Forceware 169.25 Vista32 Installation Failure

thilk

I am attempting to install the drivers (Forceware 169.25 for 32-bit Vista) for my brand-new 8800GT. However, the InstallShield wizard crashes after copying files and displaying the NVIDIA splash screen with the message: "Error Number: 0x80040707 Description:" (the "description" field is blank). After the initial dialog box containing this information, I receive a window titled "NVIDIA Display Drivers" with the following contents: "An error (-5011 : 0x80040707) has occurred while running the setup. Please make sure you have finished any previous setup and closed other applications. If the error still occurs, please contact your vendor: NVIDIA Corporation (http://www.nvidia.com/)."

All other applications were closed (except for Windows-related programs, explorer.exe, etc.) and no previous setup programs had been aborted or were still running. I had already uninstalled the Catalyst drivers from the ATI X1300 card that I had been previously using and restarted my computer afterward. Following the first failed installation, I booted into Safe Mode, cleaned my registry and temp files, restarted again, and attempted to run the installer from Safe Mode. I received exactly the same error, again, after files had been copied and the NVIDIA splash screen was displayed. I also tried using the driver CD that came with the card, and received exactly the same error at exactly the same time.

I am using a Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 (Rev. 2) motherboard, an Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 processor, 2GB OCZ Spec Ops PC6400 DDR2 RAM, a 320GB Seagate Barracuda hard drive, and a Rosewill 950W power supply. I am running 32-bit Windows Vista Ultimate Edition. As previously mentioned, I had been using an ATI Radeon X1300 video card, but I uninstalled the drivers and the Catalyst Control Suite.

What steps can I take to fix this problem?

thilk

It works now! Here's what I did to fix this problem, for anyone having similar issues:

1) Go into the control panel to uninstall Catalyst and all other ATI software.
2) Go into the Device Manager to uninstall any "Display Adaptor" drivers.
3) Run the driver installation program, but cancel out of it as soon as the installation files have been extracted to the hard drive.
4) Restart into Safe Mode
5) Run Driver Cleaner Pro
6) Run Driver Sweeper (maybe unnecessary, but better safe than sorry)
7) Run CCleaner: both the hard drive and the registry scan options (again, better safe than sorry).
8) Go into the Device Manager again, right click on the standard driver that Windows installs under the "Display Adaptors" category and click "update driver."
9) In the wizard that shows up, click the bottom button, labeled "Browse my computer for driver software" on the relevant page.
10) Point it to the folder into which the driver software was extracted in step 3.
11) It should install without using InstallShield, and work this time (at least, it did for me).

A reference to the essentials of the above process can be found here: Answer

It looks like this is more a problem with InstallShield (or rather, the way that it was implemented for these drivers, since it works fine for other stuff on my computer), rather than the drivers themselves. I hope this helps if you're having similar issues.