Windows 7: Nvidia Geforce 8400M Gt Driver query

Hi,

I intend to upgrade my Sony Vaio VGN-NR21S/S laptop to Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit I am currently using Windows Vista Home Edition 32-bit.



My graphics card is not compatiable and I have found few threads on this forum which addresses the issue.

Is it better to do the inplace upgrade and then update the graphics card later?

Thanks in advance,

You usually can't upgrade the graphics processor on a laptop. What claimed it wasn't compatible? There are Windows 7 drivers available on NVIDIA's website.

NVIDIA DRIVERS 258.96 WHQL

Also, it is recommended to do a clean install if possible. The inplace upgrade can take a while and a lot of people have problems resulting from it.

I ran the Windows7 Upgrade Advisor tool from MS and it stated that my graphics card driver in my laptop is not compatiable with Windows 7 . So i tried Sony Vaio's Download/Support section for my particular laptop model and i found out that my laptop is no longer supported by Sony regarding Windows 7 OS. Sony has not released an update for my graphics card.

What I don't like about Sony is the fact they don't want to support laptop's which are 2 years old in my case.

Anyway, I visited Nvidia website to find the latest driver for my card which is 258.96 and I noticed that the Firmware update is not compatiable:

Regarding clean install, why does In place upgrade cause problems?

One of the reasons the inplace upgrade causes problems is that any problem that already exist is carried over or made worst. Sometimes it just causes new problems. I can't say exactly why it does, but I do know that we get a number or people here every week with weird problems, and when we ask, they say they did an inplace upgrade, and after doing a clean install, as advised by us, the problem simply goes away and we never hear from the person again.

A lot of OEMs say that their older computers are not compatible with Windows 7 to get out of not having to provide driver support, declare extended warranties viod, and as part of their planned obsolescence.

You could try the driver from NVIDIA to see if it works. If it doesn't, you can simply so a system restore, which will reverse the installation for you.

Thanks for in the info.

If i decide to not update the graphics card driver at this moment and I do a custom or inplace install, is it true that Windows 7 will install a standard VGA driver?

Is it true that my network adapter drivers etc are removed by Windows 7 if i decided to do clean install?

Yes it will but most of the time if you have any problems with the driver install you can use this tool to modify the.inf file NVIDIA MobilityModder It has been very successful in the past. The problem with the standard VGA driver is most of the time it causes problems with being able to run your native resolution.
I don't forsee any problems with your network driver.
In my opinion though it is always better to do a clean install instead of an upgrade. Fabe

Just to give you a quick update, I have installed Windows 7 Ultimate using custom install. I left the recovery partition intact.

Regarding the Graphics driver I have solved the problem by giving this tutorial a try:

NVIDIA Driver - Convert from Desktop to Mobile (Laptop)

Thanks guys for your kind help!