Vaio FZ Owners Official Owners Thread

K, please let us know what model is going to be the FZ11s replacement and possibly how much it'll cost when you find out

 

Hi Honguy, don't worry,I got FZ190E and FZ140E for my son,I heard about the noise , so I did a test for any body that I can get to see if they hear the noise,,,Guess ????, No body could hear that SQUEAKY sound. I also understand some with the Excellent hearing capability and can pick out the high Pitched Frequency noise,and deeply feel bad for them,,,Have fun.

 

Does anyone know when the new FZ2 is coming out in Europe, specifically switzerland. If its within aa month or two, its gotta be worth the wait, considering u get better specs for the same price

 

They are expected 17 September in most of Europe. You can check the link i posted earlier for the spec's.

 

Hello I'm new to this forum, I just ordered my FZ190 CTO online last Thursday, Friday I got the e-mail saying that my system is being built and with an estimated ship date on 9/6. I read through this entire thread from page 1 up to here, took me two days since I also went to all the recommended links as well, I've become a lot more informed thanks to everybody on here. I was very interested in all the comments on the clean and semi-clean install since that's what I will probably do. However, I noticed that on my current Toshiba laptop, I can just right click on the C: drive and select "format" I was wondering if that would be essentially the same thing as a clean install. If I'm assuming correctly, "format" should clean everything up, including all the bloatware, but keep your OS intact and maybe the drivers right? Correct me if I'm wrong, thanks again.

 

oh no no, format completely cleans out the drive, leaving nothing left, not even the OS. if you right click on a say C: and the OS you are using is installed on the C: drive, and click on format, it will give you an error stating how you cannot format because of the fact the OS is installed on it. the right click format option works when you have additional hard drives or partitions or other storage options installed.

 

I was about to purchase a FZ-190 within a couple of days off of sonystyle.com...and then saw the talk about the FZ2. With some of the models coming out in a couple of weeks, does anyone think I will be better off to wait on my purchase to see what the new models are like?

 

Thanks for clearing that up for me jason

 

Does anyone know if Sony is going to fix soft touchpad buttons in new Fz line? and any other cosmetic improvements.

 

Hi All,

I spend almost a week and i still only read this thread untill page 75!!! The things is, i'd read all post about clean and semi-clean install. I decide not to do it. However i have another idea. I live in Thailand but i bought my FZ in the US, here is my spec:

• Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium
• NVIDIA® GeForce® 8400M GT
• 15.4" WXGA (HC) W/CMR
• SuperMulti (DVD+-R Double layer / DVD+-RW Drive)
• 160 GB Hard Disk Drive (Price reflects discount of $50.00)
• 1 GB DDR-SDRAM (DDR2-667MHz, 1 GBx1)
• Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T7300 / 2.0 GHz


I found out that the "FZ" that are selling in my country contain with "LESS" bloatware! You can check it out in this link (there are 2 model)

http://www.sony.co.th/VAIO/prod_info/vgn-fz18s/specifications.html

and

http://www.sony.co.th/VAIO/prod_info/vgn-fz15s/specifications.html

As you can see, there are no AOL, Spiderman, Napster, MobiTV and manys!!! I just wondering if i can find a person who brought FZ in my country and let them make me a recovery DVD from there FZ and use it with my FZ. The model FZ18S has almost the same spec as mine. Just only CPU and blue-Ray.

EDIT:I allready ask sony in my country about this the said that it is NOT possible. It has to be exactly same model.

Any thought???

Thanks

 

@ Mel4747:

it's hard to tell with Sony, i'm afraid we have to wait till someone owns the new model and post about to be sure of all the differences. I'm not sure if it's 'better' then the 'old' FZ's, it depends a little on your computing needs and preferences i guess. i't looks like it will have a less brighter screen, a faster cpu, the same gpu and a faster netwerk adapter as far as i can tell so far.

@ aeiorb; i really don't understand why you would want to go to the trouble of trying to make the recovery disks from an other machine to work on yours. If you don't have a full copy of Vista just delete the bloathware manually following the instructions in Gary's file or using the lists you can find in this thread. It shouldn't take you more then one or two hours and then your done.

 

I currently have the sony vaio vgn fz11m laptop and i have it connected to my samsung lcd tv via Hdmi, i dont get any sound through my tv just the laptop, is there another cable i need to get to put into the headphone jack and to the tv or do i need to play with settings as i know hdmi does let sound through it, lol

Thanks in advance for any answers.

 

Greetings all! I just purchased an FZ and am curious about the recovery dvd's. I understand you have to make them your self. But what if you spec'd your Fz with a cdrw drive. I rarely ever do any copying to disc media. So i didn't think anything of it. Can the recovery discs be made on cdr dsik? Thanks in advanced.

 

First you are ASUMING that there is no Spiderman, AOL, Napster etc. I don't think that is a safe assumption. You would need to verify that it really did NOT have the bloatware by contacting someone who has the machine in hand. Just because the website doesn't mention it doesn't mean it won't be there.

Second, the Recovery DVD's do appear to be tied to specific models, most likely by comparing info in the BIOS.

Gary

 

No there is no additional cable needed, you need to enable the HDMI sound output. Right click on the speaker icon in the system tray. Select Playback devices. The rest should be obvious.

This thread might help FZ HDMI SOUND

Gary

 

Brilliant mate, just got it working now brilliant, thanks.

 

I did the exact same thing, my laptop haven't arrived yet, but what I ended up doing is go to Best Buy or any other major electronics chain stores and buy some external DVD burner (I bought a sony one for about $99). Once your laptop arrives, plug it in and burn your DVD's, then return the burner. I guess it's not the "right" thing to do, but I'm running low on my CD-R's but I have a load of DVD-R's and I'm generally a sloppy person, I don't want to burn 10+ CD-R's and then eventually lose them. My best advice. To answer your question, yes you can burn them onto CD-R's.

 

Attn: ScuderiaConchiglia

I have downloaded and read your instructions for installing clean vista on FZ190. I want to give it a try. would you please be so kind enough to answer my following queries before i start this mission.

1) Partition:
You have partitioned some drives to NTFS system and other to FAT32. can you please explain the difference and which one should i use.
1b) Can I use vista buil-in partition uility ?

2) During installation of windows vista business from a dvd copy, do i need to put any serial number or adopt activation procedure ? because i will be using my friends copy of vista ultimate. but my laptop comes pre-installed vista business, what should I do ? or stick to vista business ?

3) After fresh installation of vista & before installing touchpad driver do we need external mouse to operate vista ?

4) if anything goes wrong during this process, how to restore to factory setting using recovery DVD's ? do I need to boot laptop with recovery dvd ? plz tell procedure.

5) How to install sony applications using recovery DVD, is it simple insert and run ?

Thanks in advance for helping ppl like us.

 

1. NTFS is the current and best format for a partition. However when running Norton Ghost (the application I used to image my hard drive), Ghost is running under DOS. DOS can only read and write to FAT32 Partitions. I wanted to make a Ghost image to a third partition on my hard drive, that's why the third one is set up as FAT32.

1B. Yes you can. If you want to do so, you will need to tell the Vista Install process that you want to delete the existing C: partition. And that you want to create a new one, and you will need to tell it what size you want it to be. Then after Vista is up and running you can use the built in partition management app to use the remaining space to create your D: partition and a FAT32 one (that I called G if you want to use GHOST to keep a spare image on the hard drive.

2. Yes you will need a serial number. I do not know if the one from your laptop will work or not. There is some anecdotal evidence that the OEM serial number will NOT work on a retail copy. I can't verify that one way or the other. Sorry. (I used a retail copy that came with a serial number.) You will have to stick with Vista Business for sure. The serial number you have will most certainly NOT work with ultimate.

3. NO

4. Two ways. If you still have the hidden recovery partition on your hard drive... power off, power on and hit the F10 key. This will cause the machine to boot from the recovery partition. The other way is to boot from the first of the two DVD's.

5. Yes. When Vista is running, if you insert the first of the two recovery DVD's it will present you with an option to use the utility to restore specific apps.

Gary

P.S. Please take ALL subsequent questions on the clean install process to the thread on the subject. The link is in my signature below.

 

just got my new fz190 can any one let me know how can i create system restore cd's or dvd's

thankx

 

Thanks for your time and answers which cleared some doubts now i can think forward

 

Congrats with your new Vaio !!
There's a program in your program-list called 'vaio recovery tool', open it and you will see the light

 

I've been monitoring my FZ temps -among other things- since i've got it, and i noticed that under heavy load some components get a little hot. Most things cool down quit fast again when the high performance tasks are completed, except the things that get the hottest after a long stress; the ram modules. I guess there is a is a complete lack of airflow in the compartment that holds the ram banks because they only seem to cool down again after turning the machine off and let it cool down for a while. Even after a few hours in sleep-mode the ram temps stay the same by the way, i really have to turn it off to get the memory to cool down again. I was planing to open up my FZ soon anyway to take some pictures of the inside components en check how much dust it collects, so i'm gonna try to see if i can do anything about the airflow (i'm not afraid to drill a few extra holes if it seems that that would do the trick, although i suspect there isn't much spare room for airflow in a notebook as compact as the FZ), but does anyone know if putting some cooling-pasta on the ram chips would help anything for the meantime?
The maximum temperature the ram has reached so far is 51 degrees Celsius, but this was a one time occasion, otherwise it stays under 50 and most of the time around 31 or atleast under 40 degrees.

I'm also looking for a way to monitor the GPU temperature, although i supect there's no temp sensor in/on it. Anyone knows a good way to check this?

 

How are you measuring ram temps? Is that the temp1 and temp2 numbers reported by SpeedFan? In sleep mode the ram is still powered up so it would make sense that the temps would stay up. I was also looking for info on the GPU temps but have found nothing thus far.

Gary

 

Nvidia monitor gives you the gpu temp and mem/core speeds.

 

I checked the nVidia site and could not find it. Got URL? ...big ol' grin...

Gary

 

I had my FZ-190 for a month now. Day by day it's getting slower to boot and generally the system is slow upon start up. I removed all the unnecessary start up services, progs, etc. Is there any way except clean install to speed up my vaio? Also it takes forever to connect to a wireless network upon start up.

 

Can you be a bit more specific? Slower to boot dosen't really tell us much. How fast was it to boot? How fast is it now to boot?

Gary

 

Hi again all,

Thanks for your contribution, Storm.

I finally received my new FZ .
I ended up choosing the FZ18G:

C2D 2.2Ghz, 160GB hdd, 2GB Ram, 256 Nvidia graphics, Blu-ray burner. This model is the one with the two lamps, whereas the FZ17G and FZ15G has one.

I'm glad I decided to upgrade to this model.. The others just didn't seem to cut it. And I'll be putting another gig of ram into it on Monday .

All is going well so far, so fingers crossed it continues that way.

I have a question though, which I'm sure has been answered at some point, but I've scoured the web and have yet to find a conclusive answer:
How does one go about creating 'backup discs'? The ones you're supposed to create the moment you switch your machine on, whether you're unistalling the bloatware, or clean-installing Vista altogether.. The only option I can find within Vista is the option to create a files backup disc (music, pictures, documents), but I'm assuming these important backup discs mentioned in this forum offer more than that...

Help?
How do I create the backup discs?

Thanks again.


P.S; Mine is also rather slow to boot and do anything, really. For a Core 2 Duo machine with 2GB of ram, I expected it to be much faster than it is..

 

Yes, i do assume the temp1 an temp2 in SpeedFan stand for the RAM temps, i'd have no idea what they would be for otherwise and there temperature does seem to rise with heavy memory activity. I'm aware that the RAM keeps powered up during sleep mode, but i would expect it to be in sort of low power state in sleep mode and that that would cause the temperature to drop at least a little bit after a few hours of 'rest'. But that doesn't seem to be the case...

Someone just recommended a program called 'Everest' to me for checking the GPU temp btw, i haven't had time to download it and try it out though. I'd like to try out that Nvidia monitor to, i'll try and find it tomorrow but a link would be nice of course

 

You're welcome Alias22, and congrats with your choice, i'm a little jealous of your spec's


Maybe i should put this in my signature, lol


USE THE VAIO RECOVERY TOOL TO CREATE YOUR RECOVERY DISKS, it's in your program's list.

 

Haha, thanks for that, Storm.

You know, just before you responded to my question, I found the answer I was seeking in another thread.. But thank you for clarifying it for me, in un-missable CAPITALS!!! Haha..

 

Oh well, i thought i'd better let it stand out since i've already answered that same question here yesterday too.....

Gary; i've finally got my first temperature readings from my GPU with Rivatuner. I already had it installed but didn't knew how to use it, it turns out to be quite a handy little program Here's the 'how to':

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=81852

 

My temp1 and temp2 were at 51C last night. I have no idea why they got so high. This morning they are at 30C. I wish I knew for sure what these two temps are. What was od was the two core temps were at 30C the whole time???

Gary

 

Wow, 51 is the highest temp i saw on mine ever, but if remember correctly you have a more powerful FZ then me so it isn't strange it would get a little warmer.

I seem to get the highest temps on memory and hdd when Vista is updating itself, or when it is creating the restore files to be more precise. I'm usually also doing some downloading (p2p) and doing some internet browsing or using photoshop/word/excel at the same time or occasionally play a game.
The reason your cpu's stay cooler then the ram-banks is quit logic i think, the cpu has a fan

Did the temp1 and 2 go down over night with your machine turned on or off btw?

 

Yes and all four temps have been at 30C all day... Really ODD!

Gary

 

Ehm....ODD....?

 

Sorry that was a bit obtuse wasn't it. I meant it was odd that Friday I had temps of 51C on temp1 and temp2 and then after being off overnight they dropped to 30 and stayed at 30 despite a near identical work load on Friday and Saturday.

I am going to track this for a while. 51C scares me a bit. Especially at 76F ambient.

Gary

 

Ah, got it, i that ODD was short for something perhaps, lol

Yeah, i thought 51 was a bit high to for the RAM banks myself. Although it might be a more or less normal temp for a gaming desktop computer. I'm not sure what the recommended temps for the RAM is though.
I've been monitoring these temps for a few weeks now and the temps only get this high when Vista updates itself. Even when i stress the cpu for a few hours taking benchmarks or working several heavy tasks at the same time don't get the temps up over 37 degrees Celsius.
I don't think the problem is 51 Celsius if it was just for a brief moment, but the problem lies more in the fact that they don't cool down until you turn of the notebook. I'm afraid that this high temperature would shorten the life of the memory considerable.
The lack of airflow in the RAM compartment doesn't help of much of course. I tried if opening the lid of the RAM compartment would help to get the temps down, but that wasn't the case. I did consider putting some cooling paste on the RAM chips or a small fan maybe, or find a way to direct (part of) the cpu's airflow to the RAM, would you have any thoughts on that perhaps?

 

Right ive got a sony vaio vgn fz11m and want to install windows xp on it, it currently runs vista but im not keen, will i need to keep any drivers or anything for the laptop to work on xp or any ideas what i need to do.

 

I don't remember who was the original poster anymore, but here's a link where you can download the drivers for XP. I strongly recommend you create your recovery disks first if you haven't done that already.

Congrats with your new Vaio btw

edit: forgot the link

ftp://ftp.vaio-link.com/PUB/OS/XPDOWNGRADE/FZ19

 

How lond does it take for ur vaio to connect to a wireless access point? Mine takes more than 2 mins to connect immediately after start up. The network connection icon changes to exclamation mark before connecting.

 

that does sound a little slow, mine takes around a minute to start up and is connected with w-lan immediately. When i connect to a d-link router one of my friends uses it takes a little longer though, sometimes it switches on and off again before it actually works even. I suspect the internal w-lan card is less compatible with d-link routers then with the linksys and belkin routers i use at home and work.

Does your model have bluetooth and is it turned on btw. I noticed that turning of bluetooth also 'confuses' the machine during startup sometimes... :s

 

Please, forgive me if I'm being a total dick and just write something lots of people have been writing before me. However, I would like some help!

I have a FZ11M (european version) with the 8400M GT card, and from testing it now for more than two months, I must say it's absolutely ****e.
Alright, not absolutely ****e, some games play well. Max Payne 2 for instance, which was released in 2003! (However, still today great graphics).

Anyway, as soon as I try playing newer games, it's absolutely unbearable.
Even relatively simple games like FIFA 07 and Tiger Woods 2008 are impossible to enjoy with nice graphic options.

And I've been looking forward to Bioshock for a while now (who hasn't, right?). My experiences:
1st try: game crashes before even reaching the menu
2nd try: i get to see a little bit of the intro, then crash.
it goes on and on. crash crash crash. And I have all DX thingys updated.

It's just strange to me, because the 8400M GT is regarded at this site as a "performance card", hence my expectation to play games as FIFA 07 not only in slow-motion but in real-time. Do I have some sort of a driver issue? Is there some sort of a patch to download?

Well, thanks for any help anyway.

 

Hey again all,

I have a question I'd like to pose to other FZ owners, especially those who have similar specs to my machine:

Since I purchased this machine, I've fully charged it whilst switched off (12 hours prior to first use, then about 3-4 hours each time thereafter), then turned it on to find the battery life immediately drops to between 88%-77%. The battery itself also depletes very quickly whilst in use (tested under very minimal useage- wireless/internet off, not running resource-heavy applications, screen brightness dimmed significantly, and running the Vaio Optimized battery profile). I'm only getting 1 hour 20 mins at most, when not browsing the internet or doing anything at all on the machine, really (idling).

Is this normal? Has anyone else experienced anything like this?
I've tested it against another battery from the store, and it too is doing the very same thing..

It also stops responding quite frequently, and is very slow in processing, in general.. There are 74 running processes at any given time, which I find to be quite an abnormal and ridiculous amount of background processes to be running, though I have no idea what to do about it..

..Problems never cease. I don't know what to do with this machine..

Any input would be appreciated.

 

That's true! I started taskmgr on my FZ the other day. And I'm not kidding, I had 94 processes running! Shame Sony out so much bloatware in it... But I'm a bit disappointed in them not giving you a Vista DVD with it so that you easily can perform a clean install on it! (Or is there some way..?) Weird people, these...

 

Just update your video drivers... go to www.laptopVideo2go.com and get the 163.44 they work perfecty with bioshock... read the instructions for the notebook drivers installation.

 

well fifa 2007 and some games have a trange issue with win Vista... microsoft will fix it with the vista SP1 update but right you can download the stand alone video fix from microsoft web page. Dont remember where exactly but i found the link the the notebookvideo2go site.

 

I had the same problem with bioshock when I ran on the FZ190. Right after the plane movie, it would crash. I searched around this forum and someone said there was a microsoft update for stabilizing game play on some of the nvidia cards. Then I downloaded the "Bioshock" nvidia driver for Vista off of laptopvideo2go.com website. It was a really simple procedure. I only played the demo, but it didn't really run as smoothly as I had hoped. I had to set most video settings to low and some to medium. I just followed gamespot's game settin guide for Bioshock. I think one factor that made the game run a little slower than I had hoped was because I only have 1gig of ram since I'm broke right now and have no money to upgrade. Once I have the money, I'm getting a 2gig stick to put in there, I'm sure it would run a lot smoother then.

 

I just got my laptop also (FZ190) and it seems like your battery time is a little low because I've ran Battlefield 2142 and got a time just a little less than yours (About one hour). However, i beleive it is normal because of the way that batteries behave when they are new. That's why it's recommended that you first fully charge teh battery when you receive it, then fully discharge the battery (use the battery until your computer turns off by itself), then fully charge it again. Go through this process three times to "wake up" the battery. I believe that's the only way for the battery to figure out what is its maximum state and its minimum state. I read about this somewhere...but I always do this for all my electronics. Good luck