Problem hooking up additional monitor from laptop

[Scouser]

I have had a Sony VGN AR41E for a number of years, generally is has perfomed reasonably well.
I did have a additional vga monitor connected for some time and everything worked well. Then all of a sudden it no longer detected it. Windows it seems replaced the video driver with a generic plug and play driver. I went to Nvidia to try and update (NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GT) but it told me that it had to be done via Sony's website. I went to sony and there was no such option. I have looked into this as best I can and found that some users have lost there display all together, mine is fine, other than being able to add additional monitor, any help/advice would be much appreciated..

[BJG145]

You can download the driver on the Nvidia site...

http://www.nvidia.co.uk/Download/Find.aspx?lang=en-uk

Type: GeForce
Series: GeForce 8M
Product: GeForce 8400M GT

Ignore the rambling about the OEM and hit the "Download" button.

[Scouser]

"Cannot continue, no compatible hardware found" ?

[BJG145]

You need to go to the above page, dial in the OS and product details, hit Search, click the driver at the top of the list, hit "Download". Works for me and I don't have an Nvidia card.

[BJG145]

(...unless that's the message you get once you've downloaded the driver and try to install it...? In which case, you might try the "automatically detect hardware" option on the Nvidia site or use something like Speccy to confirm the type of graphics card...)

[Scouser]

Yeh, that's the message I get once I have downloaded drivers. I know this is the correct driver as it says so on the laptop. I think last time I auto detected I had similar probs, would not detect or install. When I go to device manager nvidia is not listed, but there are no conflicts listed, just a windows generic driver.

[BJG145]

I know this is the correct driver as it says so on the laptop

Something's amiss though, and confirming the card with a utility like Speccy is one thing I'd test. It'll only take two minutes. There might also be other reasons why the computer can't see it, eg hardware failure or disabled in the BIOS. Speccy will tell you what the computer thinks is there.

http://www.piriform.com/speccy

[Scouser]

BJG,

Thanks for all your replies, also thought it would be worth mentioning I haven't disabled anything in the bios..

This is what speccy found:

Generic Non-PnP Monitor (1440x900@1Hz)
14MB Standard VGA Graphics Adapter (Sony)

GPU G86M
Device ID 10DE-0426
Revision A2
Subvendor Sony (104D)
Current Performance Level Level 1
Current GPU Clock 297 MHz
Current Memory Clock 302 MHz
Current Shader Clock 594 MHz
Technology 80 nm
Die Size 115 mm²
Transistors 210 M
Release Date May 09, 2007
DirectX Support 10.0
DirectX Shader Model 4.0
OpenGL Support 3.0
Driver version 6.1.7600.16385
BIOS Version Chip Rev
ROPs 8
Shaders 16 unified
Memory 14 MB

What next ?

[BJG145]

So it's some Sony version of that card. Looks like the driver's available from Sony's website here...

http://www.sony.co.uk/support/en/product/VGN-AR41E/downloads/EP0000185336_4335

When you Google it though, you get a bunch of results about hardware failures with it - eg:

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/sony-nvidia-faulty-GPU-vaio...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fONuGOGosKo

I'm wondering if the thing's kaput...? If it only went wrong recently perhaps you could try a system restore (if it's enabled and you haven't made any system changes you don't want to lose).

[Scouser]

So it's some Sony version of that card. Looks like the driver's available from Sony's website here...

http://www.sony.co.uk/support/en/product/VGN-AR41E/downloads... 4335

This did the trick

I have never seen the standalone package for the video drivers on the sony site before, obviously just me!

It does make me wonder how it dropped the drivers in the first place, hopefully it doesn't mean the beginning of the end ?

Thanks so much BJG, its going to be good having 2 monitors again !

[Scouser]

Now for some reason, I'm getting huge CPU spikes in cubase, project size doesn't seem to matter, also the "few" plugins I'm using are taking a while to respond ? Graphics driver is all I've changed. I'm worried

I did a system restore point before installing new driver, I can roll back. Would that be the thing to do ?

[The Elf]

Check the graphics driver settings and try selectively turning off any 'acceleration' features and testing the result.

Rolling back may work, but please, Scouser, tell us you made an image backup of your system before you started trying these changes?!?!

[Scouser]

Rolling back may work, but please, Scouser, tell us you made an image backup of your system before you started trying these changes?!?!

Afraid not Elf ! I didn't know about that, thought system restore would safe guard my system, obviously got that wrong then ?

[The Elf]

Rolling back may work, but please, Scouser, tell us you made an image backup of your system before you started trying these changes?!?!

Afraid not Elf ! I didn't know about that, thought system restore would safe guard my system, obviously got that wrong then ?

Hopefully restore/roll-back will do it for you if you need to go that way, but making changes to your system without taking a backup is risky. I install absolutely nothing without having taken an image backup.

Do you have any image copy of your system drive?

I've had no joy with Windows roll-back or restore - they always let you down when you really need them IME.

[Scouser]

Do you have any image copy of your system drive?

Nope ! What is the way to go with this ? Any specific prog you could suggest ?

[BJG145]

I'd be surprised if it had anything to do with changing the graphics driver, though if you wanted to check you could probably just disable it. System restore should be fine - it's always worked perfectly well for me and it's easily reversible if it doesn't cure the problem, but I'd look at other stuff first. What OS are you running? Have you looked at things like task manager, event viewer, drive fragmentation, driver settings etc...?

[Scouser]

Ok, Im all for looking at other avenues first..

I am using windows 7 and have been for quite a while

I have been looking at task manager, and as you would expect when I fire up cubase memory usage goes up to 250,000k on a small project, im not sure if thats normal ?

Also just changed graphic setting for performance rather than quality, don't know if thats right ? I also do a defrag, about once a month..

[The Elf]

Assuming there's a definite causality thing going on here from installing the new drivers...

Try switching off all the fancy Win 7 graphics properties, transparency, etc. Remove any desktop picture, screen saver or the like. Strip it back to basics and see if anything like that helps.

Also switch off all system sounds.

This is all just basic audio PC set-up stuff, but you may just drop on something.

(BTW I use Acronis True Image for image backups)

[Scouser]

Things are getting worse now. I thought I would roll back driver just to see if things might improve, ( in retrospect it might have been better to just disable it )

System restore wouldn't work said something about it might be due to virus software running, disabled it and same message, great, just when you need it to do its job!

Well I don't know where to go from here, wish I had just stuck with the one monitor and a working system

Ideas ?