speranz1

I have a Sony Vaio VGN-SZ645 notebook which I purchased just over a year ago. Until about a month ago, it had been running Windows XP. My university made Windows 7 Professional available to me for free so I installed it and for the most part, it has been great. The only exception is the fact that many of my drivers no longer work, notably my graphics card driver. I have an nVidia graphics chip and all my hardware is fine, its just a matter of installing a driver that will work with Windows 7.
Unfortunately, the drivers nVidia offers on their site are not compatible with Sony computers. Does anyone know how I could possibly fix this problem?

joeten

hi have you tried this page on sony site http://esupport.sony.com/perl/select...6,66,9,70,5,72 there are some troubleshooting links.

speranz1

thanks for your message. i went to their site and the drivers they have available for my computer are only for windows xp, nevertheless i attempted to install them anyway and did not work. i'm wondering if i've done something wrong because i have gone to many other forums and havent heard anything about others with my computer having this problem...do you know if theres anything i can do?

joeten

hi did you try using windows update,if your machine has nvidia on board did you install it yourself or was it already installed when you got the pc from sony,i'am puzzled by your statement about the drivers fom nvidia since you have a nvidia chip on this computer it does not seem correct that the drivers are not suitable for the comp,the one other thing i can think of is to use drivermax to search for drivers or a similar program

spike2me

Download the drivers from the nVidia site.

speranz1

hi, thanks for your responses. i have not changed the internal hardware of my computer at all since i bought it. my computer came with (and still has) an nVidia GeForce 8400M GS graphics chip. i tried downloading the driver straight from the nVidia website but under their "supported products" section in their downloads page for my driver, they state that vaio notebooks are not supported and that i should contact the oem for driver information.

i tried emailing sony about the issue but all they would say is that they cannot make any statements about windows 7 until its release date on october 22nd. i tried using windows update, but all that does is refer me to sony's website.

joeten

hi as spike2me said you may have to try the driver from nvidia

speranz1

thanks for all of your help but when i try to install the driver from nvidia's website, a message box comes up saying that the install manager couldnt find any available drivers for my hardware

speranz1

I recently went from xp to 7 using a free professional copy of 7 offered through my school. Unfortunately, most of my drivers do not work now, and sony isnt being cooperative. I have a vaio vgn-sz645. Can anyone help me with this?

simpswr

Vista drivers have worked for my three installations of win 7

TJ Belfiore

You can always go to their manufacturer website - - -

http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/sel...IRECTOR=DRIVER

usasma

1 - locate the unknown drivers in Device Manager
2 - right click on each one and select "Update Driver Software"

If that doesn't fix it, then...
1 - get the hardware ID numbers from the Details tab for the Properties of each device
2 - research the hardware ID numbers in these locations:
- PCI devices at http://www.pcidatabase.com
- USB devices at http://www.linux-usb.org/usb.ids
- other devices by a Google search
3 - once you've determined the make and model of the device, visit the manufacturer's website and look for Win7 drivers there.
4 - if there aren't any Win7 drivers, try the Vista drivers using the following method:
- right click on the driver's installer and select Properties
- select the Compatibility tab
- select the "Change settings for all users" button in the lower left
- select "Run this program in compatibility mode for: Windows Vista SP1"
- select "Run this program as an administrator"
- click OK twice to exit the dialogs.
Then install the driver normally.

speranz1

ok so the driver that i would really like to get is my graphics driver. i have a nvidia 8400 GS graphics card. in device manager, the only display adapter listed is "standard vga graphics adapter" which is what i take to be the "backup" graphics when the other card isnt working since it only has 1 MB of memory. in other words its pretty much useless. i tried downloading the driver from the nvidia website, but it is incompatible with all vaio computers. the only drivers sony offers for my computer are xp drivers. what can i do?

simpswr

Did you try these?

http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7_wi...0.62_whql.html

speranz1

when i tried that website, the program said that nvidia could not find any drivers compatible with my hardware, just like with the notebook drivers i tried from their website...

simpswr

Did you download the driver and install it?

speranz1

i downloaded the executable file and agreed to the terms and all that. then, after it initialized setup, it gave me the message that it could not find any drivers compatible with my hardware...

simpswr

Is your Windows 32 bit or 64 bit?

usasma

Try these drivers (64 bit): http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7_wi...1.07_whql.html
They state that they support the 8400 GS

If they don't work, then we'll need the 4 characters following the VEN_ and the 4 characters following the DEV_ in the Hardware ID for the Display Adapter.
We'll also need to know if you have a 32 or a 64 bit version of Windows 7.

speranz1

I'm running 32 bit windows 7. when i try to get the hardware id the only display adapter that shows up is called "standard vga graphics adapter". when i bought my computer it had a nvidia graphics card. anyways the hardware id for that display adapter is:
PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0427&SUBSYS_9008104D&REV_A1\4&2EA4331&0&0008