Vaio VGN-NR160E XP Driver Set

[ComradeF]

My company just picked up 3 of these laptops knowing full-well that they'd come with Vista Home. Didn't figure it'd be a problem -- just throw in an XP SP2 CD and let the fun begin, right? Wrong. We knew we were in trouble when setup couldn't even find the SATA HDD!

So throughout this week I've been tinkering with what's out there, and finally managed to hack together a set of drivers that gets everything working but the Fn keys for LCD control and the S1 and AV MODE buttons.

First things first, you have to slipstream the SATA driver into your XP install disc. To do that, you'll need the SATA driver and nLite.

Here's the SATA driver:
http://www.comradef.com/files/miscel...SATA%201.0.zip (200 KB)

In nLite, go through the wizard and eventually click "Add Single Driver". Browse to "iaahci.inf" and select Text-Mode Driver. Pick "Intel(R) 82801HEM/HBM SATA AHCI Controller" and burn. Now you should be able to boot from disc and install XP.

After that, you need to get all your other OS drivers installed. I've created a driver compilation directly from manufacturers like Intel, drivers for other Vaio notebooks, and a few goodies from the C:\Windows\Drivers\EXE\ directory on the original Vista install.

Not everything will work immediately. Audio, for example, will require you to run through the Device Manager and manually tell it to just use the new default drivers (which it will have after you've installed them).

Also, the Memory Stick icon registry patch doesn't fix anything on its own... So I made a blank DLL and injected a Sony Memory Stick icon into it so that it'll work! You'll see what I'm talking about when you get there.

Here's the XP driver set:
http://www.comradef.com/files/miscel...vers%201.0.zip (80.2 MB)

By the way, I'd appreciate it if someone could mirror this for me. I don't have all the bandwidth in the world and I will have to remove this from my server if I get hit too hard!

[ComradeF]

Turns out we may have a solution for the lack of Fn + F7. The Intel graphics drivers has some cool hotkeys -- right click the blue "Intel(R) Graphics Media Accelerator Driver for Mobile" icon in your System Tray and play around a little. In particular, pay attention to Graphics Properties... -> Hotkeys. This is great news for me because I have a new widescreen LCD that I want to use with this laptop!

Still no fix for brightness keys, but at least this helps.

[jelsof]

hi there i will try drivers on my nr180e hope it will work also i upload drivers to rapid share here is the link http://rapidshare.com/files/88374997...ivers_1.0.zip;)
thanks

[jelsof]

hi ComradeF you are the greatest... it totally worked on my nr180e and no problem with audio just installed drivers. running xp no problems thanks a lot , you save me (shame for brightness )

[ChugokuOtaku]

Instead of slipstreaming, is it possible to set the sata as ide emulation in bios as opposed to ahci? btw, which key do I press to get into the BIOS? F2/F10/Del didn't seem to do the trick for me...

According to some reviewer, Sony won't support a downgrade to XP until the 1st quarter of 2008. Can anyone confirm this?

[ameyamonkar]

I had purchased a VGN-NR160E. as I was trying some partition software, all the partitions got deleted. And now I have installed a vista ultimate. I had downloaded all the drivers and software’s from sony’s site. But I didn’t find all the software’s which came pre installed earlier with the notebook. Softwere’s like vaio camera capture utility, vaio update 3, viv dvd software for vaio.. etc etc.

And there was a very imp software for me that I is to use, I don’t remember the name, but it was a audio tool which is to allow me to boost the bass, select different environment, surround effect and all. I want it very badly.
And I also couldn’t find out driver for S1 and AV button and couldn’t use the FN key to adjust the brightness.

can u pls send me the link from where I can download all this software’s

[DaCar22]

On my VGN-NR160E XP is running fine, except for the brightness keys, wich are dead.
Another problem is that when I close the LCD panel, the machine reboots instead of going to standby or hibernate.
Does anyone has a fix for this?

[neokorros]

i recently bought that laptop and want to install xp. i read your post and downloaded the driver pack you put up. what is the name of the file that i need to slipstream (sata driver) into the new xp installation cd using nlite and where does it go on the disk install?

thank you for your help, i greatly appreciate it.

~ nick

[DaCar22]

Hi. nick

I can send you the drivers I used here, just gimme your email.

David

[Nolan0913]

Hi guys. Same problem here. I downloaded the drivers and used Nlite to slipstream into Windows XP install but Windows XP still states it does not detect a hard drive? Is the SATA HD driver separate? Where in the Windows XP install should the files be slipstreamed? Thanks for any help you can provide because this Vaio is useless with Vista.