Official VAIO SR Series Owners Thread

Here is the gap on my drive. Half as bad as yours.

 

When I was install it on a retail Vista, the annoying battery pop up every went away after I install the ATI video drivers.

I got this below from here by someone:

Uninstall the sony vaio battery checker utility or disable isbmgr.exe from running at startup with msconfig (click start->run and type msconfig).

OR just be patient and wait for Sony to put all the drivers out there for W7.

The other thing my sound is much much louder now. I put the balance on L & R to 100 and it is LOUD.

 

is the battery thing the thing that says battery may not be in properly and you need to shut down or hibernate and take the battery out?

 

Garmin, something like that.

It is that annoying pop up thing that keep popping every 5 sec.

Did you see it? What did you do?

 

Does anyone know if we can activate the UPEK Protector Suite 2009 for Windows 7? Technically the full version was already included with vista

 

I realized that i installed the stuff in the wrong sequence of the drivers, but before you do that, try installing all the sony utilities update from sony.com, and make sure you got the firmware parser installed too. I think that was where i went wrong.

Give me an update when you try this.

 

Go to sony support and can you download the all the upek stuff, fully activated. It's under the security tab.

Good luck

 

Garmin,

1. Chipset Driver
2. Shared Library
3. Firmware Extension Parsor

Then this annoyed battery pop up keep popping until I install the ATI driver and after that it stop.

So what is the science?

I use the Upek stuff only for the log in. I am too afraid to too depend on it for everything and I may forget all my passwords.

I remember many years when there was no GPS and now if your GPS died, your vacation is ruined. How true is this?

 

Oh how interesting. at least that is over with, i rememeber how annoying that thing was, i have to drag in all the way to the bottom of my desktop so i wouldn't see it.

I only use the UPEK thing to wow my friends. The way they react is like as if they havent seen a fingerprint scanner before haha.

Haha GPS are awesome, haha you brought up a good point, if the GPS died, then uh oh, how do i get home

 

A HD vid on Youtube played choppy at first, I thought: "What the hell? I spent $1650 for a computer that has 4gb of ram, 2.53 cpu and an ATI HD4570 but it cant play hd vid smoothly!" But then I remember that I set my ATI to "optimal battery life" and after I switch it to "optimal performance" things get a lot better.

For additional info, I played Assassin's Creed maxed out comfortably with it, everything's perfect except for the part the left side was quite hot because this maybe where the ATI 's located. But you can't get this performance when your ATI's set in "optimal battery life". To sum up, the difference in these 2 settings is HUGE.

 

About the optical drive gap: I think a small gap is normal. Mine has a gap that's almost nonexistant near the USB port, but towards the other end of the drive, it's a bit more (about a milimeter or less probably). Also, it moves a bit up and down, but not a lot. I think the person who posted the pictures and was concerned might have a problem (sorry forgot your name)

 

Yeah mine looks like that at that end of the optical drive, but at the other end, it drops down a bit more and wiggles a little bit when i press it up. Is this normal?

 

nope. it keeps saying that there are no fingerprints available even though i scanned my hand like 4 times.

Only the windows 7 version works, but its not a full version.

 

hmm interesting. Whats in the full version?

 

Thanks, could you show me where I can change those settings, cause I'm not sure If I've changed the correct setting...

 

First, click on your battery icon on the taskbar and choose "more power option" and then choose "change plan settings" for the plan which you want to change => "change advanced power setting" (For me, I choose "Vaio optimized" and leave "power saver" there to help it fulfill its duty).

Scroll down the advanced setting thing and you will see ATI graphic setting, click it => ATI powerplay setting, one more click => you have it. Change the battery setting to "optimal performance" is the last thing.

Good luck

 

Thanks I've already changed it settings as you said. It has been in that position, maybe uTorrent is lagging my Vaio? what could that be?
I'm guessing it's lagging due to hard drive speed.

 

Did you have a clean install? Or still using Sony default? Whats your average processor load? uTorrent cant really put a heavy load on CPU.

 

those pictures of my optical drive dont do any justice

check out the video i made of it, and let me know if its normal

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upVlXxS9ae4

 

Yes I've got Sony default. 30-50% default when running Avira Antivir, uTorrent, Firefox (35 tabs, no Flash content-256MB), ZoneAlarm.

 

anyone know why my FN functions on the keyboard arent working....the only one that works is mute

 

So does anyone else's CD drive wiggle at the part closer to the end of the case? Mine defnitely does, but there isn't a big gap. Also, what junk that sony puts on this is safe to get rid of (what programs)?

 

I think you can get rid of that Sony Media Plus software. Use Window Media Player? I didnt install SmartWi. Isnt Window have firewall already? Why install ZoneAlarm. My router is already doing that so I dont even turn on any firewall.

Isnt the Word a demo? Can you truely uninstall it clean?

 

Everyone complaining about all the bloatware and slow speeds needs to learn how to do a clean install. Takes 15 minutes to reinstall an OS and another 15 to install drivers and "essential" applications.

The optical drive wiggles, the plastic is just a faceplate.

@chong, if you only rely on your router for all your antivirus and firewall needs, you must be using a commercial firewall (or don't know the limitations of a consumer router), or are a smart surfer..

 

No, I still use antivirus. Never install firewall software and turn it off on all my Windows.

On my SR with Vista, my screen seem to default back to super bright when it comes back from sleep.

Any way to let the brightness remain the same as before before it goes to sleep?

 

i got everything up and running with windows 7, all drivers and stock software, runs like a champ.

 

I'm not really complaining about the bloatware. There honestly wasn't that much compared to other manufacturers. ANyway it takes 10 minutes or less to get rid of it. I just wanted to know what's safe to get rid off because last time i got a computer i deleted the DVD playback software and it was a pain to fix that because I didn't know what was wrong.

 

is there any vaio software besides the control center/ event and mode switcher thats WORTH keeping?

i copied the whole c rogramfiles/sony folder before i wiped but it seems like i cant install any of those programs, theres no "Setup" file

so i had to actually just download the control center off the website, but it doesnt come with anything else

 

Just wipe everything and do a restore.

Does your restore CD install back all those software you dont want like the 60 day Office too?

 

You have to get the original install files from Sony eSupport website and install it like that.

 

Can somebody please direct me to a clean install guide that is known to work with the SR 420 D/H? Having trouble cleaning up the system on my own and I don't know what to trust. Hope somebody with the same laptop can help with that.

Thanks in advance.

 

What are these for?
Sony Home Network Library
Sony Video Shared Library

by the way thanks Chong67! That Sony uninstaller is useful.

 

I think all you can do is change the brightness setting in your power options. set it on both AC power and Battery, and when wake up the laptop it will go to that brightness level.

 

im sure some of us with ATI cards have the problem where the screen is black when resuming from hibernate or standby, and its annoying. well, here is the fix guys. i personally have tried resuming a few times after this and it hasnt failed yet.

http://www.superwasp.net/weblog/2007/08/fix-solving-ati-black-screen-problems.htm

 

i went to that website i didnt see anything except control center and battery monitor

 

this is the only one i see on the website, the laptop came with about 5 more pieces of software though

This utility installs the originally shipped versions of the following Sony Notebook Utilities:

Battery Checker 3.2.0.12180
Setting Utility Series 4.3.0.14120
VAIO® Event Service 4.3.0.13190
VAIO Control Center 3.3.0.12240
VAIO Mode Switch 1.3.0.14040
VAIO Power Management 3.3.0.12190

 

Mine had this glitch too, at first it happened EVERYTIME when I close the lid and I couldnt find anyway to fix this. And I was ready to rush to Sony but then it happened less and less recently and up to now, it's OK

Looks like the SR levels up like a game character, absolutely cant understand this!

 

The cash back is 10-14%.... so 1115 at j&r (assuming 10%) after the MIR and cash back. That looks very attractive. How exactly does the whole bundle thing work? Can I get it in addition to the $100 MIR if I purchase from j&r?

 

yeah your looking at
$1349 for laptop
$100 rebate
$180 cashback
$200 in bundle sales

$869 for this laptop

 

Are you sure that is a 14% Bing cashback for J&R? That's amazing, makes the deal a whole lot sweeter.

 

well its 10-14 so whether its 10 or 14, its still a great deal, hell it was a good deal at 5% since it put the cost of this machine under $1000

 

Placed an order just now. Let's see how much juice can we squeeze from this Bing double cashback.

 

anyone has got silver model that is listed on SonyStyle? If you've got it, please share your image

 

It making me sick. I should have wait. I knew it was coming but I forgot about it.

 

I did a search for semi clean install on this forum and found info on how to do it. It's pretty easy just back your drivers and do a system recovery / reinstall. When the system restarts and boots into windows and the last screen popups you can just press control alt del and kill the process because it just starts installing the bloatware. Best of luck or you can look at my earlier post which details it for my sr 420. BTW it works a LOT faster.

 

i formatted, installed windows 7, installed the drivers from the sony site
and now im up and running with all drivers 6.2 and 6.0's down the list of windows 7 rating

 

Which model do you have? My SR290 page, there is a package called something like Sony Notebook Utilities, which includes most of the above you mentioned, all bundled together.

 

i have the sr430, i can download that noteboko utilities package above with those 5 programs, but it doesnt include recovery center, picture viewer, movie mode etc

 

$300 trade in if you have an old laptop. Try to find one cheap off craigslist for around $20-50 will save you even more money

 

I ordered my laptop from sonystyle and am really happy with it, but I cant figure out how to get the windows 7 upgrade. What do I do exactly? It doesn't say on the sony website. It just says "proof of purpose required" with absolutely no directions. Can someone provide me with a good link or explain? Thanks.