/20070129084454453_ML-1740_GDI_Vista.exe


However, the .exe file is not Windows 7 compatible. If you try to install the driver by clicking on the executable, the program will terminate. So what to do?

Well, it's simple really. The driver works fine in Windows 7; you just have to install it manually. To do so, follow these steps:

1. download the driver from the link above
2. double click on the downloaded file. there will be a windows error message informning you this program is incompatible with this version of windows. Don't close this error message window yet, because we need to access the temporary files the install program has extracted.
3. now go to the temp directory of your computer, typically, it's (user folder)\appdata\local\temp. It's a hidden folder; to view it you need to enable view of hidden files and folders in Windows folder option. The files contained in the .exe file above were extracted in this directory. Sort by date and you'll see a temp folder containing the following directories: printer\GDI\Vista. Copy the content of the directory to a permanent folder, for example, the download directory.

-- There's actually an easier way as pointed out by one of the comments below. You can right click on the Samsung exe file and choose properties --> compatibility --> and choose to run the program under the compatibility mode for Vista SP2. I tried it and it works.

4. Now go to Start --> Devices and Printers. Select Add a printer, when you reach the page for selecting printer drivers, click on Have Disk... and choose the driver file you had copied earlier.

Works like a charm. Have a look at my printer set up: