Official VAIO SR Series Owners Thread

Anyone have any suggestions for a functional cheap extended battery for the Vaio SR? I am thinking about buying a cheap generic one but I don't know where to get it and which works without too much modification. Anyone with suggestions and experiences???

 

I'm definitely working on that. I've been waiting for a great deal on a SSD. The only problem though is Vista doesn't support Trim, so if i do upgrade I'm going to have to buy a copy of win7, or just go fully linux, which is what i run 90% of the time now.

 

My 128GB OCZ Vertex 4 just came in last night. I picked it up off of Amazon for $75 since Newegg was out of stock. I haven't been able to put it in yet but I have been prepping for it by downloading all of the drivers and extracting the WinDVD and Roxio Easy CD installs from the recovery partition.

I'm also adding 8GB of memory when it arrives from Newegg. I'm hoping mine will feel like a new system too

I'm debating dual booting into XP and 7 or even moving to 8. Any suggestions?

 

I bought a samsung ssd 840 250gb and installed windows 8.

There's only one thing not recognized in Device Manager. The location says "on Intel(R) ICH9M LPC Interface Controller - 2919". I already tried a driver from sony website and from intel website and it is still not recognized.

I also bought a hdd caddy and it works. But the openings does not match the clips from the original dvd cover.

@Jadedpony did the 8gb ram work? how much was it?

 

I finally upgraded with a 128gb Samsung 830 SSD. I bought the model number with the "laptop upgrade kit", but its not needed for the SR. It comes with a spacer plate that the SR doesn't need. I also got it because it came with a nice sata to usb cable that will come in handy when I want to plug in a old drive to access it. For $10 more, it was worth it.

As for the upgrade, the ssd install took 5 min. I didn't bother with my recovery disks, as I wanted a fresh install. I partitioned the SSD for a dual boot and installed win7 on the first partition. (note, you'll need win7 for your SSD because it supports TRIM). I followed go_ahead_ed's install order and it works fine. I also installed the latest video drivers from ATI's support site (12-6-legacy_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc_whql), and they are working fine. (my SR has the ATI video card). hdmi out also works good.

For linux, I installed Mint 14 x64 on the 2nd partition. I chose not to use a swap file after researching it. There was also a couple ssd tweaks I used (that i may come back and post later).
Linux Mint 14 didn't disappoint. except for a hdmi issue, it works perfect out of the box. Function keys, audio, brightness, suspend to ram, all working perfect out of the box.

An SSD has to be one of the best upgrades you can do, my 4 year old SR is booting up win7 to usable desktop in 20-25 seconds, and linux is even faster.

 

8GB works perfectly. Was $135 at Newegg for Mushkin. I have seen it cheaper at Crucial.

My OCZ SSD does not and continuously causes Windows to shutdown unexpectedly. I had a hard time isolating the issue since I had just upgraded my RAM, HDD, added an external enclosure and done a clean install of Windows as S.Prime has. It is definitely the SSD though as with another traditional 7.2K drive installed, my clean install of Win 7 works flawlessly. Maybe I will return it and pick up one of these Samsungs as you guys seem to be sailing smoothly on those.

I was even able to extract and locate the installs for WinDVD BD and Roxio Easy Media Creator. WinDVD BD is unfortunately incompatible with Win 8 it seems Win 8 did have like a 10-15 second boot time though

 

Have you tried updating the ssd firmware? I have a OCZ vertex 3 SSD on my desktop computer and get occasional blue screens. A firmware update is in order, but I haven't done it yet.

 

Good suggestion but before I installed the drive, I actually tried to flash the latest firmware but it was already on it. I called OCZ and they said to just RMA it through the reseller since OCZ only has one warehouse and I'd receive it quicker that way. Amazon is shipping a replacement so we will see if that makes a difference.

Their other possible fix was a secure erase but since the replacement won't cost me anything (even in shipping), I'll try my luck with another drive.

 

Hope someone here can help.

I've got a Sony SR290 on my hands and recently upgraded the drive to a new Samsung SSD and did a clean install of Windows 7 to give it new life.

I also have the official VGP-PRSR1 dock for the SR series. The problem I am having is that the SR290 doesn't seem to communicate with the dock. The "In Use" light never comes and none of the connections work. The docking station does receive power, the "DC In" light is green.

Is there a driver specifically that would fix this issue? I thought I had installed all the necessary drivers from the Sony site and all the Sony special Functions work and there are no missing devices in Device Manager.

I hope someone can help because man without the docking station this is going to be difficult to do work on.

Crossing my fingers...

 

That is really odd. You would think the docking station would be a direct extension of the motherboard. The only thing I can think of is that it is a chipset problem. Did you install a newer intel chipset, or use one from the sony support downloads? I would try installing one of the sony chipsets.

They have one listed as Win7 x64: File Description Intel® Chipset Driver Release Date 10/09/2009 Version 8.7.0.1007 File Size 2.15 MB

 

Thank you kindly for replying. In fact I actually installed the latest chipset driver using the Intel auto-detect webpage feature.

I will uninstall the chipset driver and install using the vaio update I installed. The vaio update in fact couldn't install that one driver since the latest on from Intel was already installed by me.

Uninstall via device manager right?

I hope that's it. Will report back, thank you again.

 

I finally resolve my problem with ICH9M LPC 2919 - unknown device by reinstalling the firmware extension driver

Now I bought GMYLE bc628 expresscard and can't get it to work on my windows 8 laptop. Its not showing up in Device Manager. I tried it on my friends laptop(win7) and it showed up. Any ideas?

 

Hmmm, I tried installing the original Intel chipset drivers Sony provides for Windows 7 but it still won't connect to the dock.

I would love to know if anyone has upgraded to Windows 7 and been able to use the SR dock.

 

A little late here Sorry

I am not using window 7. I am on Windows 8 and am able to use the SR dock (full functionality)

Hope this helps

 

So it turns out that my unexpected shutdown problem wasn't caused by my SSD after all. After running on my original 7.2k rpm drive, I was still running into the same issue. I even threw my original memory back in and it persisted.

Since I purchased my SR about 2.5 years ago, and had only purchased one extra year to extend my Sony warranty, I was out of warranty but, my credit card tacks on another year so I sent it into Sony for repair.

I was nervous that they wouldn't be able to replicate the issue but in the end they identified the AC adapter and battery as the culprits. Unfortunately those were two things that I couldn't test myself as I don't have spares but it has been up and running solid with the new adapter.

I also ended up with a Samsung 840 Pro 128GB drive and it is great. Feels like a bit less lag than the OCZ with program installations but I could just be imagining things as I didn't do any thorough testing with either drives. The SSD plus the 8GB of Mushkin PC2 6400 RAM have made my SR feel like a new system. I'm kind of surprised that it was just the adapter and not the motherboard but I'm just glad to have my laptop back so that I can go back to editing photos

After browsing other threads about the install order for Sony drivers, I have found that for me at least, the only three that really matter are:

1. Sony Firmware Extension Parser Device Driver
2. Sony Shared Library
3. Sony Notebook Utilities

Beyond that Windows updates picked up everything else but the Synaptics touchpad driver which I had to install manually.

 

That's excellent. Imo, the 840 is the best ssd on the market.

oh and which Synaptic driver did you use. that is one thing i still need to install on mine.

 

Yeah, the 840 has been rock solid so far.

I just used the driver (and update) provided on the Sony support site.

Although for video I downloaded the most recent ATI driver/Catalyst install package. My only issue with that was that it wouldn't install the audio over HDMI portion of the driver. I don't use my HDMI out much at this point but I guess if I need it I could always go back to the Sony drivers. Has anyone else seen this issue?

 

I've got an odd problem with my SR and wondering if anyone could shed any light on this.

It's a SR39VN/S.

I ran a Corsair Force 3 SSD for about 8 months and all was fine, all of a sudden I started suffering KSOD (black screen of death). Narrowed it down to the SSD, returned it and was given a refund. In the meantime I was using a standard HDD and laptop worked perfectly fine.

I then bought an OCZ SSD, did a clean install of Windows 7 and it starts giving me the KSOD again??

Once again fit my old HDD and all it fine.

Any idea's?

 

Hm, i would check to make sure your SR has the latest bios, and also the ssd is updated to the latest firmware.

 

ssd is a fickle being. I got my samsung 830, year ago and its solid! love their versatility with their software. donno if anyone even reads this anymore but, just want to update on my sr190. It has samsung ssd in original HD, a HD caddy in place of DVD drive for second hard drive at 1TB. upgraded my CPU from T9400 to T9600 via ebay. lastly, the forbidden territory of memory. I thought having my latest bios of R0310Y1 would get me to 8GB, but this has failed so far. best I could do is 4GB and 2GB ram for total 6GB ram. still pretty sweet.

Original VS Now
T9400 2.53GHz to T9600 2.80GHz both undervolted via RightMark
5400RPM 120GB HD to SSD 128GB HD Samsung 830
DVD drive to 1TB 5400RPM HD
4GB ram to 6GB ram


If anyone has gotten to 8GB ram successfully, please share. These are the ways I have tried.
intial installment symptom: extremely slow start up and unable to load windows 7 64bit
4Gb + 2GB ram install = boot up normally and 6GB accounted for in windows 7. even bench tested ram to past 4.3GB of ram
4GB + 4GB ram with msconfig limiting maximum memory to 5000kb = boot up fine, windows 7 recognized all 8GB, but can only use ~3.86gb
limitation raised to 5500GB and it failed again.

Idea behind using max memory was to get more than 4gb ram with the speed of symmetric blah blah blah. but didnt work as i had hoped.
Finally, I see that SR 490 was the model where the broshure said came with 8gb Max rather than the usual 4gb max. I wonder if it is possible to extract the bios file from SR 490 and somehow make it compatible with previous SR models. I want to try but cannot risk losing my computer function completely. so if anyone with better computing skills know how it can be done, please chime in!

 

You may want to do a system backup first, oh and I take no responsibility for you bricking your laptop. This simply worked for me just now.

For anyone who wants to run Windows 8.1 on their old school Vaio SR. While windows will install a driver that supports the full resolution, you may notice the graphics card performance is none existent. If you go to http://www2.ati.com/DRIVERS/mobile/12-4_mobility_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc.exe to download the driver, start the installation but exit after the extraction, go into device manager and select update driver "have disk" it will let you install the driver. Not sure if it's 100% but I was trying to play an old school game and it lagged like crazy before while now it seems to work fine.

 

Has anyone sold their SR recently? How much did you get for it?

 

If anyone is looking for a Synaptics touchpad driver for their -SR- for use on XP/Vista/Win7, here is a link to good version.

>> ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp51001-51500/sp51498.exe <<

It supports Multi-touch, and also has Palm detect which is great if your prone to accidentally hitting the pad when you type.

I've installed it on Win7 and it works great. (I haven't tried it on XP, Vista, or Win8).

I found it on an old news post here: http://www.engadget.com/2010/..., which actually takes you to the original post here: New HP Touchpad Driver that Unlocks Multi-Touch on older Touchpad - www.hardwarezone.com.sg

 

Windows 10 seems to be running fine on my SR290.

I did a clean install using the media creation tool to create a win10 usb installer.
During the install I wiped my SSD and any partitions on it.
Win10 installed fine, and only had 1 unknown item in the device manager.
I then installed the sony notebook utilities, settings utility series update, sony shared library, and sony Firmware Extension Parser Driver.
That resolved the unknown item and now my Function volume and brightness works.
Also the quick mode buttons and settings button also works.
So far, everything is working perfect.

 

Well cancel my last post. I ended up removing win10 and putting win7 back on. For some reason with win10 my SR was constantly blowing hot air out like the cpu frequency throttling was not working.