Help Needed - Vaio VGN-N11H!

[Scott19]

Hi guys, i purchased my VGN-N11H back in january right before vista came out so its OS was XP. Im into a bit of gaming and mainly played call of duty 2, civ 4, and a couple of star wars games on it. They played perfect without a hitch. Then i got my vista upgrade through the post installed it - no problems. Then when i came to install my games again every single one of them wont run - im aware some games dont work on vista but that the ones i own just need running as administrator and changing compatability wise to Xp service pack 2 but this does nothing. Call of duty brings up a message saying directx has encountered an unrecoverable error civ 4 something similar. I think iv tried everything, cant remember what website it was but it scanned my computer hardware, processor etc to see if it was capable of running call of duty 2 it passed everything except video/graphics card but i havent changed it, how can changing to vista stop it from not being sufficient? Any advice would be greatly appreciated - thanks in advance , Scott.

[Scott19]

anyone??


is it possible to downgrade back to xp?

[Blencogo]

Hi Scott and welcome to Club Vaio.

Although the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 can run Vista Aero it only just has the minimum specification and is not really designed for intensive games. It is sold as a 'value' graphics solution. You could try turning Aero off but I'm not sure this will help.

I'm surprised you had no problems with XP as the GMA950 just can't cope with some modern games in XP either but may have more free resources.

If you have made your Recovery Discs as advised before installing Vista, you can return your Vaio to the configuration when you bought it by inserting the System Disc and then booting the Vaio. Follow the Recovery Wizard.

If you have not formatted the hard drive and still have your Recovery Partition, you can also achieve a factory reset by tapping F10 at startup when you see the first Vaio logo.

[Scott19]

Hi thanks for the advice, iv recovered back to XP now.

I still think i might need a better video card tho, is it possible to upgrade the one i currently have?

Thanks

[Blencogo]

It's not really ecenomic to replace because it is soldered into the main board. It would be cheaper to buy a new laptop.

You could try the Intel website to see if there are any updated XP drivers for your graphics chip.