Official Sony VAIO F Series Owners lounge *PART 2*

OS? Have you accidentally disabled ISBMgr.exe?

 

@sheebp
Hi..where do I go to reenable it? I don't remember doing so

 

Battery draining: http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/25/sonys-vaio-cw-draining-the-battery-while-asleep/

 

First see if it's running (task manager > processes)

If it is then that's not likely your problem so you can look elsewhere. If it's not running then go program files (x86) > isb utility > run.

It's a long shot but I've heard that without it running, full fan is one of the results...

 

Apparently the system that doesnt want to go to sleep mode seems to be win7 issue not realtek issue. Tried to install and re-install my sound driver with the same result, it even prevent the system to go to sleep with MS driver.



A fix should be a registry patch, anyone have any solution?

 

battery care enabled but fan is still on....
On hold waiting for Sony phone tech right now. (15mins. and still counting.)
Oh man....I did not expect this to happen.

EDIT: ISBMGR.exe is running under task manager. Also tried turning the app on from the program files. Sigh No luck.
Talked to Sony tech support and the only thing they could say was to contact them tomorro during regular business hours where they will transfer me over to the technician assigned to my case.

With regard to the Fan whine, Apparently, they are presuming that it might not be the fan only but the motherboard. they want me to send it in instead.

 

Saw this article from Engadget. Might be somewhat related to the F problem. http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/25/sonys-vaio-cw-draining-the-battery-while-asleep/

 

I am running F12 on my vaio. I had to remove the windows system/boot partition though.

You can easily relocate the boot image of windows to drive C: using the following command

>cdboot c:\windows /s c:

then mark C: as an active partition.

Has been posted in this form a while back (part 1 of it), just reposting the link so it is handy to you. Consult the following link for various issues you may encounter with Linux on your vaio.

http://code.google.com/p/vaio-f11-linux/w/list

Good luck!

 

http://i251.photobucket.com/albums/gg311/OoTLink/lol018.jpg?t=1269570043

Ignore the dust, if you wish

 

There are many possibilities: Win 7, wireless devices, etc.

The fastest diagnostic tool already included in your F is the powercfg -energy command.

Check:

Vaio_F Battery Drainage & Power Efficiency Diagnostics Report (powercfg -energy)

VAIO_F_Sleep & Hibernation Wake Up Problems Fix

VAIO_F Lid Behavior Options

Try: ASSIST > Vaio_Care > Troubleshooting.



Please report back if you fix your problem problem or not.

 

You are thinking the same way i am. I had a Vaio A117s in the past, that thing had just about the best screen i have seen on a laptop, I was hoping for more of the same. Anyway I think i am gonna try talking to the local Sony repair center, so i can actually show them the problem in person. I will take my other Vaio as a comparison.

 

The same Realtek error showed up in kihokang's & in my powercfg report.

Check:

VAIO_F_Series Hibernation Problem & Powercfg Report

Realtek advanced mixer? R2.45 Screen Capture

Realtek advanced mixer? R2.45 Just Out

 

I just called Sony about getting my F replaced (or serviced), and they said just to diagnose and verify my issues (vibrating HD, flickering power supply, dead pixels on LCD, and sharp case edge on front), I'd have to send the machine to San Diego where they'd need 9 to 14 days to take care of it.

The rep then went on to talk about how it could be physical abuse, in which case I would have to pay.. what the..

He recommended I go to the nearest SonyStyle and have the reps there verify the issues, because they wouldn't be able to do anything otherwise. The nearest SonyStyle store is about an hour and a half away, well....

... wow.

I think I'll call again tomorrow.

 

Wow... I am really freaking out about what I am getting tomorrow... Seems like many people have experienced a lot of issues with the F11. Screen, fan noise, flexing keys, unexpected shutdowns etc. Feels like there is more of a lottery reading all these forum posts (and yes, I have almost read them all).

What I have not been able to clear out if there have been problems with a certain type of F11? Is it because of the i7-820 processor, 1080 Screen, GT 330M, Blu-ray, or just a previous version of the laptop? Please fill me in, I am super anxious.

 

I presume you skipped all the positive feedback.

Since I live in Costa Rica, when I order stuff on the web, it can take anywhere between 2 to 8 weeks to receive it & 4 to 10 weeks to exchange it so I'm glad I don't worry & always expect to be lucky.

Again: Everything is relative:





From an interesting study by warranty company SquareTrade (Nov. 2009) .pdf downloadable here with short analysis articles here and here.

Everything is relative including that study. Failure rates seems quite high to me, which could be skewed by owners taking advantage of the extended service plans & maybe being less careful with their machine. High failure rates are also a very good sale argument for SquareTrade's plans. OTOH the comparison between brands is interesting.

Threads by Notebook Manufacturers.

 

You seem to be extremely knowledgeable about the F11, and I really appreciate all your posts (and will appreciate them even more if my laptop turn out to be not what I expected tomorrow). Do you have any answers about what particular hardware or versions of the F11 have been problematic?

 

It's completely random, chances do sound good that you'll have a decent machine. Besides, you've already purchased it, what can you do?

Open it, carefully inspect it, and then enjoy it. My first F11 was great, but I wasn't happy with the way the power supply behaved, so I exchanged it for one that has a few problems.

It happens, unfortunately. And also, most people that come here are people that come here to complain, not people that come here to praise. (Nobody does that XD)

That said, if you were ordering a computer I'd tell you to consider alternatives first. However, you're getting yours in the morning and it doesn't matter if you open it or not (you can return it either way), might as well try it and enjoy it

Good luck! I wish the best for you

 

According to the 1 year graph above: you have 95.8% chance of not having any failure.

---------------

Vaio_F11 Owners, please vote now!

Poll: Sony_F_Series Owners Display (LCD) Opinions

 

Son of a gun! I figured out my Sleep problem, but not before wasting a ton of my time and making a lot of work for myself.

I installed from scratch again and the first thing I tested was the sleep mode. It worked. I started removing all the bloat and doing my usual Windows tweaks. One of the tweaks that I have used in the past is going into msconfig and telling it I have more than one processor for faster boot. Well, this is what caused the sleep problem! I changed it back to 1 processor and now my Vaio sleeps perfectly.

 

Hello everyone, this is my firs post here. I Have a vaio VPCF115FM and i have one problem a two questions:
q1. Somebody noticed that the mouse pointer 'Working in background' animation is not working?, anyone have the same problem or i am the only one?
q2. I noticed that the the front part of the bdrom drive is a bit loose, is this normal?
and my problem is with that my battery drains a lot, even when shutdown... when i power on my laptop the battery have 15% less of battery(depending the time when i power on it again) and in a balanced power plan it only lasts 2:04 exactly when in the sony page says it must last up to 3 hours with the default settings. I tried the calibration steps that Joe Bleau posted and I was able to solve some errors with the energy configurations, but i still have the drain problem and still feel that it is not lasting the time it should be.
I anticipate my thanks for your answers.

 

I had a chance to take the F11 apart again (covers only) to experiment with the fan acoustics. Also did some temperature and voltage measurements and took a few more pictures.

First, The fan is rated at 5.0 VDC full speed. The minimum turn on voltage is 2.3 VDC. Just a tenth of a volt or two makes a big change in RPM speed. This is probably irrelevant as the fan speed is controlled by pulse width modulation over the 4th wire.

With the covers off the F11 and turned on it side with the keyboard away from the fan intake, I ran Real Temp 3.4 to monitor the i7 core temps and GPU temperature. Interesting results. I found that the fan will turn off when the GPU temp drops to 35C AND all four cores drop to 40C. A three degree rise in the GPU to 38C turns the fan back on. I used the Real Temp Load Tester program to attempt to raise the core temps before the GPU would slowly raise its temp to see what core temperature would cause the BIOS subroutines to turn on the fan to cool the i7. Because of the polling delays in RealTemp, I averaged out the response to 44C; a 4 degree swing. This "naked" configuration of the F11 caused the fan to cycle on and off frequently which it doesn't do with the covers and keyboard in their proper location.

With the covers off, the fan's variable pitch speed dependent drone was not noticeable. I then put the keyboard back into its proper location which covers the top intake port by 85%. Still could not hear the drone. When the bottom cover was reinstalled - the drone reappeared. So, it appears that the drone is acoustically produced by the bottom cover's interaction with the bottom intake port of the fan.

After I reassembled my F11, I checked out the Vaio control Power Options setting and noticed that the Thermal Control Strategy was set to "Performance Mode" - give priority to heat discharge. I changed this to Balanced Mode - Standard thermal control setting and in a few seconds, the constantly ever changing variable pitched fan dropped to a steady state idle.



It still doesn't turn off but it is a hell of a lot better than it used to be. Because the fan is now at a constant low pitch drone, my brain has begun to mask out the noise - that is, I just don't hear it. When it was constantly changing speed at idle, it got my mental attention. The fan now exhibits a delayed reaction to an increase in CPU usage. One side effect, the heat level of the left side of the keyboard has risen as well as the output temperature of the fan discharge. It's an acceptable tradeoff. I had not changed this setting since getting my F11 so I have to assume that the Performance mode is the Factory Default.

I also pulled apart the blade from the motor on the replaced fan. The fan is indeed held together by magnetism but it does have a pin shaft and brass bearing in the center of the motor. It was lubricated with a light grease. It looks like the pin shaft point is seated in a cup anchored to the circuit board under the magnets.

On the bottom side of the circuit board are several inaccessable surface mount devices. This is also a 4-wire fan. See pictures below.

 

It could be a placebo effect, but the screen quality seems to be even better than before I did this second restore.

 

Oh! i was forgoting that when a power on my pc and shows de desktop i hear this beep sound... like when some external device is connected, that's really weird.

 

Welcome to the forum and Vaio F owner's Lounge. There are thousands of posts in this thread (part 1 & 2). We strongly recommend that you read the following Unification #2 post ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=5992644&postcount=554) that has a ton of links to problems, solutions, recommendations and hints. Follow the links in the post and you shall find the answers your looking for.

 

Good for you.

Just curious: if you do that processor thing again & run powercfg -energy, does it find the problem?

BTW, check this out: Autoruns.



Msconfig is out for Win 7, try the free Microsoft Autoruns for Windows v9.57.

You won't believe how fast and how much info & control it gives you for the F (startup, etc). Shows you what is going on under the hood.

It's small, portable, no install, it's hard to believe it was made by Microsoft.

Make sure to Save & create as many snapshots as you want, you can go back anytime & even compare settings between different backups.

Do not disable ISBMgr.exe, it's for your F battery management.

Check this quick guide from the Autoruns Forum. A good read: Who’s That Hiding in my Windows?

 

The loose BD drive cover is normal.

 

Thank you very much for the additional fan info & photos.

Which begs the question: would some self-adhesive material (high temp resistant) applied either outside or inside the bottom cover change the resonance?

 

I would be comfortable doing that, but I don't know if that would void the repair warranty... :S

And yeah, I didn't make a system image. But for it to totally fail after a week? I dunno, a little part of me was holding out for a bit longer...

 

Excellent job. Sounds like you have at least found a workaround for the whine.

I still await a repair job for mine. Thanks for that contribution, it really is more than just that.

 

No, removing the hard drive will not void the warranty. Remember to slide the drive out of the connector (the end with the nylon tab) before lifting it out of the bay. You will have to remove the four screws holding the drive in the caddy also, to be able drop the drive into the HD dock. This is easy stuff, just don't lose any screws.

 

Thanks for your answer, i found something about the batterya, and was the same thing aread before abiut the calibration, that didn'nt solve the problem. I didn'nt found information about the problem with the pointer animation or that weird sound i that talked about.

 

No worries, it won't. When sending your F for repair, Sony_does not guarantee that it will keep your data so making a backup is expected.

If the lappy won't start, the only way is to remove the drive & use an external enclosure or cable with an other computer to backup the drive. Just call them to double check.

Put a towel on a table to prevent scratches on the lid, flip F, unplug, remove battery. Press the power button 5 seconds to drain the few drops of juice left in the machine. Only 2 screws to remove HDD door & 2 screws inside the bay securing the HDD caddy. Slide caddy to disconnect the HDD then lift out. Once outside, remove the 4 little side screws securing the HDD to the caddy. Don't touch the circuits, don't loose the screws. That's it.









Some always wait just a little bit too much before making backups. I also did that once.

 

Wow this thread has gone a long way since last week. Anyhow - I'm supposed to be getting a box so I can ship my F11 in for repairs. Tech support said that my "n" key might have short-circuited or something. It's a hardware issue and not a software one.

I also got my hands on FSX (finally) and will get a vid up as soon as my F gets fixed. On the other hand, I also played some Bad Company 2 singleplayer (as opposed to multiplayer) and will have footage of that up soon as well. I think the singleplayer mode runs slightly worse than the multiplayer for whatever reason. The framerates are still decent though (30-50 fps @ 720p).

 

Phew!!! So finally the fan stopped running full blast!!

I had the laptop powered just on battery thinking to let it drain overnight. It was in sleep mode however so it was not a total drain.

Once plugged in the morning, The unit would not power on. It would just flash green once everytime I pressed the power button. This also happened the moment before the full-on fan blasting issue began last night.

I removed the battery and unplugged the the power supply. With the lid open, I pressed and held the power button for about a minute and then powered the notebook on after plugging it back on using the power supply.
Once powered on, I reinserted the battery.

WOOOHOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! No more fan rushing at full speed blasting cold air through the vent!!!. In hindsight, I shouldn't have freaked out over the matter and did a full factory state restore. If I were more patient then things would have gone more smoothly.

Gonna have to reinstall all my apps again ......

Since it was not a software issue in the sense that I caused it , I'm inclined to believe that the sleep or hibernation mode that is automatically activated when battery is in critical state might be the cause for the fan to be on at all times. Why would that be though?

Just glad to have my F11 quiet again

 

It was set to Balanced Mode when I received mine. At all modes I have this intermittent noise coming from the fan. It's starting getting on my nerves. I wish it was just a steady noise then it wouldn't bother me.

According to my search there is no way to set the fan to a constant speed, is is correct?

 

That's correct. And it's also my biggest bugbear. Dear Sony: fix it please. It won't take you long.

 

I see... I was thinking if I should proceed with my clean install & dual boot or I had to send it back for repair. Well, since there is no fix for this I guess I have to learn how to live with it and start to revamp my hd.

 

From what I have found, the fixed pitch intermittent frequency is coming from the fan itself. At one point, I had removed the Panasonic fan from the thermal module and applied power to the red and black leads. No matter what RPM the fan was running at, the fixed pitched sound was intermittently coming from the fan. When I finish repairing my friend's old Vaio, I will do a little more experimenting later today.

 

Cheers for doing that. Perhaps if you could do a short video to youtube then at least we can have something to compare our noises to, and also a link to give sony support each time we contact them...

 

I was thinking it is caused by the changing rpm. At least it sounds like a fan is rotating at different speeds and speed is constantly changing.

Yeah, good luck with your experiments. I am looking forward the results.

 

@jacksjw, btw, were you looking for a third party software for F, if I remember correctly?

 

Good luck with that! If I had sent mine in for the third time for repairs, that is what they wanted to do to it, replace the motherboard. That is when I gave up and just returned for full refund. Please let us know if you go this route...and if replacing the motherboard would indeed fix the "whistle". It is interesting that they want you to send it in this time, instead of the onsite visit. Make sure you take pictures of the condition it is in when you send it in. As you may get it back witch scratches and bruises...

Meanwhile my desktop is on it's last few days...I sure miss my F1190 right now.

 

The calibrationprofile for the glossy-screen in US also works for the glossy screen in Europe. Thanks for the profile!

 

Melody what's up with that dude in your avatar

 

Not allowed to talk Avatars, and he's a She, my favourite lady.

Poor old Poohkie, she NEEDS a computer! Yet the F11 let her down. Most of us at least have another good working system.

 

Glad you fixed your problem & reported back.

To my knowledge, you are the third person to report a fan stuck @ 100% in this thread but the first one that DIY repaired it.

Maybe you should forward your post to Sony_support & ask for a comment by a tech or engineer. I would like to know more about that in case it ever happened to me.

Could you check in your Event Viewer to find error messages related to this event and write down the error # and details? Start > type: event > and click on Event Viewer.

Win 7 Support: What information appears in event logs (Event Viewer)?

" I shouldn't have freaked out over the matter and did a full factory state restore...
Gonna have to reinstall all my apps again ..." - If you would have created a system image while it was working fine, you would not have to do that. Guilty! See http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=6059462&posted=1#post6059462

To drain the phantom power left after removing the battery by pressing the power button for at least 5 second is a good practice.

I guess that while pressing it for 1 minute, you sent good vibrations to your machine and prayed to Allah or Buddha and that may have helped too.

***** ***** ***** *****

I posted this many times but here is an upgrated version and it may help somebody out there, so again:

Before attempting anything on your Vaio_F11 (fresh out of the box):

1- Create recovery discs (to preserve factory state, DL not too good, 2 DVD's. 1 or 2 more may be needed if you added optional software via CTO.

2- Create a system repair disc (one CD)

3- After tweaking your F to your taste & adding software and while it's still working fine (don't wait till it's too late): Create a system image, which contains a copy of Windows and copies of your added programs, customized system settings, and files with Windows Backup or an other backup utility.

3.1 - I used Acronis before but with 7, Windows Backup is already included in the F's Windows 7 OS: it's seamless, fast, free & working just fine. My most recent full system image size is 110GB including all my private data, so way to big for DVD's. An external drive should be used for this, preferably connected to the F via eSATA or Power Over eSATA ( Power Over eSATA HDD ext. enclosure vs. slower USB w/ photos & benchmarks).

So, if you want the OEM Factory State, use the recovery discs to reinstall on your current HDD if you want to sell the unit for example, to shrink the hidden recovery partition: Sony_VAIO_F C: Drive Partitions & Recovery Discs Trick or to install on a new HDD in case the OEM one dies.

If you want the new HDD to be exactly as your old HDD is @ the present with your added programs & customizations, use the system image! If Sony_support wiped out your HDD during servicing as it happens frequently, that image may be quite useful.



***** ***** ***** *****

 

I'm happy to note I called about my issues and they will be sending someone to replace the HD, LCD, and ac adaptor.

Wish me luck XD

 

@Joe Bleau

Hehehe!!! you have no idea how relieved I was when the fan no longer acted up

I will discuss this with Sony Tech for a comment and relay the info to all of you. By the way, I actually did check the event viewer before I did a factory restore but nothing showed up for that day and the day before

what's another 55 seconds extra right....thank God it worked!!!

 

"Hehehe!!! you have no idea how relieved I was when the fan no longer acted up " - Oh yes I do. I live in Costa Rica, remember? So every time I save myself a 4 to 10 weeks round-trip to support for any stuff, I pat myself on the back & recite my thank you prayer to the DIY god.

So, will you create a system image after you finish re-installing all your stuff again? <scolding>

 

Thank you fellow F owners for contributing: there are 64 votes so far in the Poll: Sony_F_Series Owners Display (LCD) Opinions. Click any blue number to see all the user names.

From the FAQ: "You may view the current results for a poll before you vote by clicking the 'View Results' link". So non-Vaio_F11 owners, don't skew the results as we can see your user name.

Some old timers from the Lounge #1 thread are coming out of the woods to participate.

I guess that happy owners are not as vocal as the unhappy ones in this thread.