Sony Laptop Nightmare

I have been messing around with computers and gadgets all of my life...I work with computers and I use a computer all of the time. I usually upgrade my PC every year, built and overclockeed by myself.....never that many problems.

Then I decided to buy a Sony laptop.

All I want to do is upgrade the graphics drivers so I can use Steam. I downloaded the latest Nvidia Windows 7 WHQL driver from Nvidia (3D Guru), and when I try and run it I get a message that says it cannot find any compatible hardware. OK, so maybe I got the wrong driver (I thought all nvidia drivers are the same just OS dependent) So I go to the Sony site to download it, and the latest driver they have is from 2009...nearly 4 years old! Its older than the one on there already. However since I already uninstalled the old driver I need something....it is going to take 4 days to download a 24mb file (I have fibre 60mb p/sec so the speed is from sony end). Then I tried to use the Vaio update service, and that has sat updating for the last 3 hours with no sign of how it is doing or % complete.

Any drivers I have found from 3rd party sites all say that they cannot detect any nvidia hardware.

I have been trying for 3 days now to do this....it is the worst computer experience I have EVER had...no contest. I remember now why I got rid of my Sony smartphone. SONY is all style over substance. Their support is appalling, and the website structure is a joke. They do not even have any phone support (not listed on the site anyway)

Can someone please help me while I still have a little bit of hair left.....?

EDIT: .....the model number is VGN-AW11S-B. This has a 9600M GT Nvidia adapter

 

What laptop model do you have? As I recall from my Clevo laptop the generic Nvidia drivers often don't recognize a manufacturers version of the Nvidia chip, there is a vendor id or something similar the driver looks for. You would need to tweak the generic nvidia install package to install it on your laptop. Googling for nvidia driver plus the model number of your laptop might turn something up.

 

It looks like he bought a Sony laptop with NVIDIA GeForce 8xxx series.
Do not intro yourself as a geek and then you couldn't do a simple thing.
As previous post said, let people here to know your laptop model and they will give you an answer.

 

Yes. knowing what laptop you're talking about would be helpful.
For example, if it is a Z, make sure the speed/stamina switch is in speed mode not stamina.
(Edit: and yes, make sure that you actually have an Nvidia)

BTW: your title is very misleading. What you have cannot be rightly characterized as a "nightmare". If you want to take on these kinds of projects and blaze through jungles (of unauthorized drivers), then navigating through these kinds of issues is just a part of the game.

 

Oops, after all of that I forgot to leave the model, doh.....the model number is VGN-AW11S-B. This has a 9600M GT Nvidia adapter

Sorry for my rant earlier, my blood was boiling....you know how it is. But Sony always seem to over complicate the simplest things sometimes, in my opinion.

Any help is appreciated.

 

I'm not very familiar with your laptop, but there was this post in French referencing the issue, you can use Google to translate it into English:

Sony: Mise a jour carte graphique Nvidea 9600M GT

Looks using DriverMax to get the driver worked for this guy though I'm not very familiar with DriverMax myself.

 

What happened with the driver on Sony UK Support site?

 

Is this what you need?:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/553738-how-modify-nvidia-drivers-vaio-3.html

P.S. It was on the very first page of this forum...