Sony Vaio CB Official Owners' Thread

Try download the driver from the Sony website.

 

That would rollback AMD driver to the oldest one.

 

If that doesn't work. Uninstall all of the AMD drivers from the control panel, download driver sweeper from here: Phyxion.net - Driver Sweeper
Restart in safe mode, and run driver sweeper, clean all of the AMD drivers.
Finally, reinstall the official Sony drivers.

That worked for me.

 

hi guys,

anyone knows where can I buy a hard drive caddy for my VPC-CB190X model? Have been searching everywhere but no luck....

Thanks a lot!

 

Yes. A hard drive caddy and a bluray usb adaptor is a much better combination. I don't use the optical drive all that much, but I'm constantly using one or even two USB hard drives.

 

My temperatures have spiked, specially the ones from the core i5. They rarely got higher than 60ºC (140ºF), but now they reach up to 77ºC (170ºF). I changed the thermal paste to my old trusty Artic Silver 3, but they remained the same. So I bought some Noctua NH-1T (or something like that) that is supposed to be the best, but I've only got like 4º C better in the CPU and 1-2ºC in the GPU while on load.

I also bought a Coolermaster notepal U2, I have put both fans under the main intake, but to no effect.

Any ideas?

 

BTW, It's not only because of the increase in temperatures, I received this computer on july of last year.

 

Just a quick question: how long does it take for your vaio to boot?
I have disabled all the startup item except for Realtek , Eset SS5, Synaptics driver and Catalyst and most non-microsoft services (except for VaioCare, Event service and Smart network) and the full boot takes up to 2 minutes. Even settings like no GUI boot don't improve the miserable performance by much...
Is it possible to install/load/use EFI instead of BIOS?

I've got august 2011 model with i5 2410m, 4gb ram and hd 6630 gpu.
Thanks in advance for your answers

 

You can also disable Catalyst if you don't switch graphics too frequently.

 

Does anyone know how to remove the keyboard of this thing?
I really need to clean the keyboard.

 

Can anyone suggest me which RAM should I buy for my VPCC17FG ? Its got 4 GB as of now. A scan on Crucial's website gives this info about my laptop's RAM:

DDR3 PC3-12800, DDR3 PC3-10600
Memory Type: DDR3 PC3-12800, DDR3 PC3-10600, DDR3 (non-ECC)

There is 1 unused memory slot so I was planning to add another 4 GB of RAM on it.

Corsair DDR3 4 GB Laptop RAM (CMSO4GX3M1A1333C9) | Ram | Flipkart.com
Will this be a good RAM to purchase ?

Thanks for your help!

 

Removing the whole keyboard is quite difficult, you'd have to dissasemble half the laptop. You can, however, remove individual keys to clean what's underneath them:

How to Remove a Key From a Sony Vaio Keyboard | eHow.com


As for the RAM, I think that would be fine. I added another 4GB of RAM as soon as I got mine over a year ago. It was Corsair CMSO4GX3M2A1333C9 4GB SO-DIMM RAM Memory

 

Alright thanks a lot. Also, do you know which company's RAM Sony put in this laptop ? My previous VAIO had a Hyundai RAM in it.

 

I don't remember, but you can just take one screw off and see for yourself


Another question, has anyone changed the GPU on one of these laptops?. I'd like to upgrade the 6630M.

 

Hey A Quick HI to you all.

I'm a newbie here & i want to know about the vaio VPCCB456FG Display. Is it a 3d dispaly or 3d compatible display or what??

Does anyone here have it ?? & what is the refresh rate of this display ???

this notebook supports 3d panel which can be used for 3d viewing.

VGP-FL3D15B : Others : VAIO™ Accessories : Sony Singapore

I have a e series notebook with ATI 5650 M of 1 gig of ram, 4g ddr3 ram , Hm55 chipset , & i3-370m @2.40GHz processor .

can i play 3d movies , 3d games on it with the help of this 3d panel & of course with 3d softwares like power dvd windvd ?

please help...

Thanks to u all in advance..

 

the vaio update thingy doesn't work anymore.....
takes me to this page: https://extra.sony-asia.com/vaio/update/vu5/URLForInvalidInfoFile.htm

 

Does anyone have working drivers for the 6630m for Windows 8 64 bit?

 

Here they are:
AMD Catalyst

 

Hi, did you try that driver, I'm wondering cause it says:

"The following notebooks are not compatible with this tool:
Notebooks equipped with switchable graphics
Toshiba® notebooks
Sony® VAIO® notebooks
Panasonic® notebooks"

And at Sony support site there are only Intel drivers available.

 

I did not try them on Windows 8 but I'm sure they will work. That message is displayed on almost all the versions of Catalyst. I have installed Catalyst 12.9 on my laptop and it works fine.

 

Anyone tried the ATI drivers for Windows 8-64bits supplied by sony for the vaio vpccb190x? I've installed them but the hardware manager shows me that there is a problem with my graphic card driver so I suppose it is not working. Does anyone know how to solve this issue?

 

^^ It won't work. Sony needs to supply proper divers for the dual-hybrid graphics to work.

 

Do you think sony will release those drivers someday? I really doubt it... You know what really upset me is that representatives (the people whom you chat when you need assistance) in the support site knows how to solve this issues.... yesterday I was chatting with one of them and he solved partially mi graphic card problem but he let pass 15 minutes to tell me that he can solve that problem and others that I was having with my laptop but I have to pay $108 after the 15 minutes of free assistance. Why do I have to pay them for something that should be working!!? I didn't know how to react so I decided to go the politely way and close the connection with him... After a couple of restarts my graphic card wasn't working again so what he did wasn't enough. he really wanted me to pay him to solve this totally... This really frustrates me!

 

^ that is f!@#ed-up. i would call up SONY's customer service and politely ask to talk to a manager and report that d-bag.

 

could you try this?

1. Navigate the Control Panel, and delete drivers using Programs and Features.
2. Locate & Select “AMD Catalyst Install Manager”, launch it and select "Express Uninstall ALL AMD Software". Execute it and follow instructions. Reboot.
3. Download and install Driver Fusion. Go to safe mode and launch it
4. Select "AMD" and "Intel" tabs: And hit "delete" button.
5. Navigate to "Device Manager"
6. Find and expand “Video adapters” section. You should see Two "Standard VGA Graphics Adapter" devices
Note : If something other than 2 “Standard VGA Graphics Adapter” is present at "Device Manager" "Display Adapters" section, right-click on each device, choose “Uninstall” and select “Delete the driver software for this device” check-box. and reload Device manager.
7. reboot.
8. use driver that sony provided for win 7. or try leshcat's unofficial driver. here's the link : leshcatlabs.net ← Keeping it simple

this should solved your problem.

 

Yeah! I was thinking on intalling the windows 7 drivers provided by Sony. Have you tried it with your CA? Did it work?...
Anyway, I'll try what you suggested and inform the results later, thanks!

 

well i always use this kind of cleaning before installing driver. to make sure nothing would go awry

 

I actually found some working drivers for my VPCCA190S... Support for VPCCB15FG : C Series : VAIO™ Notebook : Sony Asia Pacific

More specifically: http://www.sony-asia.com/support/download/520556/product/vpccb15fg
and
http://www.sony-asia.com/support/download/520556/product/vpccb15fg
(Install the first one listed first)

I also have an AMD Radeon 6630m/Intel 3000 hybrid card. The drivers above actually installed properly on my system and I am able to force the system to operate on the high end card when I want it to

 

Tried with windows 7 drivers and leshcat drivers, didn't work.

Didn't work either, after a restart the driver is not working again, also I don't know how to force the ATI card to work instead of the Intel, it is supposed that you could do that with the Catalyst software that installs with the driver. But with these, Windows7, and Windows8 drivers supplied by Sony this feature is gone.

UPDATE:

OK this is what I found so far, if I manually disable the intel card on the device manger it looks like the computer uses the ATI card, but still it is not working like it was on Windows 7. I've installed Skyrim and disabled the Intel card to force the system to work with the ATI one, the game ran but was unplayable. That didn't happend on WIndows 7. I think I'll return to 7 until this issues are solved.

 

or you could try the newest leshcat driver. it was out a couple hours ago. beta support for windows 8 driver

 

Don't disable the intel card, and give me your exact hardware ID. I'd like to confirm what your card is to be sure it is compatible with the driver link I posted earlier.

Sent from my XT894 running ICS

 

Hi Dani, i'm wondering if that driver is compatible with my card, here are the intel id:

 

Can you also post the hardware id of the and card?

Sent from my XT894 running ICS

 

Can anyone tell me a good way to clean the lens of DVD drive ? Whenever I insert a DVD, it's always detected as blank. Any suggestions ?

 

Hey! Sony just updated video drivers for the vpccb190x, now everything is working... At last!

 

... except for the fn shortcuts and the buttons on the top right side of the keyboard

 

I`ve just installed Leshcatlabs drivers on my VPCCB17Fx with Windows 8 PRO. After read all manuals onsite, they`re tottaly functional on Win8!!!!

Thanks!

#sonygotohell (wheres is the video drivers for win8?!)

 

Buttons ASSIST, WEB, VAIO ?!

No Thanks, I had never used this!! rsrs

Hey Andrese, are you from Brazil ?!

 

Yeah! Me too, I don't think I'm going to miss those buttons. And no pal, I'm not from Brazil, I'm from Ecuador.

 

Hello guys, I'm in a confusing situation and I hope you can help, I'm still a noob for these things,

Three months ago I started experiencing high CPU usage while having no running applications and the system was randomly freezing just by using windows and any program in windows. It freezes when using windows explorer, while scrolling down a PDF, while trying to switch to another editing menu in Word or simply the obnoxious lag while typing, also when changing songs in any player I get this 2 second stutter from the previous song. Starcraft II became unplayable because of this video/audio stutter which happens every 5 to 8 seconds. I also noticed that during this freezing period the HDD LED lights up and just when the system unfreezes it turns off again, only to light up again after 5 seconds when the system freezes again. And there was the shutdown message which read 'waiting for task host window to close'.

I figured this task host window program that was running in the background was the cause for this so I did some google searching. The high CPU usage was solved disabling a windows task schedule called RAC. But all the over problems still remained, the freezing and the shutdown message. Trying to avoid doing a clean install I disabled the indexing options and windows search as suggested by some sites for reducing the hard drive activity but to no avail.

I even used two programs called Process monitor and Process explorer to find the process causing these HDD activity and the freezing but they were not helpful in finding a clear cause. Finally I did a clean install but to my surprise the problems were still there, except for the cpu usage. Virus scans came out clean and I decided to manually delete the taskhost.exe to see if it would make a difference, I never again saw the task host shutdown message but the HDD activity was still freezing the system.

I did another clean install and made a partition to the HDD and spent a whole day separating the windows C drive from my secondary B partition to which I transferred the default location for program files and user files, to see if it would speed up the system but it caused more problems than it solved, so I did another clean install. This time I didn't load any Sony drivers, nor windows updating, just a fresh windows 7 and it still shows HDD activity freezing the system. Resigned, I loaded all drivers and the programs I use frequently but it has become hell to use this for playing music or just reading a PDF paper.

Is this a graphics, RAM or HDD failure? I was hoping I could solve it myself without having to replace computer parts.

Thanks for your time and help

 

For those who are interested, Sony has released Windows 8 drivers for CB15 on its website.

 

yeah. but somehow it freezes my system. now i use leshcatlabs driver. and it is being great and up to date.

 

anyone still reading this thread?

I *cannot* get my Steam games to use the AMD card. I installed the BIOS a long time ago which allows me to manually choose the video card, however, its easily apparent that the Steam games are using the Intel integrated graphics because games are almost unplayable. Is there any way to get Steam to use the AMD graphics? I'd really appreciate any help. I'm still on Win7.

 

sorry, double post

 

apparently not many people still reading this thread. Anyways, I did get it to work finally and thought I would post the details here for anyone else having trouble getting games to use the AMD card versus the integrated Intel graphics.

I had to check the "Automatically select power-saving GPU when on battery" option in the Switchable Graphics settings. Once I did this, every game I threw at my laptop would work wonderfully on the AMD graphics. Its really odd, if you manually select the high performance GPU (and have the laptop plugged in) it won't work. You have to use the auto switching and have the laptop plugged in for it to work.

Anyways, hope that helps someone.

 

I have a VPCCB 17FG Laptop . Do u have any idea, as to which of the Leshcat switchable graphics Driver , should i use ?

 

i used 13.2 Beta. it's stable. may be a crash once in a while when i am using graphic card intensively. but it recovered right away, try to use 13.1 if you want a stable one. 13.2 beta is faster by 5-10%

 

@accel ,


Any particular sequence in which Sony Drivers ( for Windows 8 ) & the Leshcat Drivers need to be installed ?

 

nope, you can install it right after you installl your windows or after you install all the windows 8 driver

 

Anyone knows how to open the keyboard for cleaning for the CB15 ?