Unrecognized hardware on a mystery motherboard

[mendriel]

I've been searching for any information on this for a while, but I'm at a loss...

My laptop (generic) had a nVidia card and some type of onboard sound, but I cannot specifically identify either one. Windows isn't recognizing them, so I have no sound and am using the canned basic VGA drivers - very laggy display dragging windows around and such. dxdiag is no help, but that is probably because of the lack of proper drivers problem.


Device Manager lists these items as:
Video Controller (VGA Compatible) - has the yellow question mark/exclamation point next to it
C-Media AC97 Audio Devoce - has the yellow exclamation point next to it

Windows Update gave me no driver upgrades for either.


Here's the info I got from CPU-Z:

CPU Tab:

Processor Specification - Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.80GHz
Processor Code Name - Northwood
Core Speed - 2800 MHz
FSB - 133.3 MHz
Bus Speed - 533.3 MHz

Mainboard Tab:

Motherboard Manufacturer - American Megatrends Inc.
Motherboard Model - N351s1
Graphic Interface Version - AGP version 2.0
Graphic Interface Transfer Rate - 4x

Memory Tab:

Type - DDR
Size - 1024 MBytes
Frequency - (greyed out)


I also ran a Bios Identifier from www.ami.com that gave me this info:

SMBIOS info:
Manufacturer: American Megatrends Inc.
Product Name: N351s1
Version: 1.0
Serial Number: 00000000


The AMI website was not very helpful at all...no clear way to me to look up an item by its product number. The only path I found to follow there was to upgrade my Bios. I am now awaiting contact from eSupport (directed there from the AMI website) to get the files to flash my Bios...not really placing any faith in this being a solution. I imagine they will want an arm and a leg for any help.

I googled the product number to see if I could get specifications on my board thinking I could just download drivers independantly, but I didn't get any good hits (at least not in a language I could understand).

When I tried to install the latest drivers from nVidia's website, I got a message saying that I have no hardware the drivers are needed for.


I have provided all of the information that I can think of and have exhausted all of my informational resources thus far. If anyone has any ideas for any other ways I can identify these items and/or get drivers for them, I'd be very appreciative.

Thanks a bunch!
Andy

 

[CrazeD]

Under device manager, double click the device you need drivers for, then click the 'driver' tab at the top of the window that pops up, and then hit 'update drivers'.

 

[MrCoffee]

You say the laptop is generic but it must come with drivers? who ever manufacture that laptop must supply those drivers on their web site.

What version of windows are your running?

Typically with laptops you have to get specific drivers from the manufacturer.

 

[mendriel]

I checked out my invoice and found the manufacturer was ACI Inc, but unfortunately I can't find a website for them. Plenty of vendors sell their notebooks, so I imagine they are still around. I have a number that I will call tomorrow and hopefully they will direct me to a website or at least give me specs so I can start a more specific hunt for drivers.

My OS is Windows XP Pro.

And as for updating the drivers via Device Manager, I have tried that already and it tells me the hardware was not installed because it is recognized, therefore it provides no drivers for me.

Thanks for the suggestions so far...it looks like I at least have a direction to follow now.

 

[umybiatch2k6]

i hope i'm not wrong in suggesting sandra software for you to determine the origins of the hardware... give it a try, though, if you haven't heard of it

 

[mendriel]

So I contacted eSupport and they told me that this was a known issue that has to do with ACPI. Next he told me he would email me a fix for it for $60. When I hesitated, he told me that if I "worked on computers" I qualified for a $20 discount. Sounded fishy to me, so I declined.

Another thing that I questioned was why was there an ACPI issue now, but I never had the problem previously (same version of Windows).

Anyone had any experience with this?

If I can't figure this out, I may just install Linux on it...been thinking about making a Linux machine for quite some time.