Getting graphics drivers for my vaio laptop

Tube

So I need to update my drivers as they are old and busted and Batman keeps bugging me about it. Unfortunately I have two problems:

1. Standard Nvidia GeForce 9600m drivers won't work as they tell me to instead use the drivers provided for my laptop by Sony
2. The drivers provided for my laptop by Sony are 2 years out of date

Is there any way I can fix this?

Lasbrook

Nope, not really. I think it's pretty common practice for video card companies to just ship all support for mobile chipsets off to the manuf. I bought a Toshiba with an ATI card a while back and ran into the same thing.

I tried looking up Omega Drivers (the only 3rd party drivers I know of) but they're nearly as old as your Sony ones.

Edit: Looks like there are other 3rd party ones out there like on ngohq.com but they look like modified versions of the official drivers so they probably still wouldn't be of any help.

pacbowl

Cardboard Tube wrote: »

Is there any way I can fix this?

Unfortunately no. Unlike desktop graphics cards that can use drivers from the chip manufacturer such as ATI or nVidia, laptop graphics cards are pretty much locked into the drivers supplied by the laptop manufacturer. The only other alternative is to find "hacked" or 3rd party drivers such as Lasbrook mentioned.

Boredom

I used to use something called ATI Mobility Modder on my laptop, which mods desktop drivers to run on laptops.

I googled and found that there's one for nVidia too, on the same site at:
nVidia Mobility Modder


The site won't load for me right now, so I can't tell you much other than the ATI version worked for me.


edit: Further googling reveals that a ton of modded driver releases are available at http://forums.laptopvideo2go.com/ (the main site download links are down so the forums are the way to go).

You're probably looking for something like this, but be sure to browse the forum for drivers matching your exact configuration.

Tube

Thank you very much for the help, I'm trying those out now. I'm frankly appalled at Sony's level of customer service.

Invisible

It gets worse with Sony. Don't ever do a clean install of the operating system without using the Sony disc or you'll lose your DVD drive, it'll open and close but never read discs. And you can't even find the driver for it anywhere, not on Sony's website, not on the manufacturer's website (special for Sony), not any where.

Tube

I downloaded the drivers from the above link, but when I run setup it says it's unable to detect any drivers that are compatible with my hardware. Is this just because I have the folder parked in the wrong place?

finalflight89

If you're working off that laptopvideo2go site (which is what I use), you need to replace the nv_disp.inf file in the folder with a modded one that they have available for download. Also, sometimes the .exe installer still will not function, so you will have to go to Device Manager -> Display Adaptors -> Graphics card -> properties -> Driver tab -> Update Driver -> Browse manually -> Have Disk and select that .inf file you downloaded. Sounds long, but it should definitely work.

Tube

Thank you!