VGN-AR series Nvidia driver and recovery discs please

[bigmovies]

VGN-AR 21M  with all the options including TV tuner-- HDD was wiped and W7 installed with the necessary  SATA driver inserted first BUT it has been impossible to find drivers for the proprietary hardware and the W7 drivers do not work properly.

FINALLY I have found the Nvidia Geforce Go 7600 driver that works and gives 1440 x 900 resolution:  

     https://www.driverscape.com/download/nvidia-geforce-go-7600       (choose your system/bits)

I would LOVE to restore this laptop to its original state, but out of the box the recovery partition was hidden, it did not come with recovery discs, and if anyone actually made recovery DVDs, they probably threw them away or lost them.  IF anyone has recovery discs or a partition please let me know. 

[Blencogo]

Hi bigmovies and welcome.

I have a working VGN-AR31S. I have upgraded from Vista to Win7 but I think the original recovery partition exists - so I can probably make a set of Recovery Discs.

I also have a copy of the Sony Original Drivers and Utilities Packages for both AR2* and AR3* models if you prefer to install individually or if the Recovery Discs don’t work.

The problem you may have is getting Updates to the original software versions. I will have some updates - I think I am still using the old NVidea driver which supports 1920 X 1200.

PM me an email address.

[bigmovies]

This is just too good to be true!! I cannot find this stuff anywhere. The real unicorn is going to be the driver for the TV tuner/recorder. I have sent you a message, many many thanks!!

[Blencogo]

AR31S Recovery Discs can be sent when you send your Address.

AR2* Drivers and Utilities uploaded to Google Drive. Includes AverMedia TV and NVidea Graphics.

Just a word of warning. I am not sure if the Recovery Program needs online access to Microsoft or Sony to update anything. If they do then all Recovery Discs may not work for Win 7 and older. Let us all know please!

[Blencogo]

Looking at the Recovery instructions, it doesn’t say you must be online.

[bigmovies]

I have the drivers and apps now, but as I am on Windows 7/64bit they are generally inoperative. The plan is to order an SSD and start from 0 with XP MCE.or the recovery discs.  I think I can hack the vaio drivers into an xp install, but none of this is  what you would call intuitive.

If and when it all works, I will make it available (I guess as an installer ?).  I am a mac guy so all this is deep in the dark scary forest.

[Blencogo]

I will send the AR31* Recovery Discs tomorrow - need a customs declaration now we are out of EU!

The installed OS will be 32-bit on all Sony products of this age - I thought Sony didn’t support 64-bit on these old Merom processors.

These discs will install Sony OEM Vista MCE 32-bit.

[bigmovies]

Today's update: Have tried at least 5 different XP install ISO's, with and without all the drivers, none of them working for a variety of different reasons, missing EULA, iastorsys corrupted, not enough memory? really?, blahblahblah. 

May try a SATA driver only install, if that doesn't work I will wait for the recovery discs but getting pretty pessimistic here that they will reject my AR21M because it is not AR31.

More soon

[Blencogo]

Discs are on the way!

VGN-AR21M was sold as ‘Vista Ready’ so it may take the Recovery Discs (Disc 1 self boots).

Alternatively, you will need to install XP and install all the Drivers and Utilities before doing anything else. Copy Drivers to C:Drivers and Utilities to C:Utils. Install them all - I think all of these have an *.EXE FILE inside the folder to install. All the Utilities have dependancies so they MUST be installed in order from the top or they won’t work.

The error messages you are getting may be because you are running 64-bit but iastor.sys is part of the Intel Rapid Storage. Have you installed this and the SATA driver. I think the AR21M has a single 160GB HDD so it will not need RAID configuration in iastor.sys.

The other thing to check is the RAM. I think the AR21M only came with 1GB - not enough to rum much - worth checking if this has been increased to 2GB.

Good luck

[bigmovies]

Looking forward to the recovery discs, thanks.

Weekend update: I gave up on an XP install as it demands a floppy drive to install SATA driver and rejects all attempts at slip-streaming a SATA driver.

Just for "fun" I installed an SSD as disk "0" and had a hell of a time trying to get it to work with a clean install of windows 7 32-bit. In the end, I went to bios and returned to the default settings - if the bios "sees" the drive, W7 will install. So far it is not without glitches - some times a restart or unsleep will not see an operating system, but a visit to F2, or curiously, leaving the CD tray open seems to cure that without changing anything else. It is MUCH faster.

I am now installing all the old VAIO drivers in order, no complaints apart from the camera I believe is not supported in W7, nor the TV tuner. (so far at least)

And now the Sony utilities.... The battery utility does not like my after market battery so I have rolled back before that one.  "Intel Matrix storage manager not supported."  "Wireless LAN Starter not supported."  

It does appear to be working well overall, but I have not gained function of the webcam, nor the TV tuner as yet, nor any added functionality of the touchpad like scrolling.  Nor have I gained much if anything in the VAIO utilities, apart from a comprehensive Nvidia control panel (useful for dimming the display and tweaking color.)

And again on restart "operating system not found" which seems to be avoided by leaving the CD tray open.  ???

What I know so far.

There you have my weekend.