Sony :: Vaio FW490 Windows Vista 64 Refuses To Boot
Jul 20, 2009
I just recieved my Sony Vaio FW490 today. After uninstalling the trial version of Office 2007 (student version), windows refuses to boot normally. I tried several system resores without success.
Although it said that the restore worked properly, I kept rebooting to repair windows or vaio restore center or something like that. I finally called Sony tech support, and they walked me through restoring the C drive to its original state option
I am in the process of deciding which laptop PC to purchase. I had decided on a Dell Studio XPS 16, but then received a suggestion on this site that a vaio FW series could fit my needs.
I dropped in on a Sony Style store and they have the FW378 DH in stock. I also called the online Sony store and they suggested the FW490.
The differences in the two PC's were: 1) the processors: The FW378 came with a P8600 at 2.40GHZ, and the FW490 with the P8800 at 2.66GHZ
I currently have the SXPS 16 but am thinking about returning it and ordering the FW490 instead. I'm actually on my second SXPS and both computers just run way too hot when in normal room temperature.
On my current machine I also have a few stuck pixels on the bottom of the screen that you can really only see against black backgrounds.
life of the battery on my new Vaio FW490. The battery on my previous laptop (an IBM Thinkpad circa 2004), was always connected to the laptop, and almost always plugged in. I rarely used the battery. After a couple of years, I noticed that the battery could barely hold a charge for more than 15 minutes.
Is it a good idea to regularly run the laptop off the battery? Is keeping the laptop plugged in for long periods of time OK? What should I do to ensure that my battery lasts.
I have a Vaio FW490. I took it with me on vacation. When I realized that the LCD TV in the place I am staying had an HDMI connection, and that there was no blu ray player, I decided to connect my laptop to the TV via the HDMI. I had no problem with the video, once I discovered that I needed to shut off the laptop display. The sound was fine for all of the various previews on the Blu ray dvd. But once it started playing the movie, which was in DTS 5.1 audio, there was no sound. It played sound when I chose the directors comments, but I was unable to get any sound when the dts track was chosen. This occurred with 2 blu ray movies. I checked my sound settings while the hdmi was connected and it showed "digital audio HDMI (ATI HDMI audio) as the default device.
Is it just not possible to play a blu ray dvd from my laptop to a TV via hdmi only? Do I need a separate audio connection?
If I buy the windows 7 upgrade (only $49!) do I have to upgrade my vista or can i keep vista and have windows 7 at the same time in a dual-boot situation? Does anyone know if this is allowed?
I may be over-reacting here, but I just realized that I can access the Internet from my VAIO FW490 via Bluetooth tethering using my LG Vu.
No special tools or software needed, except the Broadcom Bluetooth Driver from Sony eSupport. It's really quite handy if you plan to take your laptop on the road.
Here is a simple guide. http://fw490.blogspot.com/2009/10/ev...bluetooth.html
I have a serious dillemma , I'm trying to install Windows 7 - 64 Bit on my 32-bit vista laptop.
I have a sony vaio fz290.
I burned the image of a 7077 build I downloaded from demonoid. Booted off of it and clicked install , and then I got an error about not having a Cd/Dvd drive device driver missing , I tried a lot of things and searched all over the internet.
A few things to ask as I'm desperate
What can I do to make this work ?
Do I have to format my comp for this to work or can I just update over the 32-bit installation
I am about to order a Sony Vaio FW490, and I would like to know how much of a difference visually that these 2 screens are. I know that the FullHD obviously looks better, but how much better exactly? And is it worth the extra $100 or so?
I have yet to see a FullHD screen at the Best Buy near me so it is difficult for me to compare the two. I have also heard that the FullHD screen is not adequate for gaming. Is this true? I am not a hardcore gamer by any means, but I did plan on playing some of my new games like Street Fighter 4 occasionally. In addition, a 1920x1080 resolution does seem quite large for a 16.4" screen. Can anybody provide some sort of screenshot of the FullHD screen?
For a couple of months, the laptop refuses to boot when turning it on. Screens stays completely black, never reaches the Dell-logo. The power-LED burns normally, CPU lights up for a few seconds, then dies out. I hear the fans starting and I think the hard disk starts as well.
The speakers start making an intermittent beeping sound, short beep every +- 3 seconds.
At this point, I have to interrupt the proces, and restart. Occasionally, the computer does start normally (around 10-30 times trying). In the beginning, this took only a few times trying, but it's getting worse.
When the computer comes back from sleep, it doesn't have any problems, only when it's (re)started, or coming from hibernation (deep sleep).
I have my Ideapad y510p laptop and it is refusing to boot. Basically, I was simply restarting my computer and then it stopped working. The computer seemed to have been getting finicky lately and taking longer too boot prior to this issue, but that may just be me. When I press the power button the Lenovo logo pops up and the spinning thing starts. This spins for an extremely long time then a BSoD appears and the laptop reboots.
And for a split second the BSoD flashes "INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE" (the BSoD sits for a few seocnds then this message pops up for a very short amount of time, I had to film it and go frame by fram to figure out what it said) On the next boot cycle a little "Preparing Automatic Repair" pops up. This goes on for a long time too, and when it finishes it takes me to a blue screen asking for my keyboard layout. Upon selection I am greeted with an option to troubleshoot or turn off the PC. Troubleshoot then allow me to refresh my PC, reset my PC, and advanced options. The refresh option when selected states "The drive where Windows is installed is locked. Unlock the drive and try again." The reset option brings up a "Please Wait" then comes up with an error stating "Unable to reset your PC. A required drive partition is missing." Under the advanced options I am presented with an option to do a system restore, which errors out and tells me to specify which Windows installations to restore, an option to do a system image recover, which errors out giving me the error code 0x80070002, an option to do a startup repair, which then says that it could not repair my PC and nothing is listed under "Log file", an option to adjust my UEFI Firmware Settings, which just loads up the BIOS, and an option to load up the command prompt. The command prompt is where things start to get intresting.
I ran diskpart then list disk and list volume, list disk returned "There are no fixed disks to show" and list volume returned "There are no volumes." I proceeded to run chkdsk /r /f /x but that returned that the drive was write protected, which I am assuming is because I am running off the recovery x drive. I also ran sfc /scannow which stated that there are pending repairs and that I need to restart to fix them. So, after all this it would appear that my hard drive is not mounted or malfunctioning. However, in the BIOS the hard drive is listed, also I tried changing from AHCI to compatible and that yeilded no results. I then proceeded to simply try to use the novo button and do a system restore, however when I tried this it poped up a screen saying "Windows is loading files" and when the progressbar completed the computer reset and when back to the boot screen and put me back where I started.
I tried booting from a USB flash drive and a USB CD drive and both of them failed and just reset the computer and brought me back to the boot loop. I tried reseting the BIOS, pulling the power plug and battery and holding the power button for 20 seconds, and a BIOS update to v3.05 (I used the CMD prompt to open notepad then navigate to a folder that contained the BIOS update exe and updated the BIOS), and none of these worked. I then proceeded to pull the hard drive from the laptop and stick it in my desktop. I tried booting off this hard drive on my desktop, but this did not work. I was able to grab all my data from the drive and back it up on my desktop perfectly fine.
Also, when I loaded up disk management, I noticed another 350mb recovery partition. Shortly after getting the laptop I made a post on these forums asking about what all the partions on the primary hard drive and I included a picuture of the disk management (the thread with image can be seen here) and in that picture there is only one 350mb recovery, however, now there is two. Not sure if this is of any use or not, but I am just trying out be as through as possible. Also, I ran a chkdsk of the primary partition (c drive when on the laptop) when I had it in my desktop and that did not work any.
I bought this laptop on 16 December, and got on with transferring apps and files from my old desktop PC. All OK until last Sunday, when I left the laptop doing a Win 8.1 update overnight. Next morning, it was requesting a reboot, but then, after the initial HP logo, the screen goes blank for some minutes. Then the Win 8 screen appears with a message:
"LogonUI.exe - Application Error. The instruction at 0x00b1645a referenced memory at 0x00000008. The memory could not be written."
When I click on OK, the screen goes blank then flashes. The message re-appears, with the same result. I have tried to boot the machine from a CD and a USB pen drive, after changing the boot sequence in the BIOS/UEFI screen, but with the same result. What should I do?
I have an Acer Aspire 8930G-7665, OEM Windows Vista x64. I want to set it up to dual boot between Vista and Windows 7, hence the thread title. However, I've had nothing but problems since the beginning.
Forgetting all the issues getting it partitioned, which I've done, I can't get the computer to boot off the DVD. This is strange because the same DVD worked fine on a Dell unit previously.
The first hurdle is that I can't get it to present me an option to boot from CD. The workaround is to change the boot order, which I've done. But now when it accesses the DVD drive to read the DVD there, the computer simply stops responding. There's a flashing cursor in the upper left corner of the screen.
I have a Sony Vaio VGN-SZ483N with Windows Vista Business Edition SP1. For some reason, everytime i first boot up my laptop Vista will automatically restart with no error messages whatsoever.
I disabled the automatic restart option in vista and the same thing happens. However, once it's done the initial restart everything works normally and therefore i dont think it has anything to do with over-heating. I used to have windows xp pro sp3 and this did not happen
I have a Dell Inspiron 1440 that won't boot now. Using WinVista Ultimate and needed to reboot but it hangs after the Dell logo/Inspiron screen with the white status bar is completed at the bottom of the LED screen. I removed the 500GB HD and inserted a new 1TB Win7 Professional that I've been working on for the last couple of weeks and it won't boot either. Same situation on both HD (2 Win OSes on same laptop with same issue). FYI, I have 8GB RAM in the laptop (been that way for couple of years) but I don't suspect the RAM as the issue. I do have 2-2GB RAM DIMMs that came with the laptop initially in case that's a test I need to make.
Functionally, it appears like the boot sector on the HD isn't "available" but I've tried two (2) different HDs and I get the same issue. Hence, I think it's not a HD issue.
What IS the issue and what are my options? Laptop appears to be fine otherwise. New motherboard? $$??
Pressing F2 or F12 doesn't get me anywhere at startup time either.
I have tried a slew of overclocking programs including rivatuner and ati tool, to try to underclock my gpu for better battery life. They usually give errors about a unsigned driver installing but I boot with signed driver checking disabled. Has anyone been successful over/underclocking the gpu on a fw490?
I just ran PCPitstop on my FW490 (running Vista Home Premium 64 bit), and the Driver recommendations report listed two drivers which they suggest changing:
1) Realtek High Definition Audio current driver is 6.0.1.5759 , to proposed driver 6.0.1.5888.
2) Marvell Yukon 88E8055 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller current driver is 10.53.2.3 to proposed driver 10.70.6.3.
The recommended drivers do not appear on the Sony eSupport site for my specific model (VGN-FW490CJ).
Should I leave well enough alone, or is Sony not posting the most current drivers for my Vaio.
i created a new partition to dual boot vista ultimate 32bit and windows 7. After i restarted the computer Vista can no longer boot and the new partition does not show up.
I want to order myself a FW490 but the problem is I have to go study in London soon and the warranty wont cover outside the us. This is really problematic and possibly force me to go back to buy dell. but I was just wondering about the possible option I can do. Would it be possible to buy a warranty in the UK?
I have an FW490, and noticed when looking at the device manager that under Portable Devices that there was a problem. There is a warning beside something called "R5C592". When I checked under properties it says Device type: Portable Device, Manufacturer: Ricoh, Location: on UMBus Enumerator.
Under device status it says: "Windows cannot start this hardware device because its configuration information (in the registry) is incomplete or damaged. (Code 19) Click 'Check for solutions' to send data about this device to Microsoft and to see if there is a solution available."
I checked for solutions and couldn't find anything. My PC seems to be running fine. Is it possible that it could be that I used a USB key that is causing this problem?
I notice a significant difference in volume levels on my FW490. When listening to music via iTunes, or to Sirius online, the levels are adequate. However when I watch a dvd (Bluray or regular), even after turning the speaker volume as high as it will go, the volume is very weak. Is this normal? Headphone volume is fine btw. Is there a setting that boost volume when playing dvd's? Otherwise I will be buying notebook speakers.
I ordered a FW490 CTO w/ P8700, 4650 1GB, 4GB RAM, Vista 64, etc. Anyways, I was a little disappointed with how well it ran Americas Army 3. I downloaded and ran GPUZ, and I got some interesting results... It says that my 4650 uses GDDR3 memory, which is apparently the best setup for the card, but it also reports that my clock speed is 450 MHz, and my memory clock speed is 600 MHz. From everything I have gathered, that is below what most 4650 Mobilitys are at... what gives? What are the speeds of everyone elses 4650?
