I’m buying my new laptop today, but unfortunately it comes with XP Home, so, I want to format it and install the Pro version, has anyone ever done this and is there any problem in doing so?
I don’t know what CDs come with it or if the drivers are compiled with the OS one but I think I’ll be allright.
If there are any tips, or good programs for laptops like battery management and such you can give I’ll be thankful for them.
What I would suggest, is that you find all the drivers from their website and burn them to a cd or a usb pen, then you install XP Pro and then the previously found drivers, there you go. I did that often with compaq and toshiba laptop. Easy and you stay from crappy Home version.
Download from here:
http://www.vaio-link.com/downloads/downloads.asp?l=en
i purchased a sony vaio s150 (great ultra portable notebook, btw). it came pre-installed with xp home. i followed their support directions. go ahead and set up xp home; but don’t register/activate it because it’s not going to stay on the drive. you want to use the pre-installed environment to use sony’s restore disk utility. create a set of vaio restore disks; mine was like 8 cd’s total…so make sure you have a stack with you.
the restore disk not only allows recovery factory defaults…but it stores all the proprietary sony software and drivers on it.
now, reformat your drive (i always suggest a good low-level format if you have a floppy drive; google for maxllf.exe) and install xp pro. once you’ve got the system installed, running and patched…use the sony restore disk’s to reinstall all the sony software (dvd player, burner apps, utilities, drivers, etc) for your notebook. you can also get a lot of the drivers and software from the vaio support site when you register your pc.
that should be it.
now, when i did it, i reformatted the drive and installed gentoo linux 2004.3 on it. i don’t run windows. but i have the restore disk set just incase i ever need to restore it.
this is how i did it.
All of the above are good suggestions for any laptop, but unless you have a specific need for or a discount on Sony laptops I can not recommend them.
Sony’s laptops are very fragile, there warranties may as well not exist and replacement parts sometimes cost more than the laptop it self.
But that is just my experince.
I’ve done this on a Sony VAIO GRT-170 Laptop, with no problem.
Get a slipstreamed XP Pro CD, start clean.
Then go to the Sony Download site and download any and all drivers and necessary utility software with updates.
You may have to selectively pull some software off of the rescue disks, as with my laptop the exterior volume buttons are run through a piece of software I believe is only on the rescue disks.
Good Luck
man..thank God I have a MAC. Thats crazy stuff. A home version and proffessionalversion, I’m shocked.
nothing but good service with my s150. of course, i don’t drop it or bang it around. i’m good with my equipment. keep it in a padded sleave while it’s in my backpack.
my only complaints stem from sony’s use of windows. it took custom scripting and some hacking to get my fn keys and i/o buttons to work in linux. and, i can’t upgrade the bios on the mobo because sony only releases a windows exe flash utility. which i think is the stupidest thing anyway…as unstable as windows can be…flashing your bios from anything other than a bootable floppy is idiotic.
other than that…they used standard intel parts…ip2200 wifi nic, ati 9200 video…etc.
last complaint. tiny ram. upgrading to 1gb is pretty expensive.
otherwise, i’d buy a another sony vaio notebook.
Perhaps Sony has turned around.
My experience come from when I worked in a computer repair shop and saw Sony after Sony come in and be cost-ineffective to fix. Then again if you are careful with it and recognize that once it is obsolete it is not worth fixing. (Most laptops fall into this category and most users try to fight this because they still perceive the value of the laptop to be the purchase price)
Good luck with the Windows load and enjoy the new toy ;-)
Good luck with the Windows load, and enjoy the new toy ;-)
Damn… sorry about the hickup… (I need to switch to open office…)
I hate MACs
Grffith,
Cool as I said enjoy… I was semi-inspired by this discussion to actually take the plunge and buy a Power Book, (I have been thinking about it for months) it is a little 12″, so far so good… things are a little “new” seeing as I only used windows up to this point.
But hey, what is life if you don’t challenge yourself to try new things?
I have no cd’s. I have empty computer, just win xp. What should I do ? :( It’s desktop pc and I can’t watch tv on that because I don’t have program to do this. Please help me.
I am having a problem with install the driver.
I format everything in my Sony Vaio PCG-V505DX and after that I try to install the os and the driver. But the installer for the driver cant detect my model and now I can’t install driver.
Is there any body know how to resolve this problem. Every helping is very appreciated
I have a GRT250 that didn’t come with the cds and the installation of xp home was unstable so it was difficult to figure out what I needed to backup. So instead I installed xp pro and ran file scavenger to see what i could salvage, although I found several items, included BootDisc.iso, I still can’t figure out what utility I need to get the volume and contrast buttons to work… Unfortunately because the software is Sony specific they wan’t to charge $25 for the restore cd’s; as if I didn’t pay enough for the notebook in the first place. If anyone has the restore/recovery/utility cds I need and could make me a copy I’d appreciate it.
Thank you Griffith for your reply. That is very good news. I am going to go ahead and buy the 460B and upgrade the OS. So you deleted both partitions and did a clean install. When windows started did you restore the drivers from the dvd or cdâs you made?
Thatâs where I had problems. I downloaded the drivers from sonys web page and not the cd. Thanks so much for your help. I will email you.
Grifith,
It worked, however the unit runs so hot im not sure I like it… also, it sounds like a jet ready for take off…. (fan noise) even if itâs set for quiet operation. What do you think about this… I canât believe Sony let this go.
I loaded the sony power management and it helped, but this laptop is way to hot to put on your lap, the 5200 rpm sata hard drive must be responsible for all the heat, or the ddr2 memory….because the s360 was much cooler.
Hi all, if you need to re-install the apps off the recovery cd and it won’t auto run (like what happened to me when I installed XP Pro on my new FS-115) have a look at the link below to manually extract the app folders off the cd. There is an app called KCap (downloadable from that site) that will extract them from the *.pac images.
I’ve just run it on sony.pac and it’s created loads of folders.
There is a file called APP.LST in the folders that start with JPBL (that were just extracted off my recovery cd, don’t know if they will be the same for everyone else) that can be viewed with notepad and will tell you which apps are in which folders.
Hope this helps I’m off to unpack the other .pac files now!
Here’s the site (very helpful!)
http://www.myplc.com/sony/sony_apps.htm
Boff
hi boff, where do i get the pac image? i formated my PCG-V505DX and now i cant find my recovery cd as well…
can i change the information language on a vaio?
have some one of you chaged the OS on a SONY VAIO VGN-70B?
hi there,
pls help me to get SONY-VAIO VGN-A197XP drivers, it is with Win xp, but i would like to change it to WIN 2k.
pls help me,
Many thanks
i have a vaio vgn-fs315e and it runs perfectly for the hardware configuration it has. really. silent and cold. only the ac heats up (duh!). i also had winxp home on it but repartitioned my hdd for a winxp pro. i have all the drivers running great except for the scroll bar at the touch pad (i have drivers for that too, but don’t know where to put them…still doesn’t bug me at all). anywayz, all the people that have seen it said “wooww…dang..thats soo cool”… i mean , c’mon.. its sony..the display kicks ass.
i have a vaio PCG-K415s i bought some months ago. as it came with windows os home ed, and without any cds supplied, i decided to reformat the hardisk and installed xp pro.but somehow, i lose 10 gb hardisk space in a partition not intentify in My Computer. i would like to know how i can recover this space?… thanks for answering me the soonest
i have a vaio PCG-K415s i bought some months ago. as it came with windows os home ed, and without any cds supplied, i decided to reformat the hardisk and installed xp pro.but somehow, i lose 10 gb hardisk space in a partition not intentify in My Computer. i would like to know how i can recover this space?… thanks for answering me the soonest
I have a vaio vgn fe11m notebook and it had a
win xp media center in french. I make a recovery kit and I delete all
partition and I try to reinstall a win xp profesional in english but my
instalation hang up with an error message”stop 0×00000050 “.
My laptop is buy in january 2006 and now i can’y go in france for
service.
I can’t install neither linux(xandros and knoppix) onto.
I don’t know what to do. Even the reinstalation kit won’t work.
plz help me
I have a vaio vgn fe11m notebook and it had a
win xp media center in french. I make a recovery kit and I delete all
partition and I try to reinstall a win xp profesional in english but my
instalation hang up with an error message”stop 0×00000050 “.
My laptop is buy in january 2006 and now i can’y go in france for
service.
I can’t install neither linux(xandros and knoppix) onto.
I don’t know what to do. Even the reinstalation kit won’t work.
plz help me
hi i have a vgnfe11m notebook, i reformatted the drive also erasing the sony drivers partition, i installed xp pro on it , but when the camera driver is installed the notebook wont shutdown and allthough the sound card says its installed under the audio devices it says no audio device found, now because i deleted the sony partition i cant restore it :(
would anyone be able to help me out with the restore cd/dvds as sony want too charge me for them :(
I have a sony vaio notebook PCG-6D1L,and I have done everything to try and find a recovery disk for it….I bought the laptop off of display at circut city and they never gave me the disks or software for it…PLEASE SOMEONE!!!HELP ME!!! would I have to order it or can I somehow find the software to download for free?
i have fs315e it’s good notebook ,but i need more drivers,in vaio-link is not all drivers what i need. where i can find for vaio vgn-fs315e drivers? help! write me fruktas999@one.lt plz
Hey, i have a sony vaio s150, and i formated everything. Then i installed Win2K (came with Windows XP home)… stupid sony has all of the drivers but when you run them it says this is only meant for sony vaio running xp home. I did everything manually except i can’t get the sound anywhere. Could someone with the same computer download the driver and unpack it and email the files, preferably zipped, so that i can install it… Please help, thanks in a advance
hi:::i would like to know how i cAn change my default language(french) on WINDOWS XP,vaio media center etc to ENGLISH;….I BOUGHT A SONY VAIO fe11H FROM fRANCE AND I WANT TO CHANGE THE DEFAULT LANGUAGE …I DON T KNOW FRENCH
PLSPLSPLS
Hi James macleod . I installed W XP pro SP2 on my VGN-FE11M and i have the same problem with the camera driver. I solved the problem with audio driver by installing an UAA High Definition Audio Class driver (kb835221.exe) downloaded from sony before instaling audio driver
Pls tell me how did you solved the camera driver problem. Tks
gjuoxtni otvtuflpxk pmgndra
Hi I boght a Sony VAIO PCG-GRT 77/b from Japan,Now I ewant to use English version of OS on that notebook but I am not able to get the video and audio drivers. can somebody please help me since I dont know Japanese.
my e-mail ID is romeet_s@rediffmail.com
could someone help me?
There wasn’t sound when i played video clips on the internet, so my friend tried too help me. Unfortunately, we deleted a few devices, thinking they would reinstall when i restarted, but one hasnt.. now it says “no audio device” on the volume configuration thing. If anyone can spare a few moments too help, i would be really really greatful!
Please email me at helen_pearse@hotmail.co.uk
I just changed my OS from ME to XP Pro and my notebook now thinks that it is a desktop. Specifically, it no longer has any touch pad options, so I cannot remove that annoying double-tap function.
Do anyone have an idea that could fix this?
Well this thread kind of confirms what I have experienced with TWO vaio these last 2 years :
- Less reliable laptop I ever saw . And I bought those babies since they were invented in the late 80′s.
- Agressive commercial policy from Sony : each item taht will fail (and there will be a lot of them) is sold 5 times the fair price. Wait for the walwart to fail (which it will most likely do) : over 200$ instead of 40.
I saw the two laptop literally fall apart : cd drives : both dead. External outlet : both dead (plus try to find a 6.15A compatible one …) sound card : dead (noisy) in one case. LCD (so called bright-something) will blink like mad, even go blank … worse than dead : I believe this is software related (a boot, even hibernate will fix this !!!)
Both vaio were built on P4-M processors, which require a tremendous work in power management. Sony failed miserabily in that area. As being said here, hte pc will sound like a jet taking off : you’ll have to crank up the volume when watching a movie ! The “silent” mode turns the machine into some old 286, unable to install acrobat reader in less than 20 minutes…
Vaio laptops are sooooo expensive that we are led to believe it has some higher quality standards, making the fooliest talk about “pc iBook”. How grotesque : these laptops are simply the worst piece of hardxare I ever saw ; and I make a living with them.
hi, i have an older vaio pc – its fine for the kids, and has done well for us however the hard drive failed and when i went to install a new hard drive, i could not get the recovery cds to recognize it (the hard drive is installed properly, etc..), i contacted sony and they said that i have to take it to the factory service center to have it reimaged. i think that its bogus that i have to do this. is there a workaround that will allow me to have the recovery cd’s work with a NEW hard drive?
I have a SONY VAIO PCG FRV31 laptop with WINXP home edition preloaded. I have created the rescue disks but when i had some problem the first cd of rescue disk didnt work at all, thereby forced to use some other win xp disk to boot my pc. Now i want to use my authorised licence and install sony softwares. Can anyone help me please
I recently bought a SONY VAIO VGN FE31B. The OS was in German and I formatted everything and installed an English version of XP Pro. To answer one of the questions above: no you cannot change the language of the OS. You need to install it from your own CD/DVDs.
Well my problem is that now I don’t have any sound on my new laptop with XP Pro! :( I have tried all the drivers from the sony webpage and none works.
I would be very grateful if anyone could help please!
Hi, Please can someone help me, i have reinstalled windows xp pro on my vaio notebook and i no longer have the Vaio Media software installed please can someone tell me where i can get hold of it. Thanks
Sony Vaois do not allow you to change the OS. It is an OEM verion and comes preinstalled, with both specific drivers and software.
Changing the OS leads to no support and being asked to perform a Recovery of your Vaio.
Also due to their licensing agreements with Microsoft you cannot change the OEM OS Language either, so you will be stuck with whatever language it’s in when you buy it. Either that or you install your own OS and loose the extra buttons like the FN or the media controls
Hi, i just got a new VGN-FE31b vaio from my sister. And its my first time to have my own vaio so i really don’t know where to get its drivers for free. I tried surfing the net but i kept on landing back to the japanese website of sony. Now, o got no f\drivers on my laptap. HELP!!!
Help please.. i m gng to purchase a vaio laptop..
is there any problem in changing the os of laptop,,
and will they charge everytime when i will ask them for any changes plz.. reply !!