Sony Vaio Z i5/i7 (VPCZ1) Official Owners Thread Part 2

Just about as bad as improperly turning off any other computer. No permanent damage. Possible data loss on the hard drive but nothing serious as far as I know.

 

Hi,
Thanks for your suggestion. I need to double check if I've made the disc.
Also, is there anyway to get the data out before I do the recovery?
There's some data in there which I need to get out.
I opened up the laptop and it's using raid and some kind of proprietary connect for the ssd!! =( Not sure if there's an easy way to get the data out.

Thanks.

 

You can boot it up with a Linux live cd. Have an external drive ready.

 

i like uhh hiram's boot disk... even lets you mess with the RAM drive

 

Thanks for your advice. I use it and was able to get the data out!! thanks!

 

Sounds like it could be a graphics chip problem. If your laptop has a dynamic hybrid graphics system switch try running it on Stamina setting for a while and see if the problem persists, or try upgrading the Graphics chip driver. Mine had the same problem while watching HULU movies until the nVidia driver was updated.

 

Isn't it true the Vaio Z doesn't have a recovery partition?

I was at the Sony Center to have my Z repaired (faulty keyboard) and the sales guy was saying that I erased the recovery partition and that it might take longer to repair it or some other bull.

Even after I told him I'd made recovery disks in Vaio Care right after the first boot, he told me 'that doesn't count' or something like that.

I really thought the Z doesn't have a recovery partition, or does it?

 

My Z1 seems to have a 14GB recovery partition... (that's 14/128GB of space )

 

is there a good way to underclock/undervolt the Z12's CPU? The CPU fan's been making quite a bit of rattling noise for a while, and a few days ago it became loud and random enough that I felt something had to be done. Failing that I may try and d/c the CPU fan. 99% of the time it sits on my desk so I could stick a laptop cooler underneath which won't be nearly as bothersome as it is now.

I'm running a i5 @ 2.4Ghz btw. Should be whatever CPU's in the baseline model available at most retail/online outlets.

 

Did you already try put the Thermal Control Strategy to Silent in VAIO Control Center? (the fan will still be running 24/7 though)

 

yup, always have it set to silent mode. It's not the fan going loud because it's spinning too fast, more likely bearings or something is failing on it and the fan is struggling to keep spinning at times.

 

You could try purchase a replacement fan/heatsink: Sony Vaio VPC-Z Series Fan and Heatsink 1-787-943-12 | eBay

Available from other places as well - I'm not sure what is a good place to source parts as I haven't done it before. Part number is 1-787-943-12 as listed in ComputerCowboy's service manual for the Z1.

 

so is the answer to my original question basically that there's no way to underclock this thing? this incident doesnt put a whole lot of faith into the hw for me, so i'm not so big on spending money on a replacement part that could fail yet again. bios hack or something that lets me fan spd control over speedfan is somewhere along the line i'm looking for.

 

Have you tried this? SpeedFan - Access temperature sensor in your computer ? Worked for me in several latops but never tried with my Z11.

 

speedfan was the first thing I tried, no dice.

On the upside the jamming noise from the fan mostly stopped for the time being, and it does reset somewhat if I put it to sleep and then turn it on again. Guess I'll live with it until I can get rid of this junk once Ivy Bridge comes along.

 

If your fan is defective why are you so mortally opposed to simply replacing a defective component. You would rather relegate the entire computer to the status of junk than perform an operation that would take 20min at most.

If your car had a worn out fan belt, sure you could do work-arounds to keep it from overheating... or you could just REPLACE THE FAN BELT!

 

Having regular BSOD's lately. Crash analysis shows

"Probably caused by ntoskrnl.exe ( nt+7cc10 )"

Anyone else facing this? I didn't change any drivers at all. This is on Win 7 Pro X64...

 

On any normal laptop I'd say disk failure. On the Vaio Z I fear you're starting to have bad luck with your SSD. You won't get it fixed without erasing Windows.

What you could try (pretty advanced) is unlinking the raid, doing a secure erase, relinking the raid and reinstalling Windows. If even that doesn't fix it your SSD's are bad and you need to send your PC back to Sony. And make sure they understand the SSD is bad, not the Windows install.

 

Sounds like fun...will see how it develops.

 

My BSODs were caused by one stick of RAM becoming faulty. Have you run any hardware diagnostics?

 

Not yet so far. Any recommondation for that?

And my new BSOD a few minutes ago let me to another issue: Probably caused by e1k62x64.sys. Google lead me to the Intel Gigabit Network connection. Updated to latest driver now and will see what happens.

This makes sense to since the BSODs only happened at work, where I am connected via LAN. Everywhere else I am on WLAN.

 

This afternoon, I've been having some trouble with the touchpad. The cursor either being stuck and occasionally jumping around by itself.

Any ideas/tips for getting it back to normal?

 

Does anyone know how durable the LCD on the Z1 is? I know of the pressure tests etc... but unlike a thinkpad/latitude - would the Z safely survive being carried in a backpack, without a sleeze in a quite thinly padded compartment?

 

I used the hardware diagnostics in Sony Vaio Care. That picked up my memory problem. It has a network adapter test that you might want to try if you feel the LAN is causing problems.

 

Mine has so far (3 weeks ) - One thing I did notice is that you get the outlines of your keyboard on your display, but most laptops have that problem.

Just be careful not to keep the lid next to a sheet of paper with laser-printed stuff on it. I've had a few printed papers (laser printer) in my sleeve case together with my Vaio Z (had to be quick packing), and it left my lid with some strange spots I can't get off.



Right now I'm having a bit of bad luck with my repairs. It's been in repair for two weeks now, and today I got a call saying that the repair center doesn't have a replacement part for my keyboard available, so they've ordered it from Japan and it might take a bit longer to repair my laptop. Probably by the end of next week.

Kinda sucks, then the laptop will have been in repair for longer than I've actually had it!

 

I am having an odd problem - i just got the laptop but Windows actually shows two drives, C and D. Doesn't that mean by definition that the computer is not in Raid 0? If so should I be worried about it? My inclination is to return the PC because this is not how the computer and the standard drives are meant to be run but would appreciate any thoughts.

 

Check device manager (right-click on Computer -> Manage). If it shows just one drive in the Disk Drives category, your drives are in raid but they're partitioned. You'll have to reinstall Windows, delete all partitions and then create one big one.

If it lists two drivers (probably Toshiba/Samsung SSD stuff) your raid isn't active. You don't really have to return your laptop. Just make a set of recovery DVDs with VAIO Care, set the "Display raid info" thing in your BIOS to on, and then you can enter the raid setup utility at boot to create your raid. Pretty easy to do.

(either way, you will lose everything on the disk right now)

 

2 questions...

1. Has anyone tried the VAIO Z Series Extended Sheet Battery aka VGPBPSC27? Sonystyle site says it is compatible with my Z13. I am hesitating between the extended bumps out regular batteries of this battery sheet...

2. I am looking for a good "docking" option for having 2 monitors plugged in when docked at the office. Has anyone tried any of the sony one and would make any recommendations? Perhaps so 3rd party docks?

Thanks!

 

1) that battery is for the new Z2 not last year's Z1

2) There are three different ways to dock to multiple monitors on the Z.
a) ViDock or DIY eGPU These are the most expensive ways to dock your Z but they will be the most awesome
b) Matrox DualHead2Go or TripleHead2Go, should work in theory but IDK if anyone tried it
c) Any sort of DisplayLink USB adapter, cheap but low performance, you can hook up lots of monitors though


Note that the above options are not mutually exclusive. You can do all of them.
I have the ViDock, the regular stock dock, the VAIO USB dock with DisplayLink and the official extended battery for the Z1. All of these things work great. Keep in mind that none of the official Sony accessories for the Z1 actually make the Z1 output to dual monitors. The VAIO USB DisplayLink Dock does but that was not designed for the Z1.

At the end of the day I would recommend getting the standard Z1 dock, the standard Z1 extended battery and one really nice monitor. You can make all sorts of other crap work... but it is a huge pain in the butt, real time suck. I do it because I love fiddling, but I sort of hate it also.

 

I just got my Vaio Z13 back from repairs. Everything is nicely fixed (keyboard and speakers), I am only slightly disappointed it took so long.

And, the keyboard sits a bit high in the casing. Keys touch the upper border of the body sometimes, and they have quite a lot of space below them. Result is that most keys have quite a scratchy sound if you press them from a certain angle. Which is a bit of a shame... You get one issue fixed, another is created... BLEH! (shouldn't happen on this kind of laptop)

Photos (all taken from as straight on as possible):
https://picasaweb.google.com/ambroo...authkey=Gv1sRgCMesnLjiyYPxuAE&feat=directlink

 

Hi
I own a Sony Vaio VPCZ126GG/B which i purchased about a year and a half back the brief system specs are res 1600x900/i5 prc 2.53Ghz/6GB ram/128GB SSD HDD

I play World of Warcraft but i am unable to use the gfx card 330M as whenever i put it to auto mode my laptop restarts within a few minutes so i am forced to switch to integrated Intel graphic card
I was using the version of signed drivers posted on this forum Nvidia 26314 - Intel 2281 signed Still the over heating issue was a problem but i could manage without the 330M using always on stamina mode.

last night my laptop shutdown like it does whenever it overheats and since it was a bit late i went to bed leaving the laptop to cool down and look into it in the morning.

next morning i boot up to see the disc checkup prompt i let that proceed which i generally don't do after that got over as soon as the windows started booting up it shutdown again and now whenever i start it either in safe mode or normal or even when it is right at the bios prompt the laptop reboots in 30-40 sec and now its completely unusable.

please help me out i had this problem earlier i sent the laptop to the service center they replaced some items (some capacitor and Optical drive) and returned it back saying the problem has been fixed but the problem never was rectified and i do not want to send my laptop to the service center again for another 2 months.

I am not very techie to handle bios hacks but as far as low tech stuff like installing/uninstall etc is concerned i can do that
The Vaio Assist button is also not able to fix the prob i tried that but as soon as recovery starts the PC shuts down.

 

I am having a problem with my AKE expresscard USB 3.0 on my Z13. The latest drivers work and the card is seen. When I plug any device into the card, it comes up and I can use it, but then it dissapears for a short time and then comes back. It cycles like this continuously.

I have two AKE cards, one with the external power plug and one without. The same thing happens with either card and with any type of USB 3.0 device plugged in, from a flash drive to a hard drive.

Any ideas about the cause and a solution?

 

thanks for the answer!

 

Do you guys think Sony will release Windows 8 drivers for Z11/12/13/14 series when it's out? Or will it be "too old" despite being made for Windows 7 (which should be compatible with the next version).

After using the Windows Explorer and Task Manager in the dev preview of 8, it's really hard to go back to 7. But the hybrid drivers just don't work on it.

 

I think they'll have to. It's a business class notebook... And if they don't I'm sure another brand with the same generation Hybrid graphics will release a driver, and we'll probably be able to reuse parts of it to make it work. Shouldn't really be a problem.

 

Do you plug the external power supply into the card? This may be a sign of insufficient power being sent to the card.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/620969-new-z1-bios-r3031c3.html

Link: http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/swu-download.pl?mdl=VPCZ116GX&upd_id=7153&os_group_id=6

Just installed this. I'm gonna miss those rainbows when switching graphics cards...

I really will.

 

Hi all,

I have searched this forum and linux forums for installing ubuntu on vaio Z (VPCZ12X9E). Unfortunately I'm not getting the error fixed

I have installed the latest Ubuntu 11.10 by "Run it with windows"
after installation the laptop restarts and selects ubuntu.
Now I get at booting the following error:

Gave up waiting for root device: /dev/disk/by-uuid/xxxx... does not exist
waiting a while and pressing "exit" to try again did not do the trick.
So I never actually have been able to start up ubuntu..

Any ideas what to do? tutorials or how-to for my specific vaio Z version?

Regards,
Phil

 

Didn't know that there is a new BIOS update for the VAIO VPC-Z1 series.

Thanks for the info. Appreciate it.

 

Why would you upgrade then? It's only bugfixs for WiMax users and people who want a BIOS password. AKA almost nobody.

 

I'm just saying that most of the artifacting on the screen that is displayed when you switch graphics cards is now gone with that BIOS update.
If I recall correctly, there was a person who posted on NBR who stated that they very much disliked seeing that mess on the screen.

 

What kinda batterylife do you guys get? I have a Z11 with 128gb SSD, i5, 900p screen. In stamina mode, screen on 40hz, NIC, WAN, DVD drive off, screen on relatively low setting (in the evening like now lowest) and I get about 4,5 hours. I heard people are getting a lot more out of their Z.

 

that sounds about right for a standard battery. i get around 4 hours in stamina mode on an i7, 1080p, bluetooth & dvd off on med brightness. @ 80% battery

 

^ ditto here

 

I dont know how you guyes get 4-5hrs; with standard battery in 'stamina' mode with Bluetooth, WWAN, WAN on & brighness at 40% I am getting 3hr (and my battery condition is good).

 

Bluetooth is off & no wwan for me (battery's condition is excellent). It also depends on what you're doing. i just have media player, firefox, and word open whereas you might have more things running.

 

Lower your screen refresh to 40hz, decent savings to be had

 

Hmmm....might look for extended battery then. Coming from an Asus UL30VT which does 8,5hrs with a full battery this is kinda big switch. I don't want to charge the battery when there is some juice left to help keep the battery healthy, but 1 evening on the laptop leaves enough juice not to want to charge it but not enough to make it another couple of hours...

Anyone got experience with extended battery that is NOT from Sony?

 

Not on the Sony, but my company purchased a ton of 3rd party batteries as replacements for our fleet of Dell's. They worked well.

I've also used cheap Chinese batteries for various phones. Also worked well.

Would I use a 3rd party battery in my work laptop? Yes. In a quasi-disposable phone? Yes.

Now, would I put one in a $4k laptop I purchased with my own money? No.

 

4k? Haven't paid nearly that much But maybe there is a known batterysupplier that a lot of people have used with only good experiences?