driver problem

[beavereater]

I formatted a PC here in Japan. It is one of those name brand, pre-packaged PCs. Apparently, it came with no disks other than the Japanese OS. Bought the English OS, put it on there, but now the video sucks, its all smugged, and there's no audio. Anybody know what I should do next??? WinXP CD doesn't have drivers on it that can help, and the homepage for this PC is in Japanese so I can't understand it. Is this a driver problem!? Any help please...

PS...a little tipsy due to alcohol consumed in large amounts!!

[Jayhawk]

Tough one beavereater. Is there anyway to use AIDA32 to dispay some kernal of information that may give you a clue. Sometimes "name brands" aren't translated so that might at least point you to a manufacturer.

Anything written on the card / chip (which is it). If it's a graphics card maybe you could post a picture. That might point toward a manufacturer.

I assume you are using Microsoft's "default drivers" right now. The two major graphics chip makers right now are NVidia and ATI. Might be worth throwing one of their driver sets on to see if it improves (long shot). You could always de-install in safe mode.

Last resort. Here's a link to an Japanese to English translator.

http://world.altavista.com/

[gmatov]

http://members.driverguide.com/index.php?action=fccid

If you are able to pull the card, if, indeed, there is a seperate card, read the FCC ID nimber and enter the part asked for in the link above, www.driverguide.com .

You may have to sign up for the site to log in.

If the card is actually a chip on the board, your opening DOS screen, where it counts the RAM, etc, should show, in the upper left corner, the make and model of the Video chip. Some, of course, show only the OEM's logo.

Cheers,

George

[beavereater]

I called NEC (The maker of the PC)...they were not very nice or helpful at all. I explained that there was a virus on the PC, formated, and now this problem has occured. Anyway, they said we should use the recovery disk...unfortunately that was wiped as well. (Maybe my fatal error) Anyway, the PC is this one
http://www.yodobashi.com/enjoy/more/i/cat_8427287_58_184/17615028.html

They said that if we want the drivers, we would have to pay about 100 dollars for them. Not sure if this is standard or not, never bought a Brand Name PC before...but friends that do have them usually have drivers that come with the PC on CD or disk. Isnt that the norm!?????

[redwudz]

I did a Google search from the name of the machine in that ad, 'PC VL20E8D'. Several pages of hits, must be popular. If I got the right one, appears to be 2400XP processor, 256MB ram, 120G HD. One site says'nforce2 IGP+ nforce2 MCP2'. Nvidia?, but not sure exact model. No info on sound. Unfortunately all the sites seem to be in Japanese.

EDIT: Here's the NVIDA site and their generic driver? http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp Hope this gives you some leads.

[beavereater]

Thanks...I will give it a try tonight. Hope it works. I will post again when I know more. Its work time over here right now, so back to the classroom!!

[beavereater]

Update...

Well, we didn't find out much, but it seems the board is a SiS if that means anything. We tried downloading a couple drivers and got the video looking clean again. When we look in device manager, it seems the sound/audio has no conflicts, but the multimedia controllers do...and I don't know where to go from there. I will be opening up my friends PC sometime soon...would taking photo's harm the PC (I mean the flash of the camera)...??

[Jayhawk]

I will be opening up my friends PC sometime soon...would taking photo's harm the PC (I mean the flash of the camera)...??

Well it does sound like you're making some progress. No, a flash can't cause any problems. I'm curious as to what the "multimedia controllers" are. Usually Windows sticks that tag on audio, joystick, Midi, etc. but you say the audio is fine. Am I correct that there is no sound card and the board has an audio chip. If that's right can you see any identifying writing on the audio chip (like Advance or ESS). I know some of the NEC's in the US use ESS.

[beavereater]

There is no sound...but like I said I will open things up tomorrow evening and see what it looks like inside. I will post numbers and so on...please stay tuned