Windows XP Service Pack 3 removed the VGA driver

[Heighwayman]

I recently installed service pack 3 for Windows XP and found that the install had removed my VGA driver. It seems that the only way to recover it is to completely restore all drivers. Is this the case? If not how can I selectively restore it? My model is VGN-A197VP

[Thalamus.]

Hi Heighwayman,

welcome to Club VAIO..

Try this..

Download Original Drivers Package for your vaio via the Sony support download page, Use the following link: A197VP Original Drivers Package

Extract the folders and place the Video drivers for you model into to a folder ie C:\Drivers\Video.

Go to Start > Run type devmgmt.msc and press OK, Device Manager window should open, double click Display Adapters.

Right click once on the VGA driver and select properties.

Select the 'Driver' tab and click on Update driver.

A new Hardware Update Window will appear, select Search for the best driver in these locations, remove the tick from floppy, cd rom and browse to the location of the downloaded Video driver folder to included it in the search and click next.

Wait for the driver to install then click Finish, a System Settings Change window should now appear prompting you to Restart your Computer and click Yes to restart.....

[Heighwayman]

Thanks for your response.

I've downloaded the zip file but I can't see any folders only many files and nothing that looks like a driver.

What should I be looking for?

Regards.

[Thalamus.]

Hi Heighwayman

once you extracted the contents of the Zip file you should have 15 folders, one of which is labelled Video..

Inside of the video folder you should see a further two folders one labelled For VGN-A115M_A115Z and the other For VGN-A115S_A117S_A115B_A195HP_A197VP_A197XP_A195EP..

You will need the drivers contained in For VGN-A115S_A117S_A115B_A195HP_A197VP_A197XP_A195EP

[Heighwayman]

I've extracted the files into a folder on my D drive and copied the folder you suggested onto the C:\Drivers folder. I've done this to avoid further possible corruption of other dricers etc. When I tried to update as you suggested it couldn't find the folder and I had to unzip an embedded zip file in the C:\Drivers folder first. When that file was unzipped, I was able to identify a folder that contained a driver but when the copy started I received an error. See attached. I can't believe it's so convoluted. You should be able to download a driver and update it in one pass.

[Thalamus.]

Hi Heighwayman,

I'm not sure why you are having a problem..

If your problems started after installing SP3 I suggest you roll back to Windows XP SP2..

Use the following link for instructions on: How to remove Windows XP Service Pack 3 from your computer

[Heighwayman]

Hi Thalamus,

I've finally got there. I rolled back to Windows XP service pack 2 and I got the same error but although I had the error message saying unable to install file 'x', I was still given an option to continue. I did continue and the same message appeared with various file names until the copy completed. I tried to reset my display settings and bingo, it worked.

Thank you so much for your expertise and patience.

[Thalamus.]

You're welcome, glad to hear you fixed the problem..