Sony VAIO with Geforce 8400m - Driver and Brightness

[erickcorderoak]

Hi,

I am using Mint 19 on a Sony Vaio VGN-AR520E and it has an NVIDIA Geforce 8400M GT. Right now, I am using the generic graphics driver. I tried installing the NVIDIA driver and the whole system stopped working. Tried a few times and to no avail and ended up having to reinstall Mint again.

I remember that this particular graphics card had driver issues for Windows 7 too. Is there a way to fix this? Also, the brightness control doesn't work; either using the function key or using the settings on the menu.

Any help would be greatly appreciated !

thanks

[roblm]

This may be due to what Nvidia calls MSI (Message Signaled Interrupts) compatibility problems. I’ve seen it affect some GeForce 8 series cards using the nvidia-340 driver.

To test this, use this command in the Terminal to open the grub file for editing: xed admin:///etc/default/grub

Add the kernel parameter pci=nomsi to this line:

Code: Select all

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"

So it will now look like this:

Code: Select all

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash pci=nomsi"

Use this command to update grub and reboot: sudo update-grub; reboot

If that doesn’t work, then try this parameter: NVreg_EnableMSI=0

If there is a problem getting back to the desktop, then press Ctrl+Alt+F1 to enter the virtual console tty1. Use this command to open the grub file: sudo nano -t /etc/default/grub
Use the Arrow keys to move the cursor. Remove the parameter that was added. Press Ctrl+X to save and exit. Use this command to update grub and reboot: sudo update-grub; reboot