Another 8400M GS Driver help thread

[Dsells13]

Hello!

I have a Sony Vaio VGN-SZ660N, which came with Windows Vista Business. I had upgraded to Windows 7 back when it was first released, however I had the problem that everyone has with my video card has. (Nvidia 8400M GS). Neither Sony nor Nvidia has compatible drivers for this, so I SOMEHOW got it to work. However, I had my hard drive fail on me, and I had to buy a new HDD and install Windows 7 on it, however, I can't remember how I got the correct Nvidia driver to work on here!!! It defaults to an Intel driver, and it looks good, however I can't play any games on an Intel driver... Can someone please point me in the correct direction with this? I've tried a lot of things thus far, and I'm out of ideas...

Thank you so much for your assistance!

 

[yowanvista]

Try this driver
NVIDIA DRIVERS 267.76 WHQL

 

[pebbly]

Hi Dsells13, welcome to the forums , Have a look at this link ,it will give you all the info you need http://www.sevenforums.com/graphic-cards/26710-nvida-driver-install-start-finish.html

 

[Dsells13]

yowanvista,
I downloaded and ran the driver you provided, here are the results:
After the setup begins to run, and it checks my system for compatibility, it comes back with "Install cannot continue, this graphics driver could not find compatible graphics hardware"...

 

[Dsells13]

Pebbly,
I've downloaded several modded drivers/modded INF files, and whenever I try to run the actual setup, it always comes back with my hardware isn't compatible. Also, when I manually install a modded driver, it gives me: This device is not working properly because Windows cannot load the drivers required for this device. (Code 31)

 

[stormy13]

It failed to install with good reason, Sony is one of the few (Toshiba and Panasonic are two others I know of) that doesn't allow the reference driver from Nvidia or AMD to be installed on their laptops.

Now with that said, that doesn't mean that they can't be forced to install. What you do is go here,

Drivers | drivers for mobile cards and laptops | laptopvideo2go.com

and choose the driver version you want, they all come with a modded INF with the appropriate device IDs added to allow them to be installed on almost all Nvidia laptop GPU's regardless of laptop manufacturer.

 

[Dsells13]

Stormy,
How do I know which one I want? There are 13 pages of Windows 7 drivers, I don't know what values to input for the PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_&SUBSYS_

 

[stormy13]

The modded INF is already included. With something as old as the 8400M, personally I would g with an older driver as there is little to nothing to be gained using the latest. Something from the 198.xx or lower (start on page 17) would be more than enough for it.

If you want to use the search at the top, open Device Manager and locate your video card, double click on it to open the Properties and then click on the Details tab, scroll to HardwareIDs and it should show them there.

 

[Dsells13]

I downloaded several different ones, but to no avail to any of them. I've downloaded the modded drivers, force windows to install them, but I get that same windows 31 error, saying that it can't properly load the required drivers for this device...

 

[Dsells13]

When I run Dxdiag in the CMD prompt, and I click on the display tab, it shows "N/A" or "none". I had to recently install my HDD, is there any chance that I knocked my videocard loose? Should I open it back up and make sure everything is hooked up?

 

[Dsells13]

Okay, so I popped open my computer, everything was hooked up as it should be. I am so stumped, none of the drivers are working!
Thank you everyone for your assistance, anyone else have any ideas?

 

[stormy13]

You can always give this a try,

http://www.sevenforums.com/graphic-...convert-desktop-mobile-laptop.html#post363587

And if that doesn't work and you haven't yet, do a search in the Graphics Cards forum,

Graphic Cards - Windows 7 Forums

using sony and 8400m as the search terms and see what has and hasn't worked for others.