Official Sony Vaio Fit multi-flip PC Owners' Thread

Am I the only one suffering with crummy WiFi? Sony support are asking me to do a factory reset. It's taken nearly a week to get the machine into anything like a usable state, so I'm understandably reluctant to reset it to their ty factory default.

 

hi thx for the replies ...i know sony advertise the 15a as only getting 5 hours battery life so i cant see or undestand how you are getting 6/7 hours ...is it maybe you have got the ssd drives and maybe 16gb ram gives more battery cos it doenst have to use a page file ....its really getting to me now ,,cant understand what i could be doing wrong ..im using windows 8.0 ..do you think 8.1 could improve the battery life

 

8.1 improves battery, as do newer drivers.

 

Hi, I am new in this forum. Recently I have bought a Vaio Multi-Flip 14A. I have had the typical problems with touchscreen. I hope it works now perfectly, because I have restore Windows 8.0.

In relation with the webcam ((" HD web camera powered by "Exmor R for PC"), I have seen that its resolution is quite low (very very low), using Skype and the App "Camera". Do you think can it be repaired, to have more resolution (more than 1 MB)? How? Or it is normal its low resolution?

Thanks

 

Welcome to the forum, javiiq

The *typical problems* with the touchscreen are usually fixed with a calibration tool found on the Sony site, with all the other drivers and updates for the Flips. Reverting to Windows 8 to fix that was not the ideal solution... because you should be running 8.1, not 8.
Go to the Sony support site for your country, enter your model number where they ask and go to the downloads/drivers section ; all the updates are there, including the touchscreen calibration tool. Once you've found this tool, I suggest you update to W8.1 again and then run the calibration tool if you have touchscreen issues.

About the camera resolution : sorry, I have no idea. Perhaps someone else does.

 

to the chap that says he can get 6 to 7 hours has he got the i5 cpu or the i7 ...i cant get mine anywere near that sort of battery life .....what settings have you got the laptop on.....really appreciate the help

 

I rarely have this happen. 3 times in 1 month. When it does, unplug the machine from the charger, then plug it back in. That fixes it, well its a good work-around at least. I have no idea if Sony will be able to fix this with a patch.

ISSUE: Touch screen stops responding.
FIX: Unplug/Replug the charger from the laptop. Or run the Sony screen calibration tool.

 

@~Mark, thanks for your comment. I will follow your advice to update to W8.1. But I am afraid that W8.1 has problems in other manufacturers (Toshiba, Lenovo, etc), with hybrid laptops. I think it is necessary a new version.

@PopsGG, what version of Windows do you have?

About the camera resolutions ( "HD????? web camera powered by "Exmor R for PC", according to the Technical Specifications), do you have a low resolution also in your Laptop? I am attaching an image to show you a sample. What do you think? Is it normal in Sony Vaio Multi-Flip this low resolution?

 

hey, does anyone else have this error on startup? (event log)

The UMDF reflector was unable to complete startup because the WUDFPf service was not found. This service may be started later during boot, at which point Windows will attempt to start the device again.

every time followed by errors regarding WudfRd failing to load, e.g.
The driver \Driver\WudfRd failed to load for the device HID\VID_0483&PID_91D1&Col01\6&1ee98eef&0&0000.

 

Hi Kingfield

Maybe this will help : The UMDF reflector was unable to complete startup because the WUDFPf - Microsoft Community

Post from "adamgoon" about 2/3 of the way down the thread :

Good luck

 

Hey Witch,

I resolved the wifi issue on my 14A by installing the updates and moving to 8.1. My adapter is Broadcom.

 

Hi andya,
I have an i7, again 6/7hrs is possible for me only in economy mode: Wifi+Bluetooth deactivated.

Also I uninstall most of the bloatwares... Replaced antivirus with microsoft security which is light...

Ssd is for sure saving some battery drain.

I use that mode when I have to travel and want to play films... Or do some really light work : word ,etc....


Envoyé de mon Nexus 4 en utilisant Tapatalk

 

Thanks for the tip. I'm already on the latest firmware, drivers and Windows 8.1

 

hey thanks, actually stumbled across that myself and tried it earlier, it didnt work hence my post here haha.

but as far as i can see this is different because i have nothing plugged in and my startup seems to be fine. i don't see any actual impact of the error on my laptop so i guess i'll live with it for now lol

 

Does anyone know how to toggle the screen off without causing the background processes to go to sleep. If I start a video render and want to save battery by turning off the screen using the sleep button it oviously pauses the render as the cpu goes to sleep. Even if I put the power management to shut off the screen on battery or power at 1 minute, the screen never shuts off.

If I set the brightness to 50% on battery and 95% on power, when I disconnect I can see the brightness dimming, so the power management seems to be working but again the screen never shuts off as set with battery or power...

 

hi thirteen13..im suprised...as you say maybe not having an ssd is causing more battery drain ....you say economy mode is this in a piece of software sony supplies .....i was thinkng it is the hires screen that is causing the drain ..but if your getting 6 7 hours that is amazing ....what do you set you cpu state to

 

Same crappy resolution here... I reckon its because I have the hidpi screen ... So even a 720p camera don't look nice... The quality is actually not too bad on skype when its not on full screen....



Envoyé de mon Nexus 4 en utilisant Tapatalk

 

Hi andya, I was surprised too....
Ok so on eco mode I have :
Intel cppc:
- agressivess at max
- optimisation enabled

USB parameters
- suspended is active

Intel graphics
- max battery life

PCI
- max eco

Cpu
- min: 5%
- max: 100%

Brightness at 30%



Envoyé de mon Nexus 4 en utilisant Tapatalk

 

Again I don't really use this mode apart when I am travelling ...
I cut wifi and Bluetooth...

This is the window setup not Sony...

Envoyé de mon Nexus 4 en utilisant Tapatalk

 

thx ill give that a go but im sure i have similar settings..i wander if the hard disk is eating the battery ..i notice most of the time in task manager its around 25%..maybe an ssd ...

 

one simple solution is to change the lid closing function from the default (sleep) to "do nothing". Its in the power options (search in control panel and it should come up). When u close the screen the display turns off, but there is no change to the processes that go on.

 

What I do with mine is I set the screen saver to blank. that way, my computer is on but screen is off with the time I set it to kick in.

I am having audio problem with my 14A. All of a sudden, the audio is gone. I thought it was driver issue, so I reinstall the driver and at first it works but then the audio is out again. Now no matter what I do, it keeps saying "No Audio output is installed" Please help!!! Thank you.

 

No you are not, if you google you will find tons of WIFI issues and not only with SONY laptops.

With my 15A/W8 and Intel WIFI I ran into an issue that WIFI would not connect and just tell me LIMITED (connection). I reinstalled the WIFI driver and it looked like it solved the issue but it did not at the end. It's difficult to troubleshoot and there is no pattern. It looks like the router and WIFI card do not align well many times. It's not the distance because I tether so the phone is next to my laptop.
My solution will be to use a micro USB WIFI as suggested by others, I hope that will work better.

 

Well this is a review done today on a Flip 15 that Sony sent the reviewer. Just scroll to the bottom the reviewer mentions the annoying fan noise LOL
It seems Sony will never fix this.

Ultrabook Review: Can Sony Vaio Fit 15A Take on MacBook Air? | InvestorPlace

 

I hate to say this, but some reviewers from non-tech focused sites don't even bother installing driver and firmware updates (which in the case of the Flip 15 do help with fan noise). And the thought of comparing a 15" PC convertible with the 11/13" MacBopk Air seems absurd. Compare it with the 15" Retina? Sure that would make sense, but not the Air.

 

Hey everyone, just recently got a 13/i7/256ssd. Everything was working perfectly, until i decided to update to Windows 8.1.

I installed every update from Vaio Update, and Windows update before moving onto windows 8.1.
Right after upgrading to 8.1, my keyboard failed to function correctly on desktop, it would work in bios but not in windows. And the Start button on the screen did not launch instantly anymore, instead it'd take me holding the button down for 2-3 seconds.
Also some updates from Sony Vaio Update failed for some strange reason.

I had to do a refresh in order to fix all my issues. It's fine again now, but what a pain in the .

Anyone have an idea of why my update to 8.1 went so horribly?

-Thanks

-Wes

 

Some bios versions do help with the fan noise on SOME flips. Many people with 15" models who have done all the driver and bios updates still have an issue. The bios updates are not a panacea for the fan issues. Personally I tried various bios versions on my flip 14 and finally when 250dd did not work and because of numerous other quality issues I returned it for a refund. Am I alone in my experience? Nope this thread and the wider web is filled with complaints about the model. I wont even bother to get into the fact that the onus is on Sony to send a reviewer a machine which is fully updated. Not to mention we do not know whether or not the machine being used was fully updated.

 

I think the best thing is for you to download updates directly from Sony support. Sometimea vaio updates and vaio care do not have the latest versions.

 

Hi everybody,


My 13A randomly shuts down. Is there a possibility to see the event-log of the laptop just before shutting down? I want to know what is causing this sporadic behaviour.

 

still only getting 4 hours and that is with wifi tyrned off and blue tooth ,,cant understand it....maybe the ssd is needed but i cant imagine the hybrid drive causing such battery drain

does anyone disable either the geforce card or the intel ...ive disabled the geforce ...any ideas guys

 

i would just like to say. To all those that think SSD will give you more battery life, think again. As the NAND chips get packed with more and more data and the cells decrease in size, errors occur more often (due to quantum effects, and difficulty to make cells perfectly...which also falls under quantum effects :U). This means the controller on the SSD has to work harder to correct the errors. This means the processor consumes a lot of power. Also, due to other quantum effects, SSDs generally use the same amount of power as a Hard Disk Drive (HDD). The speed of SSD does improve battery life by taking less time to do things, but not by much. At max you can expect 30 minutes more battery life. Hybrid drives are even worst than both HDD and SSD though >.>, since its two separate drives with 2 controllers.

 

Didnt follow this thread for about a month. Heared that Sony will release around next week an improved multiflip series, but I'm not sure if its true. Anybody knows somthing about it?
How is the fan for the i7 and 13" model? Still noisy? Mine is still noisy, only want to know if they already did something about it.

 

Sony announced that the Flip 13/14/15 will be updated to ship with Windows 8.1 and Adobe Photoshop Elements 12 will be bundled. They made no mention of hardware or feature changes for these models. SONY EXPANDS VAIO® | FLIP PC LINE AND ADDS ADOBE® PHOTOSHOP® ELEMENTS 12 TO SPRING MODELS | Sony

 

Curious to know why Sony only offers the front 2MP camera and 8MP rear camera with an SSD drive? Why can't customers get the same setup with a traditional spinning HD?

Also I wonder if Sony has stopped the issue of having 1MP cameras being shipped when people order 2MP cameras?

 

It really depends on your hardware, how you've set up your software, and your usage pattern. I consider myself a very very light user. When on battery, I'm on VPN (over WiFi) to a remote box that does all the heavy lifting.

I don't know if what I did with my 15A directly affects the battery life. Here's the pertinent items:

- Clean install.
- Turn off live tiles on all metro apps.
- Remove/Opt out of any accelerator like settings that pre-load apps when you boot up. I have maxed out the RAM, SSD and CPU. Let them do their job when I need the app, not before.
- Battery charging is set up to 100% charge.
- When on battery, I only turn on Outlook 2010 to do detailed emails - long, with screenshots; or when I have a lot in my inbox. I rely on my phone for most email activity.

That said, I also have settings/stuff that, at least in theory, are a drain on the battery.
- KIS 2014; all realtime scans set to high; no scheduled scans when on battery.
- Windows Indexer "Disable indexer backoff" set to enabled. Means Windows Indexer is always awake, looking for and will index any new items - emails, files, etc. Default setting is Windows Indexer will only wake up if the PC has been idle for a while.

The worst I got off the battery over the past 2 weeks was 5 hours before critical. The best was 5.5 hours before critical. My power option is set to hibernate when the battery level is at 5% - critical.

I qualified the past 2 weeks because before that, I was installing, tweaking stuff even while on battery. It was only in the past 2 weeks or so that my usage tapered down to routine levels.

 

thx for the advice...do you disable either intel or geforce card...maybe upgrading to ssd will give me extra 30mins would be worth it...im tempted to send it back but the screen is sooooo gorgeous its not easy ...maybe if i uprgade the 8gb to 16gb i will be able to turn page file off ..im lucky if i get 4 hours ...driving me mad

 

Thanks for the hard drive info guys. Jury is out as I know this hybrid HD s u x and I have to change it ASAP. Going to start the research and prepare for mid month Feb purchase and see if I can get a TB SSD in the 15A. I need to do that, upgrade the memory and do a re-paste job while I'm under the hood. So I'll wait to put the memory in until the HDD gets here as I don't want to keep opening up the machine. And a note: Does anyone have any good double sticky tape or mild adhesive to re-attach the rubber on the bottom. I found that after a couple times the front long rubber strip isn't staying on that well. My thought is getting a heat gun to the adhesive strip when reapplying the rubber, but if anyone has any good part numbers or ideas, please post. In fact if it weren't for the rubber glue on parts, this thing would be opened up much more.

Laptop #2 didn't make it past a couple weeks. From day one the HDD was doing the click of death. Ultimately it would only boot to BIOS boot options to restore and could not find anything on disk. I had to open it back up to put back in factory memory and get my 16GB memory out before going to store for swap. Hard Drive smelled of smoke! Best Buy took it back for exchange and now I'm on Number #3 and thank goodness Best Buy was so cool about the exchanges - Elite status helps and even though I felt the Best Buy lady giving me suspicious looks, everything was cool swapping to a new one. I couldn't imagine if I would have gone through this with a Sony Store purchase and have been this OK with it. Best buy is a 5 minute drive from the house so no big deal. But If I would have had to call in to the techs at Sony and box it up, etc.. I would have taken the last one to the gun range and clipped it as a target and then posted results on the Sony web site. As horrible as that is to say, I'm dedicated to this laptop and love it for all its quirks.

 

I normally use it as a primary monito in stand mode so it would be a pain to shut it everytime I wanted to turn off the screen.

 

But the screen saver just blanks the screen but the scren is actually still on, right. It doesnt actually shut off the screen does it? Truning power management to shut the screen off should be fine but problem for me is power management never shuts it off. I have both modes set to 1 min screen shutoff but it just stays on 24/7.

Looked it up and found a few posts saying it was a Win 8.1 issue and to uninstall and reinstall drivers but that did nothing. Also is anyone running the GEforce experience and the latest drivers or does everyone just run the latest drivers provided by sony?

 

I'm still on default settings for graphics/optimus - intel is the default unless I explicitly set a program to use nvidia.

Regarding RAM and pagefiles... I run some old games. So old that they panic/CToD when they don't see a pagefile. They don't have a concept of a universe where they have all the RAM they need. So I have to define a pagefile (same size as my available RAM) to use those games. But really, I shouldn't have to. So not using a pagefile depends on whether the software you use can survive without one.

8GB ram is a decent size. So experiment 1st, with a pagefile size maximum set up to be the same as your total available memory, to see how much Hard Faults you get.

Hard faults are when Windows decides to use the pagefile. If you have lots of Hard faults, then your RAM is not enough. But if they're around 0-2 per second - way more of zero than 1-2... IMO, you don't need more RAM.

Note when setting the pagefile size for the experiment above, that total available memory is less than installed. Check the Memory tab in the Resource Monitor - where you also check for Hard Faults. For example, I'm on my M4700 atm. My installed memory is 32768 but total available is 32651. I've set my max pagefile size to 32651.

I don't know about SSD and battery power. My main driver to use SSDs is the speed and heat. My guess is that since they run cooler than HDDs, they tax the fans less. I used to have an Envy 15 which initially had HDD. Then I swapped out the HDD for a SSD. It ran cooler and my lap was happy as a result.

If they do end up extending battery life, it's a bonus that I'm not really concerned with. BTW, my power plan is set to not turn off the SSD whether on battery or plugged-in. So consider Driftingnfsc3's comments above on power usage.

 

@UncleRico :

Great deal on the Evo 840 1TB at TigerDirect right now at $549 (48 hour sale) : Samsung 840 EVO 1TB SSD - 2.5 Form Factor, SATA III 6 Gb/s, Up To 540 MB/s Read Speed, Up To 520 MB/s Write Speed, 7mm Thickness, Samsung 3-core MEX Controller - MZ-7TE1T0BW at TigerDirect.com
Wow, that's Black Friday numbers.

About the glue/tape : I'm no expert on the subject. I did read about one guy mentionning a glue gun for this job on the Flip. Double-sided tape does sound appealing to me though, and from searching this is the best I've got :
Scotch | Scotch Extreme Mounting Tape | Home Depot Canada
(20 lbs sounds like decent strenght)

 

Me again. Forgot to check at NewEgg earlier. Even better deals there :

1TB Evo 840 for $540 : Newegg.com - SAMSUNG 840 EVO MZ-7TE120BW 2.5" 120GB SATA III TLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

...and a 960GB Crucial M500 for *ahum* $480 : Newegg.com - Crucial M500 240GB SATA 2.5" 7mm (with 9.5mm adapter) Internal Solid State Drive CT240M500SSD1

These are on sale for 3 days but I can't seem to find when it started or when it ends..

 

Thanks Mark,

Good for us the SSD's have really come down in pricing. I've been reading through the comparison and am leaning toward the Samsung. Clash of the terabyte titans: Crucial M500 960GB vs. Samsung 840 EVO 1TB - The Tech Report - Page 1 Really comparable drives. Nice article that even shows watt usage. Either drive will be welcome and cooler drive in comparison the hybrid-thing running now. I'm looking at $535 for the EVO on amazon with free prime shipping, too.

Interesting that some people are taking apart their older 9mm SSD's to get them to fit. OMG Stop this UltraBook SSD Ghettoness !!! - [H]ard|Forum And really with weight, every oz counts.

Good ideas on sticky stuff. I've seen that tape at Home Depot - I'm going to have to revisit that isle as last time I thought it was pretty thick. I don't want to use a glue gun, but like the idea of some sort of sticky tape - probably best. "Just want to close and wrap up the case properly."

 

Last week I received my VAIO FLIP 15A with 1 TB Hybrid HDD, intel I5, 8GB of ram, and 1080p display.

So far no problems with the fan or the touchscreen.

I upgraded drivers in Windows 8, later I upgraded the bios to 250 from the 220, and finally I upgraded to Windows 8.1.

Everything working perfect with the new bios in windows 8.1.

Really nice to use it in table mode with such a big and nice screen.

Ruben

 

hi bc4m5 thx for the info ..ill try the page file situation ..ive just updated to win 8.1 so hopefully it may help..will disable some of the services i wont be using ..im sure 8gb would be enough ..just if i do some 3d work 16gb comes in handy ...

 

Can someone tell me what kind of SD reader this thing has? is it SDXC compatible?

 

Do you anyone know where could I find a skin cover for the keyboard?

I have seen some in ebay but they do not seem compatible.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Keyboard-Co...aultDomain_0&var=&hash=item4ace9dac0e


Enviado desde mi iPad con Tapatalk HD

 

Anyone with a Flip 15A 1080p screen version can post the Panel ID ?

Go to Control Panel - Device Manager - Monitors - Generic PnP Monitor - Properties - Details - Hardware ID

 

Monitor LGD03FE.


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Monitor LGD03FE


Enviado desde mi iPad con Tapatalk HD