Sony :: Choosing The Right Win7 Edition For Vaio Z
Oct 25, 2009
for now it looks like Sony will not offer any possibility of Windows upgrade for machines bought before January 2009. So the only possibility will be to buy new OS from MS and install drivers by myself.
Right now, I have original Japanese Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit shipped with the nb and I'm thinking to upgrade to Win7 Ultimate 64-bit. Is it possible for me to buy just Win7 Ultimate Upgrade for $219.99 from MS Store? Is it possible to make clean install with that?
And what's the difference between OEM and regular version? I have possibility to buy OEM version for much less...but I thought OEM versions are just shipped with new computers.
I have just received my upgrade for my VGN-Z21WN/B (my baby, love it!)... anyway, I did a bit of research before receiving it and everywhere I read suggested to do a fresh install - so thats' what I did. It actually all went okay, and it's happily running.
I visited vaio-link.com where I found some Win7 drivers, including:
- Bluetooth driver - Realtek HD audio - BIOS update for Win7 - Ethernet Driver - Fingerprint suite - Wireless LAN (Intel ProSet) - WWAN - nVidia graphics driver
All great , except now I am missing my FN keys. The FN keys for brightness, volume, switching display etc no longer work, and I cannot find a solution. One site I researched says to download the vista driver, but I cannot find that anywhere .. and then even people said that didn't work.
Secondly, although not a biggie, is there a VAIO Update driver?
I have a Vaio VGN-CS16G/R and why is is that after installing Win7 RTM x64 and installing the necessary drivers, I DON'T see the "adjust brightness slider" on the power options? With my other laptops with the same OS, I can see that slider completely.
Also, I when I install Vaio Launcher which I got from the extracted Sony Notebook Utilities installer, it returns an error of:
I just installed Win7, sticking as much as possible to this method: VAIO FW Clean Windows 7 Install Guide
everything's working, all FN keys, volume multimedia zoom LCD out, all but brightness.
problem is, using the FN keys, the brightness dialog is showing, but I can't increase or decrease it. brightness does not show up on power managment nor on mobilty center. the power plans from vaio ("VAIO optimized") are showing, but still if I pull the plug screen stays on maximum brightness...
Does anyone with VAIO Z and installed with win7 x64 notice the fingerprint driver have a little problem?
See the system log after boot the system, Log Name: System Source: Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-PnP Date: 2009/12/17 22:32:13 Event ID: 219 Task Category: (212) Level: Warning Keywords: User: SYSTEM Computer: Henry-VAIO Description: The driver DriverWUDFRd failed to load for the device USBVID_147E&PID_10005&899163b&0&1...
if anyone is willing to share their WEI result in Win7 with Vaio Z in Speed mode. Would be curious, if it'll show some differences with different CPUs, HDDs, ... You can show the additional specifics by clicking on "View and print detailed performance and system information". (Thanks NHT about the info, didn't know about that ) As the chart doesn't show, what kind of HDD you got,
However, poking around the European Vaio link site I've found a couple of news: first an updated Graphics driver here, but also poking around (in the Originally Installed section) saw an updated Alps Pointing device driver. The version I have installed is 7.2.* while the one for the VGN-Z51XG is a 7.5.*. Downloading the driver I could see that it supports two finger browsing, pinching to zoom and a couple of other features.
Nifty I thought; however I cannot install the driver in my computer - it says "Your operating system is not supported".
Has anyone else tried this? I thought that the pointing HW in all Vaio Zs was the same? Surely Alps cannot build a driver that only works in Win 7 x64 Professional but not Ultimate?
Can someone with a Win7 x64 Professional try to install the driver and then report back with both succcess or failure?
I have a sony z46gd with vista business 64bit edition.
i wanted to install win 7 so i created a new partition with the freespace and sucessfully managed to install win7 on the new partition
But now I'm trying to install the drivers from the europe sony site as pointed out in another thread , but sadly. ikeep getting the battery is not compatible error pointed in this thread
I suspect that the drivers i installed are for win7 business and not win7 ultimate
where do u find the win7 ultimate drivers for this sony vaio ?
I moddified LV2GO nvidia 190.40 beta driver INF for VAIO notebooks. Vaio Brightness control is full working now.
I modded it for nvidia gf 9300m gs and tested on vaio vgn-cs with win vista 32bit but should be compatible with some of the newer VAIO models.
-h264 hardware GPU-decoding is supporing now (It utilizes only a few percent of the CPU)
Instalation:
1. If you already have an existing nVidia driver installed, uninstall it with its Uninstaller, then use Driver Sweeper to remove any remaining files/registry keys and reboot before you attempt to install this driver.
2. Overwrite the existing nv_disp.inf in 19040_win7x32.exe with my moddified v190.40 INF file.
Download:
My moddified v190.40 INF - here Reuploaded NVIDIA driver v190.40 - here
I had replaced mobo on my dead SZ 4 series (don't ask why) and couldn't stop there since I was in the move thus consequently contemplated about possible upgrades. For now I settled for fan, WLAN card and CPU upgrade. If it works well, I might install SSD also.
1.Fan Modification
As you all proud SZ owners know, fan is very noisy on this machines so it made me think if there is any possible modification to reduce the noise. Since the BIOS is controlling it there is not much to do on the RPM part (in win at least, but more on that later) I settled for a fan and fan casing swap from SZ 4 to SZ 7 series.
In the photos you can see that fans, fan casings and heat-sinks are of different design. Besides design differences, voltage and the amperage are the same, 5V-300mA.
Only way was to install the fan and the casing of the SZ 7 heat-sink to my old one as one of the heat-sinks bolt bushings is off for a few millimeters.
There has to be some care exercised when prying off the fan casing, some heating was required from the aluminium side on three pins were casing is attached.
Not to be simple, the difference is also in the inlet hole. One on the SZ 7 heat-sink is bigger and off centre compared to SZ 4s. Had to do some filing there, to match it to the size of the new fan. Fan of SZ7 is not bigger, it is due to different design of the fan eye and its volutes...................
I'm trying to choose a laptop at the moment and I'm finding it hard to do. I primarily want it for gaming and want it to play all the latest and greatest games.
Originally, I wanted an Alienware but I can't justify the price to be honest. Maybe the M11X but I'm not too sure if thats very good for gaming.
These are the laptops I'm looking at:
DELL Studio 17 DELL Studio XPS 16 Alienware M11X
The studio 17 has a 1GB ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 560v
The XPS 16 has a 1GB ATI® Radeon™ HD 4670 graphics card & The Alienware M11X has a 1GB GDDR3 NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 335M
Which is the best graphics card out of these? I know theres more to it than just a graphics card but I thought that would be a good place to start. Also, the i7 processor would be best I think so does that cancel out the M11X? Which laptop would you get for gaming? Personally, I'd like the 17 inch screen size as I'm out of college and don't really need the portability anymore - I use my iPhone for most of my web browsing nowadays. Basically, I'm looking for a really powerful gaming laptop for around €1,200.
if I can clean install Vista 32-bit or Win7 32-bit on current FW laptop, such as FW355 or FW378? FW comes pre-installed with Vista Home Premium 64-bit.
I want to buy FW, however I am using an application that runs only on 32-bit Windows. If I cannot run 32-bit Windows on FW it is kind of a deal breaker for me.
I own a Vaio Z690C with Vista Business 32bit. I really want to upgrade to Windows 7, and moreover use the new Bios and Nvidia driver update, however, this seems really complicated. Sony seemed to make things more complicated by only putting the nvidiadriver in the 64bit section, so I'm wondering, for 32bit owners who want to use Windows 7 32bit, is there a way to use the new updated nvidia driver in 32bit Windows 7 professional? Also, would it be worth it since I use 4GB of ram to just clean install to 64bit Windows 7, I'm only afraid of compatibility errors with random-less-official, programs, where as since I got 32bit, I haven't had a single problem since.
I just tried to install wiindows 7 on my z540, I already installed all drivers downloaded for sony's website, but the function keys still are not working.
I have the new Win7 disks from MSDN (pro and ultimate). Tried multiple times yesterday to upgrade my Z690 from Vista. Uninstalled all of the conflicting drivers/programs, it goes all the way through the install process, gets to the point where it copies over the old files, but then abruptly restarts and uses the Rollback program to get me into Vista again.
I tried 4 times, same result each time. Anyone have an idea if there's something I can do get this machine upgraded?
A clean install is not an option, too many programs I can't find the disks to...
I've recently successfully installed Win7 on my S170 and I'd like to share my experience with other S series owners. The how-to guide is posted on a different forum so I'll post a link to that. I hope it is helpful since Sony will not support this install even though the machine is fully capable. [url]
Trying to get rid of these questionably useful programs -- but I don't see entries for them in add/remove programs in the control panel (or for any of the other useless VAIO software packages that come on OEM machines sans "fresh start")
