CUDA Developer Toolkit: Display Driver failed installation

Question

I have the Nvidia Quadro NVS4200M along with Intel Integrated Graphics (on my laptop). I can't seem to get the CUDA 5.0 toolkit installation to succeed.

I am running Windows 7 Enterprise Edition 64-bit. I tried the 64-bit desktop & notebook installers and the 32-bit installers.

All of them seem to fail with the error message "Display Driver failed installation". I installed the latest drivers from here, and it is supposed to support CUDA-5.0, and despite that, the installation fails.

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After failure, the libraries and binaries are present, but NSight Eclipse (which seems to have no standalone installation link) isn't installed. What could be the possible issue?

Answer 1

1. I'm not sure why the driver install failed in your case, but if you have a "recent" driver installed, it's not necessary to use the driver that comes with the cuda installer. The cuda installer offers individual options to install the toolkit (required), samples (optional), and driver (required only if you have an older driver), so you can just select "no" when prompted for the driver install, to avoid this, assuming you have a recent driver or installed one such as the 307.45 driver.
2. You should always use a 64 bit installer if you have a 64 bit OS.
3. The only officially supported C/C++ compiler for windows is cl.exe, the microsoft compiler that ships with either Microsoft Visual Studio (the Express edition will do, it is free), or the Windows SDK (for command line use only). You're free to experiment with other stuff, but your mileage may vary. MS VS 2010 (and 2008) are the easiest to use. MS VS 2012 can be made to work but may require extra steps.
4. I recommend installing cuda after installing Microsoft Visual Studio. This is because the cuda installer should automatically find your VS installation and update some important files to make building cuda projects easier.
5. nsight Eclipse Edition is a linux-only tool (or mac). It is not for windows use, and will not be installed by the windows cuda installers. nsight EE provides an environment for code building, debugging, and profiling. In windows, the corresponding operations can be done via MS VS IDE for code building, the standalone visual profiler for profiling, and using a separate plug-in, nsight visual studio edition, for debugging and profiling within visual studio. Due to the way visual studio is constructed, nsight visual studio edition will not work with the free versions of visual studio. nsight visual studio has it's own separate installer.
6. The windows getting started guide may also be of interest.