How can I get my HD back?

[swee'pea99]

Managed to sort it all & all is well! Hoorah! With one exception...when I ran the nvidia.exe, it said it couldn't instal because it couldn't find any related hardware. Baffled, me...

 

[swee'pea99]

Many thanks all, and especially Ian. Apart from that geforce driver, which doesn't seem to stop anything anway, it's all running beautifully now, and my eldest is a very happy bunny.

 

[ian turner]

That's good though it's strange with the graphics card as according to this matched against the fifth entry in your list it should be supported and the specification for that laptop lists that graphics card.

 

[swee'pea99]

I actually got as far as using ubuntu to check the hardware, so I know for certain it's a NVIDIA 8400M GT, and I even downloaded what the nvidia site said was the right installation program, but same result - 'no related hardware found'. Ah well, it seems ok for all the basics, including watching iplayer, so I think she'll be happy with it.

 

[ian turner]

Apparently Sony (and panasonic and toshiba) prevent installation of video drivers from the manufacturers according to this thread which seems stupid

 

[swee'pea99]

Thanks. Very interesting. Not least because what kicked this whole thing off was the graphics going completely banzai:

I decided (after any amount of diagnostics, anti-virus, reinstallings etcs) to cut my losses, nuke the thing with Dban and stick it on ebay. Except that when it woke up after dban, the screen was clear. Which is when I started laboriously rebuilding it.

Having completed it, I returned it to my eldest, who was delighted - for about 20 minutes. Then the graphics went back to square one. *sigh*

I notice the last poster on that thread you kindly linked to said the Vista drivers would 'probably function under Windows 7 without any additional work'. I don't suppose it would be worth trying them with XP? (Or is this, as I suspect, basically a hardware fault, and no amount of software fiddling is going to make any odds?)

 

[ian turner]

Is the startup problem part of the problem or just coincidental ?

 

[swee'pea99]

Coincidental. It does manage to startup, and gets through to the windows desktop, but very fuzzy and sort of pixelated-looking. And it's that way in safe mode too.

 

[ian turner]

Hardware problem and according to the spec on the graphics card it doesn't use shared memory so you can't experiment with the RAM.
If you have a suitable cable or can borrow one then try and plug it into a tv.monitor and see if that has the same problem as that will indicate whether it's a screen problem.

 

[swee'pea99]

I haven't managed to connect it to a tv yet, but it started up again looking fine, then went bonkers again five minutes later. I'm thinking (the more so after a bit of googling) 'overheating' - I think my next move is going to be to take it to bits and clear out 2 years' worth of fluff...

 

[ian turner]

I was going to suggest fluff removal but the second screen seemed a less drastic next step (mind you I have no vga cables after replacing all my crts so couldn't test my laptop that way)

 

[swee'pea99]

Well, that didn't work. Opened it & cleaned out all the fluff, reassembled and back to sq 1. Didn't even wait to warm up, just started up with screwed-up graphics. Interestingly, it's just the same if you start up running ubuntu from a memory stick. Looks increasingly as though the graphics card is just no good and that's that. (There are many many reports on the net of Vaios with this specific card coming a cropper in just this way.)

 

[swee'pea99]

Oh, sorry, should've mentioned - I tried to connect it to a tv screen, but turns out it doesn't have an HDMI slot, as I expected, so couldn't.

 

[ian turner]

the tv or the laptop ? Most tvs have a vga slot that matches the one on the back of older or cheaper laptops but that involves borrowing a monitor cable. It's to eliminate the possibiltythat the screen is the problem or the link between the screen and laptop base isn't damaged (carrying a laptop around by it's screen is a bad idea)

 

[swee'pea99]

It's the laptop that doesn't have an hdmi. I tried linking it to an external monitor, but it didn't come through. Just stayed on its own screen. If I reset it to come thru' the external monitor, would that achieve the same as a link-to-tv?