MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! Ok, allright, yahoo, this project is over, in the
books. I now have installed every driver except for the dial up modem and the
mass something driver (?). Everything works fine. For the benefit of others I
am going to try to post all the links to the drivers I now have for the Sony
Vaio notebook model VGN-FZ140E.
- For chipset (install first before all drivers except the SATA hard drive
driver that will be installed during xp installation, read on), graphic card
and SATA hard drive drivers go he
http://support.intel.com/support/gra.../CS-025753.htm
- For audio drivers (the English language page was available on Sun 19 Aug
07, but today I can only see the French-language page, just go to bottom
click on Accepter and it will take you to the download) go he
http://www.vaio-link.com/downloads/i...1108005-UN.htm
- For wired Ethernet go he
http://www.soft32.com/Download/Free/...-185944-1.html
- For wireless Ethernet go he
http://support.intel.com/support/wir.../CS-010623.htm
- I was not able to get the dial up modem to work but here is a link to a
post from someone that claims they have been able, go here for the post:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/show...=129377&page=2

To everyone who helped find these drivers thank you once again! And to Sony:
you make good product but your customer service and attitude really sucks.
You should support customers who want to downgrade from Vista to xp,
knowlingly voiding their warranty. They have paid good money to purchase a
product, will not be able to make a claim on their warrantly so more savings
for you, and still you refuse to even post drivers that will work.

"Paul" wrote:

Charles wrote:
Hello Paul, thank you for your response. Unfortunately still no sound.
Drivers from the Sony website are useless. Even if they could work in theory,
there is some kind of block that prevents them from being installed on a
different model. I always get a message after I execute them saying something
like "This driver was not designed for this model". I can't do anything about
that. The Realtek HD driver gave me hope as it started to install, even
discovered the modem at the same time, but then a window requested a file
called "sthda.sys". I did a brief Internet search for this file but could not
find any answer, even took a file with the same name from a sound driver for
a Gateway pc but it did not work. Do you think that if I could find an owner
with a Sony Vaio notebook that uses a High definition audio codec for the
SigmaTel STAC9872AK, that I could ask them to copy the drivers directly with
a driver copy program such as Driver Ghost, that I could then use them? As
far as what you wrote regarding Microsoft's UAA, you lost me there. The MS
links you provided are articles that say if you want this file you have to
request it from Microsoft. But since the Realtek driver already has the UAA
part, I assume that is not the issue. Thanks again for you help. Charles.


sthda stands for sigmatel hd audio. So some part of the software knows it
is looking for Sigmatel.

Drivers depend on the identity info that comes from the hardware. The hardware
ID has to match a line in the INF file, for the installer to do whatever
the INF has instructions for. In the case of audio, there are registry entries
that might identify which channel is tied to which jack. Other settings might
affect the sound control panel and features in there. It is possible to hack
a driver package, by modifying the INF and making it more promiscuous. But
trying to do that in a posting exchange is going to be next to impossible.

Here is another driver link. This is a Dell for 965PM or so they claim.
The installer package is a nice one, in that it unzips the files first, into
a folder on the C drive. In this one, you'll get your "sthda" file. Of
course, they don't just transplant, like ripping an arm off one person
and making a leg from it for someone else :-) I would try the whole installer,
by working with the files in the unzipped folder, and see if you can get
some results that way. What I'd be hoping for, as an end user, is to get
two channel (stereo) from line_out. Expecting to get all the features to
work, would require a miracle.

http://support.us.dell.com/support/d...&fileid=211297

You can read the INF and INI files in the WDM folder, with a text editor
like notepad.

The thread referencing the Dell driver was he

http://www.notebookforums.com/thread169312-30.html

Paul

"Paul" wrote:

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