I need HELP, before I hang myself. I installed a new hard drive today, It is 250 gb replacing a 120gb.?

Question

There was nothing wrong with old hard drive, just wanted a larger one. I have a Sony Vaio Pcv RS 510 pc. Everything went fine after install,I reinstalled XP home with no problems until I reistalled Service Pack 2. After the reboot my icons were huge so I went to display and it was at 4 bits resolution and 640 by 480 pixels, I can't increase either. Went to device manager and I have 4 yellow question marks with a yellow spot and a black exclamation mark thru the spot. They are each on "Other Devices", Multimedia Audio Controller","PCI Modem", and "Video Controller(VGA Compatible)". Did I get myself in some big trouble? Can someone please help and walk me thru this in the simplest terms? Thank You

Answer 1

Not a big deal... you just need to update your drivers... you see when you installed windows on the new drive the install did not come with the drivers needed for your pc to work... if you still can connect to the internet (ie. your network card is still active) then go to http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/swu-list.pl?mdl=PCVRS510&UpdateType=Original
this link will lead you to the original drivers for your model pc, just download them and install! you should be from start to finish in maybe 30 mins :)

Good luck!

Answer 2

Any reason that you didn't copy the smaller drive to the bigger drive using a program like ghost? Most retail hard drives come with a setup utility that will copy your old drive to the new drive. if not a local computer shop can do it cheaply, this would eliminate any driver woes (assuming that there really was nothing wrong with the old system). A fresh OS install is always a good thing. What i would do is this:
Put the old hard drive back in, boot it up. Go to the device manager and make a note of the names of the video and audio and network devices. Go to Sony's site and download the drivers and save them to your hard drive. Put the new one in with the whacked drivers, copy them from the old hard drive (assuming that you know jumpers, master slave, all that, or sata) and install them. Good luck!

Answer 3

Sounds like you need to reinstall some drivers.

Double click those yellow question marks. Pick reinstall driver. When it asks where to look for a driver, make sure you tick the box for Windows Update. Hopefully this will work. You can also try going to http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com and scan for updates and make sure you install all of them, most specifically the drivers. If this doesn't work, proceed with my directions below:

If you don't have a separate video or soundcard, then get these drivers from Sony's support site for your computer. If you've never upgraded your computer from what it was at the store, you'll likely need these drivers:

Sound: http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/swu-download.pl?mdl=PCVRS510&upd_id=1455&os_id=7

Video: http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/swu-download.pl?mdl=PCVRS510&upd_id=1379&os_id=7

Modem: http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/swu-download.pl?mdl=PCVRS510&upd_id=1430&os_id=7

Answer 4

I think I know what your problem is. It sounds like you dont have the drivers installed correctly for your graphics card. Here is a link to the website where you can update aditional drivers. It sounds like you are able to access the internet, but if you arent able to transfer the drivers over, you can use the software that came with your laptop (this is the driver page for all drives *** you may need to reinstall more than you video drivers) http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/swu-list.pl?mdl=PCVRS510&UpdateType=Everything

Good luck with this, and if it isn't the reinstallation of video drivers, feel free to email me back [e-mail]

Answer 5

YOu need to reinstall the drivers for your video/audio devices. It's likely the reinstallation of Windows didn't have the correct drivers for your video card. If you have internet access, go to the Sony website and search for support on your particular model. They should have a driver download area where you can download the necessary drives and reinstall them.

Answer 6

you need to download the drivers for it. you can do that by going on sonys website .....

http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/swu-list.pl?mdl=PCVRS510&UpdateType=Original

download the drivers for the Audio, Video, and Motherboard (Chipset). Im not 100% sure if the Motherboard driver will resolve the PCI Device exclamation mark. Once you download them install them and check your device manager if it took away the exclamation marks then everything should be back to normal.

Answer 7

Instead of reinstalling xp on the new hard drive,you can copy everything from the old one to the new one. First, make the new drive a slave drive by putting the jumpers to slave positon. Make the old drive the master. Hook them on the same IDE cable. boot up the computer, it will now see both hard drives. copy the c: partition onto the new hard drive. remove the old hard drive. Make the new drive master. reboot and you should be all set to go. Check windows help files on copying your hard drive to new one. Or you can also get a disk copying utility to do the same thing.

Answer 8

If you are using Windows, you will need to download the latest updates and software updates for your software directly from Microsoft. This can be found at www.updates.microsoft.com - there are mandatory updates which it will detect for you, and install automatically. Alternatly, you can browse through the selection of downloads and updates they have avaliable. Before doing so, you can:
Go to Start --> All Programs --> Sony Accesories --> Reset Drivers then reboot.

My advice would be to contact the customer care department of your computer's manufactuer and explain the issue to them. They most likely will be able to do it for you via remote assistance.

Good Luck!

Answer 9

You should have received a set of restore cds with your Vaio. They will contain the drivers that you need to fix your problem. If you can't find them, go to sony.com and look for support. Go through the steps to select your particular model and then download the available drivers. Sometimes, though rarely, drivers for XP wont function with XPSP2.

Hope this helps.

Answer 10

Your drive has been partitioned. You will have to do a complete format and delete all partitons. And watch for the volume amt. I've had that same problem and thats how I had to do mine in order to get all my gb. After installing new hard drive you have to install all your drives, video, sound card. If you don't have the cds that came with your cards, you can look them up on the net by company name.