Vista Vaio - downgrading to XP/2000, what Sony wanted Vista only

My brother bought himself a new toy – Sony Vaio VGN-N320E. He bought it cheap on Labor Day savings for some $550, which is a great price, even if the design is in my opinion a bit poor (that big silver field with small simple keyboard and rectangular touchpad looks like designed by a 5 year old) – but who cares? He didn’t buy it to impress girls.
I didn’t have the time nor desire to do any thorough testing, so just a few observations: the display is great (wide glossy screen with fine resolution – I don’t recommend for outdoor use, of course), the keyboard is OK – the keys move smoothly and aren’t too noisy. Touchpad OK, touchpad keys very tough and making loud click when pressed. Construction looks OK.
So here’s my bro eyeing the colourful Vistas and deciding after a few moments he wants his Win 2000 back. You see, my brother is pretty conservative, he never migrated to XP and never wants to, arguing XP is just Win 2000 in a nice dress. I’m not here to judge my brother’s sanity, I’m here merely to serve him, as is the law in our country... So I found the installation CD, run it and meanwhile went to www.sony.com to collect the necessary drivers.
As you very well know, because you googled this article and are reading it, Sony doesn’t have any XP/2000 drivers for this notebook, or any new notebook sold with Vista. Wow. I’m not a Vista fan, I have nothing against it (I will just stick with XP for some time and upgrade to Vista when I will feel the time has come) – but this, dear Sony, is really annoying. Did you sign a pact with the devil? Shame on you.
I also found a petition demanding Sony to be friendlier to it’s customers and making the XP drivers available, so far signed by some four hundreds angry users, which, I’m afraid, is too pathetic. But maybe it will grow fast.
Of course I didn’t give right up; and in the end, I almost succeeded, and now I’m writing this article hoping it may save some desperate Vaio owners some hours of searching.
This guide applies to the VGN-N320E, but if you have another Vista only model (many have similar configuration), you may find it useful too. Also I write about Win 2000, but because almost all the 2000 drivers come as XP/2000, I suppose everything can be applied to XP.

After installing Windows 2000, I had many yellow question marks in the Device Manager. I was also looking at them in 640x480 - stretched wide - and in 16 colors. When I stopped laughing, I immediately began looking for the graphic chipset driver. 320E has the Mobile Intel® 945GM Express Chipset, and drivers for this – and for nearly all OSes you can imagine – can be easily found on Intel website. Download, install, restart, and the screen will probably automaticaly switch to its native resolution in truecolor (mine did).
Direct link to 945GM drivers page (links can change in the future - in this case just use Intel website's search): http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Product_Filter.aspx?ProductID=2301

How do I know the specs? If you go to www.sony.cz and find the driver download page for your model, there’s a list of the devices and drivers. Plus I used the HWiNFO program; HWiNFO analyzes your PC and gives you a detailed description of virtually everything that’s under the hood. Another useful tool can be found on Intel website – the Chipset Identification Utility that tells about the chipset in your PC have and also provides the link to the driver.

Don’t close the Intel website, the motherboard has an Intel chipset too – in case of 320E it is the 940/943GML. I installed the 943GML and it worked; this solves many yellow question marks, including the USB Host Controller.
Direct link to the chipset drivers: http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/sb/CS-022034.htm

Next is the sound card driver. 320E has the Realtek High Definition Audio. I didn’t know it yet, but in the end I learned this: the audio card (chip, I know, but I’m used to cards) lives in symbiosis with the modem – if you’re more hardware educated than me, you surely know what I’m talking about. After you install the sound driver, Windows immediately find new hardware – the modem – and try to find a driver, but cannot. If you download a driver for generic HDA modem from Conexant driver page, Windows tell you it’s not the right thing. I tried many drivers, but Windows refused each one of them. Finally, I found this on a message board: prior to installing sound and modem drivers, you have to install Microsoft UAA (Universal Audio Architecture) driver; then comes the audio driver and Sony modem driver. I tried again the Conexant generic drivers, but to no avail. I installed the UAA after installing the audio driver and nothing happened, so I suppose you can go audio – UAA – modem, but you’ll never suceed with the modem without UAA.
Link to the audio driver on Realtek website: http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=24&PFid=24&Level=4&Conn=3&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false#High Definition Audio Codecs
or google it, its everywhere.
Link to the modem driver: http://www.pcglitches.com/helpdesk/sonyhdmodem.zip (found on the Driverzone forum)

I didn’t look for the touchpad driver, because it worked after the system downgrade. There seems to be a driver (probably generic) in W2k that works.

The network card in 320E is Marvell Yukon 88E8036 PCI-E Fast Ethernet Controller Driver; this was not hard to find on Marvell website. Wifi took some time, I was looking for the LAN-Express driver and couldn’d find any that would be working; finally, I came upon the Czech Atheros WLAN driver page and downloaded the AR5001X - I must admit Google just took me to the AR5001X subpage and I downloaded and tried, and it worked. The HWiNFO should tell you the numbers needed to find your driver.
Link to the Yukon driver installer (XP/2000/Vista 32 and 64 multilang): http://www.marvell.com/drivers/driverDisplay.do?dId=175&pId=6
Link to the Atheros AR5001X drivers: http://www.atheros.cz/download.php?atheros=AR5001X&system=1

Thats all I managed so far (one evening of work). At this time, there are two yellow question marks left in the device manager – an Unknown Device and a Mass Storage Device. The Mass Storage Device is the SD card reader. This should be a Texas Instruments PCIxx12 Integrated FlashMedia Controller Driver, and I found some drivers and installed them, but it doesn’t work. The Unknown Device says something about Intel LCP, which, I believe, has something to do with the processor or chipset or bridge. So, the downgrade is not yet complete, but the notebook is already usable. If you have a solution of the remaining question marks, please share.

Also there’s a little problem – every time I try to shut the system down, Windows go to BSOD and then the notebook fires up right again. I’m sure this has to do something with a wrong driver hanging in there somewhere – in my quest for device manager without question marks, I tried many various drivers, some of them surely not too compatible with the hardware. A clean installation of Windows with the right set of drivers should solve this.

And lastly, a very useful link: www.sony-asia.com. In the Support, in Downloads, there's you can download a downgrade packet of drivers (about 100 MB) and Sony applications. Not for all notebooks - the VGN-N320E is missing - but try to find the most similar model and pick the drivers and applications you need.