Charles wrote:
Hello Paul, I have all but one driver installed: sound. The chipset is an
Intel GM965, Southbridge 82801HBM (ICH8-ME), the sound card is apparently an
Intel 82801HB ICH8 - High definition with High Definition audio codem
SigmaTel STAC9872AK. I have looked high and low, on Intel, Microsoft,
Driverguide.com, Realtek, without any goodfortune. Do you have any ideas?


Well, now we're in real "blue sky" country.

In the good old days, only a few years back, there were AC'97 codecs.
For those, there was a chipset dependency, so you needed a driver that
knew about STAC9872 and also knew about ICH8, for example. What I don't
know, is whether that is still true or not with HDaudio.

This model uses a STAC9872, but the date of the chipset used in the laptop
is old enough, that this driver probably doesn't know about ICH8.

http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/swu...=2074&os_id=16

Now, one participant here, claims to have used the Realtek driver. For AC'97,
RealTek drivers used to be used promiscuously, to set up other AC'97 codecs.
I think the result was, that you could get two channel sound. So the
result wasn't perfect. I don't understand enough of HDaudio, to say
whether this would even work (without INF hacking) or exactly what
is required. I cannot believe a RealTek driver would just install
and do everything right. Maybe it is the fact that it comes with the
Microsoft UAA hotfix that makes it work ?

http://groups.google.ca/group/comp.s...bb44ac3075bb1d

This is the RealTek HDaudio driver, from one of the realtek.com.tw
servers. It is a 25MB download.

ftp://61.56.69.18/pc/audio/WDM_R173.zip

Note that, for HDaudio, you need "UAA" from Microsoft. The RealTek
driver download has the English version of the UAA components, but
doesn't appear to have other localizations.

In the case of these Asus drivers for a RealTek HDaudio sound chip,
they have one of the early versions of UAA for about 25 different
languages. This download totals about 82MB, with the first four
being 20MB each and the last one is a little one. You unzip these,
and then there is a self-executing RAR archive inside. After unraring
the content, there are drivers and the UAA hotfix. A good chunk of
the driver download is the UAA stuff.

http://dlsvr02.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mis...5127-part1.zip
http://dlsvr02.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mis...5127-part2.zip
http://dlsvr02.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mis...5127-part3.zip
http://dlsvr02.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mis...5127-part4.zip
http://dlsvr02.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mis...5127-part5.zip

You can also get UAA from Microsoft, but I don't know how clever the
installer is in the audio packages - whether an old installer would
try to remove the latest UAA or not is something I don't know.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/888111/en-us

The description on the page here, makes it sound like nothing is required
except UAA. And yet one of the HDaudio drivers is full of registry stuff
- presumably to map the port wiring to the jacks or something.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/835221/

As for the Sigmatel parts, Sony Vaio seems to be one user of them. Sigmatel
was bought by IDT (another chip maker), but that doesn't give an excuse for
not making WinXP drivers. It should be dead easy to do, once you've made the
first driver.

So getting the sound to work is not going to be nearly as easy. I'd give the
Esupport link (first one) a try, and maybe give up after that :-)

Sorry I couldn't be more help.

Paul

"Paul" wrote:

Charles wrote:
Hello, I am trying to convert a recently purchased Sony Vaio laptop
VGN-FZ140E from Vista to XP. Upon installation, xp will not recognize my
Toshiba MK2035GSS sata hard drive. Sony will not help and Toshiba techs are
unreachable. I need to have a controller or driver that will make xp
installation possible. I have already done a considerable amount of Internet
research, but since I do not know how controllers work and who is supposed to
manufacture the darn thing, I feel like I am feeling my way in the dark. Can
you help provide a clue as to where I might look? Thanks for your time,
Charles
An advert for the thing, mentions "GMA X3100" graphics. That is a graphics
built into an Intel chipset. For an Intel chipset, there should be drivers
available.

You could use a utility, to check the chipset type. (As long as Vista doesn't
complain - after all, this thing probes hardware.)

http://www.cpuid.com/download/cpu-z-140.zip

This is chipset drivers for GM965, if that is what you've got.

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Prod...=2800&lang=eng

For SATA on an Intel chipset, there are several options. A SATA port can
be controlled via RAID BIOS, it can be in AHCI mode, or vanilla SATA mode.
The last of those should be supported by a driver in the OS itself. WinXP SP1
should be enough in that case. You could slipstream SP1 into a WinXP
original installer disk, if the original version of WinXP was all you had.
To do that, you'd need a CD burner, to burn the new, slipstreamed image.

Check the BIOS and see what options are available for the SATA ports. At least
one Southbridge, actually doesn't have any options, and vanilla is all it
does.

There are some "catch 22" chipsets out there. I tried looking for drivers
for one laptop, and Vista was it. There wasn't any WinXP driver content
to be found for the chipset, anywhere. So there are some products for
which WinXP is a hard fit. I don't know if some money changed hands,
to make that possible (no WinXP drivers), or a development group
were tightwads enough, not to have a WinXP driver team. So some people
won't be installing WinXP on their shiny new laptops. It is not a
guaranteed thing.

Paul