VGN-N38E/W no longer recognises originally installed drivers?

[ellreid78]

Hi

I wonder if you can help me please?

Recently had to recover the above laptop after it crashed all went well except the touchpad is not recognised or showing up in device manager. Have tried many things most recently downloaded the originally installed drivers from sony website.

I un zipped them then went to manually update the driver by browsing to the folder I had unzipped the ORIGINALLY INSTALLED pointing device driver to and when i clicked to install this driver I got this error message

" The folder you specified doesn't contain a compatible software driver for your device> if the folder contains a driver, make sure it is designed to work withwindows for 32 bit systems."

Now I am totally lost I have no touchpad and can only use a mouse plugged into a USB port.

Any help would be fantastic thanks so Much Elly

[rich912 · Accepted solution]

Hi Elly,

Do you have a PS/2 mouse listed in Device Manager (under mice and other pointing devices)?

If so update the driver for this using the following method.

Extract the files from the installation package to a known location.

Click Start > Control Panel.

Double click Device Manager.

Right click the device and select Properties

Click the Driver tab.

Click Update Driver.

Click Browse my computer for driver software.

Click Let me pick from a list...

Click Have Disk....

Click Browse and navigate to the folder where you placed the extracted files.

Click OK.

Click Next.

Click Finish.

Reboot your system if requested.

Rich

[ellreid78]

Hello Rich

No I do not see a ps2 mouse

thanks Elly

[rich912]

Hi Elly,

If there is no mouse or pointing device listed in Device Manager, with the exception presumably of the HID compliant mouse that you have plugged in, it would suggest a hardware problem with the touchpad, cabling or motherboard. The touchpad is a plug and play device that should be recognised on boot.

You could try a further recovery but I doubt somehow that it will make any difference.

BTW apologies for some over enthusiastic moderator marking the thread as correctly answered before you had the chance to respond

Rich

[ellreid78]

In Viao control centre pointing device is enabled. In device manager when I ask it to show hidden devices this shows up "Alps pointing-device for VAIO" with a yellow triangle inside of which is a black exclamation mark. When i go into properties I get this message " This device is not present, is not working properly, or does not have all its drivers installed. (Code 24)" Problem details says Description: Windows was able to successfully install device driver software, but the driver software encountered a problem when it tried to run. The problem code is 24. Problem signature: Problem Event Name: PnPDeviceProblemCode Architecture: x86 Hardware Id: ACPI\SNY9001 Setup class GUID: {4d36e96f-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318} PnP problem code: 00000018 Driver name: i8042prt.sys Driver version: 6.0.6000.16386 Driver date: 11-02-2006 OS Version: 6.0.6000.2.0.0.768.3 Locale ID: 2057 Read our privacy statement: Microsoft Online Crash Analysis

[rich912]

Hi Elly,

The above would seem to confirm that the device is no longer recognised/connected.

You could try updating the driver for the ‘ghost’ device using the method above, but I doubt that this will solve the problem.

Rich

[ellreid78]

Hi Rich

thanks I tried reinstalling the driver and still have the problem.

Any other  suggestions please? Do you think it is a problem with the touchpad itself?Rather than the driver.

thanks Elly

[rich912]

Hi Elly,

Yes I do think that it is a hardware issue as opposed to a driver problem. The fact that it is showing up in ‘Hidden Devices’ means that it was, at some time, recognised by the system but no longer. If the system did recognise that it was connected it would be listed without the need to show hidden devices.

If you carry out a further recovery of the C drive and the problem persisted then this would confirm it.

Rich

[ellreid78]

Ok thanks so much for your help