Official Sony Vaio CW Core 2 Duo Series Owner's Thread

Cheers!

So the INF doesn't really contain anything special (I don't know enough about INFs, you see) compared to other INFs? Because I'm trying to figure out why every other driver caused the GT 230M to bluescreen while this one doesn't.

I've tried plenty of other drivers and infs before but no combination made the CW run without BSOD after 10 seconds or so.

Btw, does the event service that you link to in the Vaio FZ thread work for CW? I'm wondering because if it's a newer version that works across different VAIOs it would be neat to have. At the moment the event service process seems to use a bit unnecessary CPU power, which I suppose is because it's an old version not properly tweaked.

 

Alright guys, I fully plan on reading through as much info in this thread (and others, as it relates to my laptop), but I basically bought this laptop (the VPCCW190X series) from Sony in 09, and my hard drive crapped out last month.

The weird thing about it is that I thought it was the fan, for the longest time. I actually wound up giving it to my wife, and the fan (or what I thought was the fan) started getting really, really loud. Not unbearably loud, but loud nonetheless. Anyway, I found out later that it had been running slower & slower, but my wife plays on facebook all the time & streams video's a good bit, so I usually run ccleaner on it every so often & she's good to go. Unfortunately, I hadn't gotten around to backing it up for her in a long, long time, which did result in a big problem when, finally, the computer apparently got insanely loud one night, started running so slow that even she couldn't handle it, then I guess went to a blue screen of death, gave her some message about overheating, & turned off.

From that point on, it's been one headache after another. I (finally), found a program called falconfour, which I successfully used to scrape through my hard drive, essentially make an image of all my partitions, then was able to restore all of the pertinent files, pictures & videos that she wanted, along with (I believe) the partition that sony sends out which will allow you to restore it back to it's original, out of the box, mode.

My question is, assuming I'm unable to get the hard drive's sector's to no longer be as damaged as they currently are, what hard drive would you guys go with in an effort to upgrade? I should point out, that I'd like to get one that would run with the laptop as it currently is constructed, but would also allow me to upgrade other things to make it much quicker as I sort of go along (basically, once I get a break from filing all of my client's tax returns & get my own filed!).

Sorry for the lengthy 1st post, I'm somewhat IT savy, but not nearly enough to know the in's & out's of everything, & wanted to get some input from you guys as to how you'd go about upgrading this particular laptop. TIA!

 

For those with the G210M graphics card I found these instruction that managed to install the 285.62 64bit drivers. The modded inf's in the previous posts wouldn't install for me.

Source:

 

My Vaio CW Series - (Model No.- VPCCW16FG) is getting hot these days.I checked this up with the Speed Fan Software.
Does it mean that my FAN 2 isn't working? And what is this fan2 exactly as in what is it cooling?

 

Hello, vanguard, welcome to NBR.

SpeedFan is not quite an accurate tool for notebooks.
Use something like HwInfo that reads the EC.

If your temperatures are high with moderate use you could consider cleaning your heatsink and fan, replacing thermal paste on your processor and graphics card along with ensuring a good air flow.

 

Hello everyone
I've been having a crazy problem with my fan as of recent and it's very loud and doesn't get rid of heat well at all, the result is a burning leg when using the laptop on the couch and the heat also spreads over to the left of the raised mousepad things :/
Has anyone else been having a problem with their fans? and how might I fix this?

 

This post is just to thank coolguy who made that modified inf file for nvidia driver installation. I was really in despair after installing NFS Run in my vpccw19 fx with nvidia 230 graphic card, as game would not load unless driver up gradation for graphic card to 285..38. BUt as you know in vaio the installer was not detecting the graphic card , the n I came across this modified inf and I could instal the driver up gradation. Now I am able to play the game as well.Bythe bye it is a nice gameto play.if you like racing games. Once again many thanks to coolguy for that excellent work.......

 

can anyone help me find a new screen for my vgn sr31m plzzzzz...i am having so much trouble finding a replacement in the uk.

 

I bought a CW laptop for my gf in 2010 (VPCCW290X model) and for some reasons, the laptop recently has very slow response to every thing (e.g., take 3 seconds for Microsoft Word to show up my typing text or very slow response when I switch back and forth between Word and Firefox). I even restore to factory settings and download all of the new drivers for hardware but nothing fixed. At this time, I did a clean Win 7 install and the issue was not solved yet. Would someone help me to find the issues? Is it because of the hard drive or something else?

 

You're posting in the wrong thread but have you tried searching on eBay? I see Vaio parts on there all the time. Sparepartswarehouse.com is worth a shot though shipping to the UK might be exorbitant.

Assuming it's not a driver problem (which it might still be given how many different components can be updated) then maybe it's the HDD dying? Is it in 'Power Saver' mode and some settings are preventing optimal performance? I'm just throwing suggestions out there

I've never had a fan problem with my CW1 in over 2 years. You could try opening it up to see if there's excess dust inside. Not too difficult from what I remember, remove all the screws from the bottom, unclip the keyboard ribbon and it comes off.

 

A couple of years ago I helped my parents choose a laptop and we went for the CW (C2D) series here:
Sony :

Well they've come back to me and said that the battery just drains in about 20 minutes now. it was never very good, but now it's intolerable. I could replace it (expensively from Sony!) but a quick look and a couple of battery diagnostic programs suggest that the battery is only 17% degraded. Now I need to get hold of it and calibrate it by charging it up and then down again, and I've checked that there are no apps draining battery (unless they're Sony progs running behind the scenes) - can anyone offer any advice? My first thought would be to do a full clean install of Windows 7 and then see how the battery performs...

 

Ended up here looking for a way to update the video driver of a VPCCW with NVIDIA GeForce GT 230M that due to Sony's lameness is still at 186.47 to 320.49 but I figure it would take me quite some time to read the 342 pages of post

Could somebody point me into the right direction please?

 

I have a Vaio CW19FX bought refurbished from the Sony store in 2010. Currently running a Retail version of Win 8.1 Pro x64, Core2Duo P8700, 8Gb etc.
Since the upgrade from Windows 8 to 8.1 (OTA), all trace of the bluetooth hardware has vanished. The bluetooth was showing "hidden" in Device manager, in a non-functional state, but after trying out the latest Broadcom/WIDCOMM software from the Sony website, "BRDBLT-P0310441-1102" ... all traces of the old greyed out/hidden bluetooth hardware vanished ... even from device manager. It goes without saying that the original Windows 7 x64 bluetooth drivers from Sony's website for CW19FX doesn't work (incompatible) with windows 8.1 ...

If any body has any idea to how to fix this ... please reply ! Thanks in advance !

XerionC

 

Question: CPU upgrade options for VPCCW16FG?

I have a VPCCW16FG purchased in fall of 2009 with a P8700 cpu. I'm realizing the CPU is near max when i'm browsing YouTube, especially HD videos. I'm wondering if a CPU upgrade would help and if it's even possible on this laptop (ie. will the motherboard handle higher speed CPU, is the CPU soldered onto the motherboard or socket?). If yes, can anyone suggest the best CPU to upgrade to (keeping in mind stability). I imagine the CPUs are relatively inexpensive these days. Just looking to get a bit more functionality out of my laptop before finally putting it to rest.

Thanks