Sony Vaio PCG-7R2M

[Aradon]

I recently decided to re-install windows on my Sony Vaio. Unfortunately I never checked what the graphics card was before hand, and now I cannot find the drivers for it. Currently its stuck with some generic driver that limits the resolution to 1024x768. I even tried a third party application callled "Driver Reviver" and still no luck. Please Help!

 

[SonyListens]

Good afternoon Aradon,

This is Kevin Krause with the Sonylistens team. I am very sorry to read about the problems that you are having trying to reinstall your graphics driver. If you call our VAIO support team at 1-888-476-6972 they will be more than happy to try and help you.

Thank you,

Kevin Krause

Sonylistens Team

 

[Aradon]

I tried the local line (Greece) but I couldn't get through, but I actually figured it out eventually. For future reference this is what I did:

I used the Auto-Detect Feature on the Vaio US Support site (here: http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/select-system.pl?DIRECTOR=DRIVER&PRODTYPE=24) and found out the model number is actually VGN-FE31H, and then found the drivers on the Eu site. I don't get why the model number on the back of the notebook would be wrong but still, that did the trick (I wouldn't mind an answer on that if you're actually somehow related to sony).

 

[Aradon]

Hi Aradon,

I am sorry to hear about your experience.

As a representative of ReviverSoft, I'm sorry to hear that Driver Reviver was unable to resolve your problem.

With Driver Reviver being a driver updating utility, I believe the program was unable to find an existing driver (because it was missing), to be able to download and install a driver update for it. A driver essentially acts as a medium of communication between the hardware device and the Windows operating system. Therefore, with a missing driver, most Windows based programs will be unable to detect and use the particular hardware device.

In addition to using Sony's auto-detect tool, it is possible to determine the details of your computer hardware using tools like Speccy and Unknown Device Identifier.

If you need any additional assistance with your computer drivers, Driver Reviver or other computer related problems, please drop us a mail at support@reviversoft.com

Thanks,

ReviverSoft

I figured it does that after this incident. I actually used one such software but at first I didn't know I could just manually install the driver from windows device manager using the .inf file. When the software detected it was actually GeForce 7400 Go I downloaded the drivers from the official nvidia site but durring the installation I would get a "no compatible hardware" error. So after I got my hands on the Xp drivers from the sony site and had to install them using the .inf file(there was no installation package) I though, why not try this on win7 with the actual 64-bit drivers instead of forcing myself to use XP. By the way, why doesn't an application like driver reviver use the same method as, say, speccy to detect the hardware instead of looking for an already existing driver?

 

[Aradon]

Hi Aradon,

Yes, it is possible to install the driver using the .INF files when you know how to go about it and if the device doesn't require other supporting files. (Doing this manually for devices like Ethernet Controllers is fine, but I would suggest installing the whole driver package for devices like Graphic Cards and Audio Chipsets)

However, most manufacturers these days offer a ready-to-install EXE file, to either install or update device drivers, and for good reason.

Referring to your question, I only specified Speccy as an option to determine your hardware details with all drivers installed, like with Driver Reviver (only more detailed). "Unknown Device Identifier" on the other hand, is the tool you should be using, when you are missing drivers on your computer. This utility helps detect the hardware based on its device ID and vendor ID. This can also be done manually by referring to the properties of the device and looking it up on sites likes PCI Database.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Best regards,

ReviverSoft

My question was more along the lines of "Why doesn't Driver Reviver integrate that feature, so in cases like mine it would detect the hardware even if there was no pre-existing driver?". I used another software similar to unknown device identifier whose name I cannot recall.