Official Sony VAIO F Series i5/i7 owners thread *Part 5*

What program are you using to make the system image?

 

It will be lighting always when you push in the worst way (and you will have to reinstall Notebook Utilities). If you are lucky - You won't.

 

If you connect a backlit keyboard, then additional options shows in Control Center. If you swap backlit keyboard for a factory one, options disappear.

 

Thanks for the confirmation ! I think I´ll give it a go and let you know once it´s done !

 

Thanks alot James D for all your help. I got through with the nvidia driver problem, and my games are working perfetly.

However ive encountered a problem with my LAN adapter,, i cant connect to the internet. When i run network diagnostics, it says there is a problem with the adapter driver. so i went to vaio care and reinstalled the driver after removing it. still no internet. The antivirus AVG says the NIDS driver has a problem, MY firewall is enabled. HELP , again

 

Doing a google search, this seems to be a not uncommon problem with AVG. Here is one thread you can try for solutions and there are many others (google it) if that doesn't work: Windows 7 + AVG 9.0 Firewall = NDIS driver not found

 

Why don't you give Microsoft Security Essentials a try? It's getting rave reviews.

 

I tried running BF2 on high at 720p and wasnt able to, the framerate was dipping below 25. Best i can get out of the GT 425M is medium at 1600x900 with a stable 30fps. The laptop is also running in "high performance mode".

Im pretty disappointed in it, i thought it would be a far better gaming machine.

When you say the laptop is very good at scaling are you talking about the ones only with the premium 1080p screen or also the regular ones with 1600x900 res? I dont have the premium display version, just the standard glossy screen with a native 1600x900 resolution. For 1080p i just hook it up to my LED HDTV.

And while the laptop may have good scaling for 720p, when playing on my TV which is 1080p native the game looks worse on high at 720p than low at 1080p, and with low at 1080p it still struggles when theres alot of action on screen.

Anyway i just installed the original drivers again and they are listed as 259.03 under the nvidia control panel. Ususally for 3d support i think you need special nvidia 3d vision drivers to be installed but i dont see them installed under the control panel...you sure this will output 3d?

Did you find a way to update the drivers without all the issues they bring?

PS. Im talking about BF:BC2. Sorry, shoulda been more clear on that.

 

It depend on the exact config in game. You have 30fps in 1600x900 ? Change to 1280x720 and turn of all crappy shadows and you'll get a boost. Almost all games ruin fps by some bullsh.it shadows, hdr, blurs and other worthless effects.

Im running PeerBlock, SpyBot and Microsoft Security Essentials now - no problems, everything works fine. Im not using any antivir software for more than 6 years now - I just simply dont need to.

 

Actually they are not worthless. If I am playing a game with all shaders and shadows my comp is like a turtle but I still live with that because without them You lose the effect of participation.

 

Lose the effect of participation in what ? Fake depth of field or too intensified hdr inserted everywhere it could be ? Man, turn off your computer, take a walk in the park and try to find those eyecandy weak las vegas sh.it in real life. Fact is, that developers are too stupid to understand standard rules of physics in the world and they tweak games with their Direct X10,11,23 'uber pro' effect like theyre were on drugs since childhood. And the massive fps drop because of it is nothing that matters cause you need to order from amazon 2 highend gfx in SLI to run it properly. And most of the people will do that, because of eye candy.

 

If not that Dx 10,11 I would forget how it is to play anything because to play in Super Mario Bros, Contr-Strike or Doom would not be very interesting. But perhaps someone like you doesn't agree with that.
I heard people who where saying something like "Intel just push stupid people to buy their I3,5,7 but no one needs it. Core-quad is the best we all need" The secret is that they just did not have enough money to buy it.
Making games is art. It is not just a shooter "Kill them all" with blured blood (have no idea what is it) and mark Dx 11 supported.
P.S. Avatar movie is not what I can see walking in a park (neither in a real forest). But it is still what people liked

 

I used Win7 to make the image, but could not get it to work with a new HDD. I installed the trial version of Acronis True Image. That did the job!

-Chad

 

I don't think that using MSE widely is desirable. It simply reinforces a monopoly and drives other security software vendors out of business.

We have seen this movie many times before. Go with Avast, it works very well IMO.

 

You could also say that the anti-vulnerability software producers are capitalizing off MS' incompetence, and MSE is them stepping up to the plate.. for free, as it should since it's MS' incompetence we're talking about here.

Apple also started doing something similar recently (there IS some kinda anti-trojan framework in snow leopard that detects things such as the rsplug trojan being attempted and stops it)... so that anticompetetive behavior is happening there too heheh.

 

Hello guys, Merry Christmas and a happy new year!

My sony_F11 has a small hiccup. It started long ago in the small town of Bethlehem. Oh wait that's another story.

Now for real. I'm having this small problem for quite some time. My laptop loosses internet connection but stays connected with my wireless network (even when I use it five metres from the router). There are two other laptops here witch are using the same network and those never have that problem. I tried googling it but apparently I can't find the proper keywords.
I've tried the driver from the e-support site and the newest from intel, I've got the Intel Centrino 6200-card. Does anyone knows some tips or critical points where I should look at?

Thanks

 

Hello Jef.
Best wishes to you too

For your internet problem see if your wireless adapter is allowed to go to sleep and change that in the device settings of the control panel.

Stop using SmartWi or VAIO Smart Network or other network utilities, just use the Windows build in one.

Some further steps are described here: Internet Connection Problem

I hope this helps.

 

I could really use firewire on this machine. Is anyone using an expresscard?

-Chad

 

Thanks for the respond, I changed the setting in the sleeping modus, for now it can't be switch when the laptop is set to sleep. I also prevented the vaio smart network tool from starting up. I will see what this changes. It happens a few times a day so now lets play the waiting game.

Thanks

 

There should be a (mini) firewire port on the left of your VPCF1390X...
SONY VPCF1390X CTO, Micromindcomputers

 

Wow....I really am a retard. My cable doesn't match up though. I'll get this all figured out someday!

 

You got to get a 4 pin 4 pin fw cable.

Ric

 

Wow, is it just me or did the prices take a significant jump for the custom F13 laptop? Specifically, the SSD drive, which is now $850 more than the 500 gig 7200 HDD. (For Canada)

 

Wow, that's a lot. The US prices have stayed the same (minus the pre-holiday discounts). The 256GB SSD is $550 more than the base drive, which is a 320GB/5400 HDD and $470 more than a 500GB/7200RPM. I think the US and CAN dollar are pretty similar these days but I may be wrong. What was the SSD price in Canada before? I think the holiday discount here was $150 off the SSD.

Edit: Interestingly, your processor upgrade and 8GB memory upgrade are each $100 cheaper than ours and that was after your memory prices went up. Weird how the pricing can be so different with similar dollar valuation and the laptop and components coming from the same place for our two countries. Guess they just charge what they can to make as much money as possible in each place.

 

All the more reason not to get an OEM SSD. This is from someone who got one. In hindsight, still very glad I made the plunge, but now I know so much more than I did back then. You will either save money or get a better SSD by installing one yourself.

 

He will save money AND get better ssd. OEM SSD in preconfigured Laptops like Sony, Dell are Toshiba or Samsung crappy drives not worth a penny. Better go aftermarket and buy normal SSD like Intel, OCZ, Corsair, Crucial. Only 2 controllers are on the market: Intel and Sandforce. And all the others are just total crap.

 

Guys please check this thread and vote if you find time.

 

hey how does the fan on the f series compare to the m15x alienware

 

Haha!
For all of you guys unhappy with the F series fan take a look at this video

 

What about the Samsung 470 which has a Samsung S3C29MAX01 controller? SSD Performance: TRIM And Firmware Updates Tested : Maximizing SSD Performance. I start to question your objectivity when you use such strong words. You obviously know alot about the subject, however, this in not a SSD thread and I'm sure to some this is their intro on the subject. Any SSD will greatly improve performance on a system with this kind of CPU. What is most important to the average user is responsiveness, snappiness and speed of opening and closing apps, saving and copying files etc. Speeds are approx 10 times faster than a HDD. As stated before, knowing what I know now I would have purchased separately (a different SSD) and installed myself, but I love my crappy SSD.

 

Strong words reflect the facts as good as it could be. Recent Samsung product is first, which could fight with the rest of the top ssd makers and still, its not top of the line, and also it costs more and also it isnt even offered by OEM. 256GB goes for about 500$, 128GB goes for a half of that and still, Corsair F120 is better in performance and price.

Its not the SSD topic, its Vaio F topic and were talking here about its performance in different enviroments. We could talk for 5 pages about Nvidia drivers, about color profiles but not about disk drives ? Sorry mate, Im not buying it. Youre happy with your ssd ? Fine, but fact is its not good in comparison of the others. Its still crap and there are better drives out there. Reviews, benchmarks arent lying my friend and OEMs are ripping our back because theyre offering in prebuild systems ssd drives which arent as good as the competition and theyre well overpriced.

 

OK guys. Lets talk about something serious not childness. Has anyone overclocked CPU I7-740m on our VAIO? Any suggestions how to?
I found once on this forum detailed instructions about overclocking mobile processors and there were something about tdp or type of something wich helps you to overclock FSB but... but now I can't find it and I think maybe someone make a thread for F models or at least write here anything?
Come on, don't shy!

 

U cant do it with Vaio. Overclock was software and it doesnt work on F series.

 

Haven't been here after the first 3 months when this was released (and when I bought it)... remember the 'uproar' about the fan whistle when running at certain speeds (mic fix did not help for most people), loud fan noise drone/changing speeds, the fan running at 100% all the time problem after draining the battery, etc etc...

Any new drivers or solutions in the past half year that have fixed any of this? Especially interested in the high pitched fan noise every 10 seconds and it running too loud most of the time (browsing is fine, until you go to tube sites... opening and running mediaplayer and other apps makes it run quite loud as well).

I've had a look at the unification post, but that hasn't been updated since april.

 

New BIOS.

Does Anyone knows should PhysX be installed on VAIO F? I installed drivers 260,99 WHQL on my F12 so I can see PhysX settings in Nvidia control Panel but when I installed Metro 2033 (and did not choosed to install PhysX cause I thought I have it) I had an error trying to start to play.
Error -System error. can't launch the program because PhysXLoader.dll was not found.
Should I install additional PhysX on NVIDIA DRIVERS 9.10.0513 or not?

 

What does it fix and does it bring new problems with it?

EDIT: googled it and saw on the official site that it fixes thermal problems known in this batch since june (and since I've been living under a rock computerwise the past half year, I missed that!!!).
Is that all though? No reduction in fan noise, still high pitch sounds? What about that nvidia driver (not the old update on the sony drivers website) 257.15 BETA?

 

Latest is 260.99 WHQL, on NVIDIA's official website. Works perfectly on my F11.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/notebook-win7-winvista-64bit-260.99-whql-driver.html
---

I'm back guys!

 

Certain games like Metro or Mafia2 require to install stand alone PhysX package - physics in nvidia driver is not enough.

 

Alright thanks.

Btw guys, that problem some people had, the constant loud fan noise after draining the battery: is there a sample of the noise it makes in that state? People are saying it's running loud consistently, but how loud is loud? Is it as loud as, for example, during bootup of the system (when it reaches the windows logo and during the startup of all the programs after you get in... the sound subsides more or less after all the loading's done though) or when you're in the bios setup?

I'm asking, because I did let the laptop drain and go into hibernation a while ago and during restart there was some text I couldn't finish reading (something about factory settings or whatever)... which was exactly what the people with the problem encountered. However, while the fan is audible during idle state, switching to very loud on certain websites (flash/tube sites) and also when running a program like mediaplayer, I do not know if this is what the victims mean when they're saying the fan goes berserk.

Anyone recorded a sample or can describe the ''consistently loud fan noise'' in a more detailed way before I start doing that cmos trick?

 

Hello everyone im new here. Just wanted to ask are there any latest drivers apart from bios and nvidia drivers.

 

Sony eSupport - Electronics - Select Your Model

You'll find them here. If Sony has not updated the CPU driver here it is:

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Sea...=Intel®+Rapid+Storage+Technology+(Intel®+RST)

Don't forget to give us your opinions on your new F.

 

Dedicated PhysX Hardware vs. PhysX-enabled NVIDIA Hardware

HP Communities - Dedicated PhysX Hardware vs. PhysX-enabled NVIDIA ... - HP Communities

Only info I can offer.

 

Thanks guys. I installed additional PhysX drivers from nvidia and now it works.

Besides Does CPU needs drivers? I heard something about turbo boost drivers but I thought it is for graphic cards not for processors

 

Yes, a CPU driver does help your system function. See post #2191 for the latest. 10.1.0.1008

http://www.intel.com/technology/turboboost/

 

I used intel detection on their page and it did not found any processor needed drivers. It found wireless, graphic card, chipset (was told that driver was valid) but not for my I7-740m

 

This is the latest driver:

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Det...apid+Storage+Technology+(Intel®+RST)&lang=eng

 

why do I need RAID driver if I have only 1 HDD inside?

 

The greater aspect of the drivers is that they enhance support for SSD's in RAID, but they're still very useful for single drive setups. You don't need the entier Rapid Storage Technology. Fishon provided you with just the driver pack for which you will have to manuall install.

Download and unzip the files. Go to Device Manager > IDE ATA/ATAPI... > Select the Intel 5 series blah blah blah > right click and select Update Driver > Browse for the folder where you extracted the files.

 

Thanks Fishon, but im from the UK, so where would i need to go. Im still trying to get the nvidia and bios update. I didnt know there was a cpu update.

 

First of all dont make false statements cause youre telling wrong to the others:

There isnt any drivers for Processors any other than those embedded in Windows. And drivers you are refering to are Intel Rapid Storage Technology Drivers which are drivers for SATA/AHCI controllers and Raid matrix. You could go by either standard AHCI/SATA from Microsoft in Windows7 or install RST - theres a little better performance on ssd with these.


About Turbo Boost - its default enabled in Win7 even after complete hdd format and clean install of WIn7, and the only software you could get is a TurboBoost windows desktop gadget: