How to install nvidia driver to Sony Vaio

    Remember when I had just bought a laptop. The first thing I did was installing Ubuntu :D
    But there were some problem with Nvidia driver for Geforce GT 330M. The screen blanked :( I did google a lot. Finally, it works. But now I can not remember exactly where to start :(
    So I try to summary those steps to make it work before everything is out of my memory.



My specification: Sony Vaio VPCCW22FX with Geforce GT 330M. Install Ubuntu 10.04
This page is a good reference before starting:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/Nvidia

Prerequisite:
- Internet connection.
- Windows (or if you have same laptop to mine, leave your email as comment and I will send you my EDID file).
- EDID Viewer to get above EDID file (this software runs in Windows platform :( ), or ignore it if you already have EDID file for your monitor.

1 - Boot to Ubuntu, switch to console (I prefer to select recovery mode in Grub menu, who knows that ctrl+alt+F1 will be changed or not :( )
      If it doesn't work (screen is still blank), restart and press "e" while grub menu appears. Move to options "quite splash" and repleace them by "nomodeset".


2 - In System > Administrator > Hardware Driver, activate NVIDIA driver. It will download and install driver.

3 - Restart computer and boot to Ubuntu as normal. If it works, congratulation! And you can bypass the rest of this entry. If it does not, we need to do some workaround.

4 - Restart and boot to Windows.

5 - Use EDID Viewer to get information about identity and capabilities of monitor. This is a free Windows program (hope that you keep Windows in your laptop to run it:D ). Please click here to get it or google for new version if available. Save the result to a file, for ex: EDID_vaio_monitor.raw (you are free to name it).

6 - Boot to Ubuntu as step 1.

7 - Edit /ect/X11/xorg.conf like this (my current configuration file)

Section "Module"
    Load    "glx"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier    "Monitor0"
    Vendorname    "Unknown"
    ModelName    "Nvidia Default Flat Panel"
    HorizSync    29.0 - 47.0
    VertRefresh    0.0 - 61.0
    Option        "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier    "Device0"
    Driver    "nvidia"
    VendorName    "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName    "GeForce GT 330M"
    Option    "NoLogo"    "True"
    Option    "RandRRotation"    "on"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier    "Screen0"
    Device    "Device0"
    Monitor    "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option    "ConnectedMonitor"    "DFP-0,DFP-1,CRT"
    Option        "CustomEDID"    "DFP-0:/etc/X11/EDID_vaio_monitor.raw"
    SubSection    "Display"
        Depth    24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

In "Section Device", I added

Option "RandRRotation" "on"

So that I can enable "rotation" feature in NVIDIA X Server Setting.

In "Section Screen", I added

Option "CustomEDID" "DFP-0:/etc/X11/EDID_vaio_monitor.raw"

Please remember to adjust the correct path to file which we've got from step 2.

Another part, I modified a bit for using 2 monitor later.

8 - Reboot or restart XServer. It should work now :) If it does not, please leave a comment. We will try to solve the problem :)

Cheers,
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*I decided to install 64bit edition yesterday and get same problem. So that it was a chance to review these works and edit this entry :D