Sony VGN-AR41E 8400M GT updated drivers

Before pointing me out to the coolguy's thread and to the nvidia drivers + modded inf, please, don't, since I've tried those drivers way too many times and they simply don't work.

My problem is that: I just reverted it to its stock Vista x32 since under Windows 7 the graphic driver crashed every now and then, and so far I'm stuck with the latest driver released by sony, which gets back to the 101.67 release of the drivers.

It's days that I'm trying out the latest versions of the drivers, but they all end up with the same crap: corrupted video, in the form of lines across the screen, and notebook reboot.
Becouse of that, and also becouse of the 167.60 drivers, I cannot use the hardware accelerated video playback of the 8400M GT and even trying to play something while on the move is a disaster, Bad Company 2 runs like crap in 1024x768 with all the lowest settings possible.

Video drivers stability is fine with those 101.67 released by Sony, but I am looking for something a bit more recent, updated, better and expecially that works on this notebook before it might become totally useless.

Thanks in advance to everyone who will try to help me.

 

There is no issue with the latest drivers, looks like your GPU is dying. Contact Sony for a free replacement.

 

Then why with the 167.60 drivers official from Sony I have no issues at all? no stripes, no corruption, 3d graphics works fine even under stress and so on?
I want to be 100% sure that it's a GPU problem before contacting Sony, and if it's a GPU problem, the issue should present itself even with the current release of drivers, am I right?

 

Plus, as stated by Sony, the affected models are those:

VGN-AR1xx, VGN-AR2xx, VGN-AR3xx
VGN-FZ1xx, VGN-FZ2xx, VGN-FZ3xx, VGN-FZ4xx
VGC-LT1xx, VGC-LT2xx

Mine is series VGN-AR4xx, which is not included in the list of the ones that had that issue and can be replaced.

 

Try the MS update driver 257.41 in my guide and see if it works. Even the later AR models seem to have the defective Nvidia GPU issue, Sony didn't list them though.

What all drivers did you try and had issues apart the modded one from my guide?

 

I'll try the MS update one from your guide, but I've tried first the latest verde drivers from nvidia's site, then went to laptopvideo2go and tried some releases there going back and none worked, then I've inserted the ids into the laptopvideo2go site and it prompted me some drivers, I've tried the latest 2: 190.40 and 186.24 and none of them worked, they all gave artifacts with driver stop or artifacts and computer reboot at some point.
The only ones which are stable and unoptimized at the top are those I have up now, the latest Sony released for this notebook, the 167.60.

All the tests were done playing an mkv file with Media Player Classic Home Cinema edition, trying to see if it enabled DXVA, and with Battlefield Bad Company 2.

167.60: no dxva and poor performances at the lowest settings in BFBC2
All the later releases tried: dxva enabled but it produced artifacts when closing the video and BFBC2 set the video drivers to crash at some point when loading the servers list or a game, producing artifacts and crashing the drivers or rebooting the notebook.

I'll try with the MS update driver but I don't have much confidence in it..

 

just launching the setup.exe from the x32 windows update cab prints out this files missing message:

license.txt, nvdispco32.dll nvgenco32.dll

 

I am in safe mode now to uninstall those drivers.. even those give me the graphic corruption, locking up the computer.. it happened just after the DXVA test with MPCHC and I had to force shut down the notebook.

This is getting really on my nerves.. I am including even a pic of the graphical corruption I'm experiencing, and such thing doesn't even exist if I use the drivers released by Sony, so I guess there's some Sony bull tied in -.-

 

If the MS Update driver is crashing too, then your GPU is on it's way giving up. The video engine has problems, and hence the crash with DXVA enabled with newer drivers.

How did you install the MS update driver? You should extract the cab file before running the setup.

 

Step by step of what I did:

Extracted the cab.
Tried to run setup.exe, didn't install.
Replaced the inf, tried to run setup.exe and pointed out the missing files.
Updated the drivers manually in the device properties, and update went fine.
Rebooted, it looked stable, opened the settings to check the version upgrade, it was there, fine, opened an mkv, it looked stable, closed it, reopened the nvidia settings to set high performance and that happened.

I know what to do step by step, I'm not a newb, I've been doing such things since the MS-DOS era, and all the windows..

But one thing: IF the GPU is on its way to giving up, why playing the single player campaing of BFBC2 with the 167. drivers doesn't crash nor gives artifacts? The game runs "fine" despites the minor slowdowns that I get even in multiplayer.. shouldn't it crash or show artifacts aswell?

This is the thing that doesn't "compute" for me, becouse if the GPU is about to die, then it should give up even while playing BFBC2 for an hour, else it's Sony's sheanigans within the drivers.

Either way, this notebook is proving to be one of my worst money investments (about 1200€ when I've bought it)

Edit: now, after some time that I've closed the game (I left it running before) it showed black rectangles coming from the middle of the screen, previously in multiplayer it showed nothing..
So it might aswell be the GPU dieing in that case, running with the "stable" drivers, atleast normal operativity for theese few days is intact..
I'll do further tests.. but so far it's becoming as good as to throw away

 

@lupom8:
Hi and greetings from Germany. I don't think that it's a GPU problem, since my own Vaio VGN-AR41E, on which i try to install windows 7, vanilla or SP1 (right now 64bit) shows exactly the same problems, with various drivers from Microsoft Update.
How did you path the original NVidia drivers' INF file?
Your career seems somehow familiar (the good old DOS days...) ;-)
regards, Markus