Official Sony VAIO F Series i5/i7 owners thread *Part 3*

I would rather try my HDD in your F. Sounds kinky.

 

Upload a copy (image) of your drive to an FTP, which I do with my OEM discs of total ca 11GB


@ Joe: Disc 1 on is ready to download, Disc 2 is being uploaded.

 

Listened to the sound on the link you posted. I'm definitely not hearing the mic problem, it's fan resonance. It is surprising this would continue through multiple generations of the F Series.

 

Resonance is a very complicated thing. What makes a Stradivarius sound like a Stradivarius and nothing else?

It's a mic fix & I made that video with my F BTW.

 

I'm pretty inept at doing what you just described. If you provide me clean and concise instructions, I'll do it for you.

My Clean Install - with windows updates is 8.5GB as an image. Will you want the entire WindowsImageBackup folder and all of its subfolders?

 

You're dirty!

Wait, you're on multiple drives, right? Are you set up on AHCI or RAID?

 

lundstrom.emil is sharing with me his user created F12_OEM recovery discs so I can try a custom clean install on my F11_and complete the article.

Personally, I don't want to try your F11_clean install image. I'm sure it works great but lundstrom.emil's discs are big enough to download as it is.

Thanks for the offer.

*****

"Wait, you're on multiple drives, right? Are you set up on AHCI or RAID?" - The F does not support RAID. I will try lundstrom.emil's discs with my spare Seagate 7200.4

 

I thought that Joe might be interested in your image for testing purposes, but sure I can test your drive too. I do not know how a WindowsImageBackup works, I use Acronis for my purposes . I can link you to my disc images (3 discs) if you want to test.

I have follow Joes Guide about clean install with OEM disc (and downloaded updated drivers from Vaio support)...

... and with Microsofts Discs ( and downloaded updated drivers from Vaio support)...
http://forum.notebookreview.com/win...-7-download-links-just-like-vista-before.html

... And a factory reset and uninstalled software after software ( and downloaded updated drivers from Vaio support).

My Vaio might be sent to the reseller tomorrow depending if I get my shipping label from them in time.

 

Hey, whatever image you try with your "highly functioning HDD" will be a great t-shooting step. If it performs fine, then it rules out software pretty definitively, right?

 

I think that the system image contains personal data & serials, not a good thing to share while the OEM recovery discs does not.

"Hey, whatever image you try with your "highly functioning HDD" will be a great t-shooting step. If it performs fine, then it rules out software pretty definitively, right?" - Yes but it does no say if the problem would be the HDD itself or the mobo.

 

Thanks, but I'm not going to do extensive troubleshooting for a while. Now that I have my SSD and eSATAp enclosure, I'm done with overhauling my system. It took 2 days to get everything installed and hacked again before I could make a complete image. I had major issues w/ Windows Backup which blew half of my birthday away.

Off topic though, I'm happy to say that I got Windows XP Mode working via Windows 7 Home Premium. Now just need to get a network internet connect so I can test the activation of it. Now I can scan in years worth of film with my scanner whose software won't run on Win7.

 

True, but right now we can't tell if it's software or hardware. And, if it were one of the two... WHICH of the software or hardware components. Ruling out software closes a significant gap.

p.s. - when you try the clean install from his disks, try it without allowing Sony to add Value Programs to the Recovery Partition. It's much easier to cancel the installation.

 

Aha! That may well be the source of your problem. What version? Search the Acronis forums with Windows 7 64-bit to see hundreds of bugs/problems reports.

 

We two have the same problem, if the problem is gone with my discs then the software is not the issue.

If you think you are finished with troubleshooting and is happy then I understand. I can yet not be happy, I will leave the country i September and will be gone for 6 years, so my laptop need to work.

 

It's the type and age (spacing of the growth rings) used plus the materials used in the finishing (varnish, shellack or whatever) and of course craftmanship. Oh wait that was rhetorical wasn't it? I'm sorry I just couldn't resist. The way this thread twist and turns is amazing!

 

I'd definitely like to know what the problem is, but need a small break from restoring my system.

Where are you going for the next 6 years?

 

But I may use Acronis 2009, but it has never faild me. I have not yet used Acronis together with the Vaio and win7, only used fresh installs from recovery partition, DVD and my own win7 copy.

The server 2008 R2 install is finished, preliminary tests shows no change in performance. I will publish results soon.

Disc 2 is uploaded, and Disc 3 in progress.

Medical studies in a country on the other side of the sea, Gdansk in Poland.

It is almost impossible and can take years to get in for Medical studies in Sweden even though you are the best student with the best grades in your own country.

 

I just ordered an HDD caddy for if I decide to place it in the ODD bay.

Can everyone keep a look out for a 5.25" SATA ODD enclosure that utilizes "power over esata"?

I found only one online, but I don't buy things like that in bulk.
Diarts Technology Co., Ltd.'s ENPESATA-DV52 on World's Leading ICT B2B Website - Computex.biz

 

It is no different in performance with a different OS. The performance difference might be hardware, but HD tune is weird. Tomorrow I will put the HDD and reinstall win7 on my stationery as a system disk, and run tests. My final tests for know.

Nice to see that the performance is faster with Server 2008 then with Win 7. xD
http://forum.notebookreview.com/son...7-owners-thread-part-3-a-310.html#post6556675



Saw just that I mad a mistake but, it is not necessary to rerun the test.

 

So this is the proof that there is no hardware problems with your F nor your Seagate 7200.4 read rates if I understand right?

*****

Point is we know everything that goes into a Stradivarius but to make a copy that sounds exactly the same with the same resonance is an other story.

I remember a civil engineering teacher telling us about the construction of a building where the concrete of the fifth (or forth?) floor was always under norm and had to be destroyed & replaced again & again.

They were going nuts checking & changing the concrete recipe over & over and checking the production process until they discovered that the problem was a press across the street emitting very low frequency vibrations that was affecting the concrete curing for that floor only.

The solution was to mount the press weighting several tons on some kind of rubber slabs.

*****

Good luck with that! Even with plain eSATA is nearly impossible, so far, and believe, I searched. In fact found some but at $47 here for an empty enclosure is a ripoff. At that price you can get enclosures with the ODD included!

I'm using a $12 USB ODD enclosure @ the present, it works fine. When I install huge programs like Adobe Suite, I usually swap back in the ODD but that is quite rare. I ordered an other tray for an extra drive & will use the ODD bay as a giant floppy.

 

Yes, I understood the point. I love problems and the solutions process. I've learned to never say never, eliminate the obvious, and procede from there until you get to the impossible and so forth. Very good story on the concrete, I'll add that to my quiver. My point of the reply was a little bit smart A## but also to point out just how this thread has progressed. I was prepared to get flamed but alas none came. Thanks for that. Now to the thread: I love my F11 and have no real complaints other than it would be nice to have a button above the touch pad to enable and disable it. With the SSD, there's no heat above the HD err I mean SSD. I have the lower res screen which is fine for these old eyes. Very little if at all light bleed, no horrible fan noise. This is one solid notebook with alot of power. I've bumped it up to 8 gig of memory. We have come along way from the old Comodore Vic 20 (4k memory and tape drive) days. Happy computing you guys and enjoy your notebooks. Life is good

 

EBay
2.5" eSATA/USB Combo SATA HDD/SSD External Silicon Case - eBay (item 130356420423 end time Aug-31-10 12:36:14 PDT)

 

Thanks for the effort but eSATA for a hard drive is easy. What we are looking for is an external enclosure for the optical disc drive (ODD or DVD/CD burner) that we removed from the F, that has a fast eSATA interface like the one I linked to above. See article about second HDD in ODD bay here.



An other eSATA External CD/DVD/BluRay Enclosure @ $85!

 

thanks willscary appreciate it!

 

Vantec ? Vantec NexStar DX - NST-530SU - 5.25" SATA to USB 2.0 and eSATA Optical Drive External Enclosure

5.25in Silver eSATA USB 2.0 to SATA Optical Drive Enclosure - StarTech.com

A 6X BluRay disk player will not saturate USB 2.0, but 8X might. This claims no real difference in speed. For DVD and CD, you will not reach the saturation point of USB 2.0, so eSATA should not be neccessary for these mediums. The fastest DVD speeds I have seen are 20X, which are about 27MB/second. CD doesn't even come close at 72X, running perhaps 12MB/second.

This relates the same as the ongoing HDD debate. The SATA I interface problem is not a limiting factor with the HDD speed. Again, the problem is either (and most likely) a software problem of some sort, possibly driver or registry error, or it could possibly be that the drive just plain performs 10% slow. It could be something as simple as fragmentation or a paging file that is full and fragmented. It could be many things, but hardware is probably the least likely. If the hardware was bad, it would most likely not work at all, or would show many read errors.

It would be nice if the above drives were "Poser over eSATA".

 

Thanks but both a pricey. I linked to the Startech one above.

I did not benchmark it but when installing the OS from the recovery discs, my ODD USB enclosure seemed much slower than when doing it with the ODD in it's bay. Maybe I was just biased? Yet two other benchmarks to do!



Edit: I think that your 2 links are enclosures for a desktop ODD, not a laptop ODD like my USB one pictured above which has about the same volume as 3 CD jewel cases stacked and comes with a 18" USB cable.

 

^ What Bill said . To answer Anseio's original question: Unfortunately, I don't know of any power eSATA enclosures for ODD's . BUT if it's bandwidth you're worried about, you should listen to what Bill said in the above post . Here are some numbers:

The theoretical max transfer rate for USB 2.0 is 480 Mbit/s, while the theoretical max transfer rate of an 8x BD-Drive is ~287.72Mbit/s. That said, these numbers are theoretical maximums and should be taken with a grain of salt, but theoretically speaking, the transfer rates of the BD-drive (by far the most bandwidth hungry) shouldn't be bottlenecked by the interface.

BUT while the transfer speeds may not be bottlenecked by USB 2.0, in general, optical drives and hard drives sometimes don't like to operate over a USB connection and have fewer performance and usability issues when they use their native sata interface.

EDIT: @Joe - I would be really intrigued to see the benchmarks. Theoretically, the performance should be pretty close, but I'm not so sure...

Hope this helps! It's a shame that power over esata never really caught on...

 

One may think that the ODD connected directly via the SATA interface in it's bay would be faster than with the data translated twice to USB: once in the F's USB port & one more time in the USB/SATA interface board of the enclosure...

 

I was wondering if you can download the windows 7 from the MS website and use the cdkey at the bottom of the laptop to do a clean install is that possible?

 

Exactly - that's where most of the problems come from. Not necessarily speed-related (though I'm sure that the transfer rates are negatively impacted), but there's a much greater chance for the data to be corrupted as well.

 

Yes but you need to also download all the necessary patches & drivers from esupport too. See link to Ilfuca's guide here in the OEM discs clean install guide or go directly here.

 

Hey guys, new owner here, beautiful laptop
Just a question, first things I should do with the laptop?
Not interested in reformat, just removed some trial programs and made recovery disks so far

 

I haven't made my purchase yet for a CTO model VAIO F, but I just configured the same specs as a few weeks ago and it seems the price is nearly $100 less than it was. Should I buy now or should I expect a bit of a further price reduction first? I'm curious since the VAIOs on the USA education store are all on sale currently. Since college students are coming back to school, perhaps Sony will lower prices a bit more still?

 

Joe are you sure about this. Have you actually seen it done? I realize that Win7 DVD's include all versions thereby allows and upgrade with new key. I have seen in the past (not with win 7) the OEM keys are unique to the manufacturer (Sony, Toshiba, etc)?

 

Thanks, martiin, for looking this up. I'm actually hoping for an enclsore for an optical drive rather than a hard disk drive.

Thanks for the links. I'm not so concerned with bandwidth as I am portability and port consumption. I'd like to NOT lug around an a/c adaptor for my ODD, or have it consume 2 ports, when there are only 3 to choose form unless I get an expander to be used in the express card slot.

In regard to performance, you should read my reprimand to you and Joe Bleau, written here. You misunderstand lundstrom.emil's complaint of SATA I vs SATA II on our machines. It itself is not the problem, it is an indicator, an inconsistency if you will, that bears recording.

Joe's machine registers the HDD as SATA II AND his performance curve (as captured by HD Tune) starts out at 100MB/s and smoothly decends downward, and averages somewhere over 80MB/s. Our curves do not do that. They hit a cieling and only begin to curve once the performance is below the cieling. My SSD performs, also, differently in Safe Mode vs. Normal Mode.

Please take the time to understand that what lundstrom.emil and I are complaining about, and troubleshooting, is NOT what you're talking about. We do not care about 150MB/s with our HDD. We DO care about our drives performing the same way as Joe's does whilst in normal mode

At the risk of being completey redundant. If it were the registry or third party software, then please explain how performance is negatively impacted immediately following a full factory installation? How is our version of a clean install different than Sony's version of a Fresh Install? Clean Installing does not void the warranty, nor does it add additional programs.

Clean installing, actually, can downgrade the chipset driver to one that performs BETTER than the Intel Matrix Storage Manager that comes preinstalled. If clean installing were a contributor to the difference, then JB should be having this problem as well, and only those who don't restore/reinstall would have ideal performance.

Please drop the issue about thinking that lundstrom.emil wants SATA II speeds, as they were never in debate. Please also do not criticize us for wanting our HDD's to peform on the level that JB's does.

 

Joe is very sure about it.

If you install Windows 7 from a retail disc (not OEM from Sony), you MUST download all of the patches and drivers from the Sony eSupport site. It's also best to follow Sony's Clean Install Instructions for Windows® 7, as there is an order to which you need to install the drivers.

It's really MUCH simpler to use your recovery discs and do a clean install from there. You can find detailed information in links beneath Joe's signature and mine for supplemental information. To download and install all to drivers in the right order is time consuming.

Yes, the Windows 7 discs come with all versions and your key will unlock the features of the version your purchased. Are you going to buy a copy? Or are you going to use your existing OEM activation? To use your OEM activation on your retail copy of Windows, you'll need to use a program to capture your true activation code. It's here somewhere if you search the threads.

Again, I can tell you that the recover disc clean install is super duper clean and fast. I've done it a few times over while fixing some problems I caused after goofing around with too many things and not having a prober backup.

 

RTM!

Step 4b in ilfuca's guide & follow link. Backup activation or call Microsoft & use OEM OS key.

As anseio said: easier with OEM recovery discs IMO.

 

If you aren't interested in doing the clean install (see about half a dozen links on this page alone), then you are doing pretty well already. I myself didn't do the clean install (mixed feelings about this now), but the laptop still runs fantastically.

In general, just remove whatever programs you don't want. Good starting points would be the Pando Media Boost (PMB) software, the other Sony media software, and trials that you don't want (Norton, Office, etc).

Beyond uninstalling crapware, there isn't much else for you to do! These machines work very well out of the box. Are you considering something specific? Joe has many guides on various improvements you may want to make hardware-wise such as upgrading the HDD.

EDIT: If you want to give back to the community, many of us would like to see more F12 benchmarks, specifically with respect to the hard drive.

 

Tanis.7x - it's not too late to do a clean install. You'll just need to move your non OS data to another drive, and then have to reinstall all of your third party programs. A little time consuming.

Here's my experience with it. I have 4GB RAM. Out of box, my machine would idle at 46% RAM used. That's BEFORE I start using programs and stuff. I hated that I had so much RAM getting used for stuff I wasn't doing. I then removed a bunch of programs and got my idling down to 36%.

In the end, I opted for a clean install using OEM discs. I did a complete restore and declined the option to let Sony add bloatware into the recovery partition. When it came time to install the bloatware, I was required to insert my recovery disc. I just cancelled out.

Now? After all of the programs I've installed, I idle at between 21 and 28%.

Here's the thing. If you uninstall Google Chrome, it leaves behind "spyware" that was used to report your usage to Google. You can see it if you run autoruns.exe, found here. There are quite a few things running in the background from a full install that have nothing to do with your daily usage. I didn't like that.

Oh, lastly, if you install the Smart Wii wireless manager program, you get ThirdPartyAppMgr.exe in your taskmanager. Notice how much RAM it uses? You can manage your wireless connections perfectly well w/o that program hogging up space.

 

Agreed!

 

for sure, but what benchmark program should i use?

 

I could do benchmarks for an F12 as well. Also, how do you uninstall some of the PMB software and other bloatware that is pointed out in the Win 7 Fresh Install Guide? I can't seem to find any uninstall info/programs for them. Such as PMB, and some Vaio preloaded software.

 

Well, you could use HD Tune for the hard disk drive. Everest Ultimate for stress testing. Furmark for GPU. And, Passmark for overall benchmarking.

I'm sure people would like to know your Furmark Scores using your OEM NVIDIA driver vs the new version 258.96.

You can also run Everest to stress the CPU while running Furmark stress test to see what temperatures you peak at after 20 minutes or so.

Those are a few ideas. I'm sure there are many other things people'd want you to do as well.

 

PMB is Picture Motion Browser.

When going to Add or Remove Programs, for your Control Panel, you need to scroll all the way down to where the VAIO items are listed. Not only will you need to remove PMB, but all of its associated "metadata" programs as well. About 5 in all.

 

Paste this is Windows Explorer: Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Programs and Features

 

Joe,

where is Corel WinDVD after your clean install ?

 

You'll need to install it via VAIO Care.

I know, I know. My name is not Joe.

 

Thanks, is that straight forward to do ? No serial key needed ?

And after doing this clean install, do you create a new recovery disc ? Or just a system backup/image ?

 

Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid

An interesting 'real world' benchmark of this hybrid drive. Sounds like a good option for those who want an SSD-like experience but need the extra storage or can't justify the price.

Seagate Momentus XT hybrid hard drive review -- Engadget

"We'd also recommend this only for those who are looking for performance gains in the simplest of tasks; opening your email client, sifting through images in Lightroom, switching between the ten apps you have open, etc. Comically enough, this performance-oriented drive best reveals its talents in the most mundane of tasks, but like it or not, that's what the bulk of us are buried in from 9 8 to 5. If you've outgrown your existing laptop HDD, and you need a capacious replacement, the Momentus XT is an option that's worth the price premium in our estimation. It may not make your Core 2 Duo feel like a Core i7, but it'll definitely get your through the day with a few less pinwheels / hourglasses."

 

You create your recovery discs BEFORE doing the clean install and don't ever lose them.

After it's been done, you've updated windows, and updated the correct drivers, then make a system image.

VAIO care does not require a serial. You can download it directly from Sony eSupport. From it, you'll be able to install:

Settings Utility Package
VAIO Event Service
VAIO Control Center
VAIO Power Management
VAIO Help and Support
VAIO Update
Corel WinDVD