my laptop won't recognise my iPhone.

My laptop does not even realise that anything has been plugged, and neither does the iPhone give any indication that it has been plugged in (won't even charge)
I know it is not the wire, I have tested others.
I have even taken the phone into the apple store and it works fine with their macs. (I have a Sony Vaio, barely a year old!)I have looked through the support pages, and nothing seems to help.
I have updated iTunes, nothing changed.
And the driver doesn't seem to exist anywhere at all, so nothing I can really do there?
I've run out of ideas....