Vaio FZ Owners Official Owners Thread

Does anyone using this VGP-AC19V19 power supply on their FZ180E/B? I got this as a replacement. My original one VGP-AC19V13 is defective and recieved a new one today. A 24 HR turn around was impressive. Good job Sony.

VGP-AC19V19
Input 100-240V~1.3A 50-60Hz
Output 19.5 ---- 3.9A

VGP-AC19V13
Input 100-240V~1.3A 50-60Hz
Output 19.5 ---- 4.7A

My new one has less amps. Not sure how this affects the power source.
I called Sony Support and they were giving me mixed messages no one is seem to be sure. Any help is appreciated.

 

Has anyone experienced problems with their wireless? I'm having a strange problem with slow downloads but normal uploads. Everything was working fine until I went on a trip for 3 weeks. I came back today and now my downloads are slow, 380 kbps and uploads of 1580 kbps. Before my trip downloads were in excess of 6500 kbps. I haven't changed any settings, I was just connected to another wireless network when I was out of town. My desktop is also wireless and is not having problems. Just my FZ190. It's just weird, it worked before I left and suddenly doesn't. I know Gary has the answer to this one, right?

 

Hey now, I represent that remark! ... big ol' grin ...

Hmmm, this one has me puzzled especially given that the desktop is wireless and it runs at full speed. That eliminates the wireless router and everything else upstream from it. Ah but that does beg a question, are you SURE that the laptop is connecting to THAT router? Are there other routers nearby, like a neighbors house, and MAYBE you are connectig to that?

When you were on the trip, how were you connected? Was it through some hotel system? Could it be that the connection on the trip had you routed through some proxy and you are now STILL connecting through it? What was the speed like on the trip connection?

You might try this: on the desktop and the laptop bring up a command prompt, then type "tracert ibm.com", without the quotes. The display will show all of the hops between you and the IBM.COM domain (nothing significant about that target, any domain will do). See if there is any substantive difference in the two, which might indicate you are somehow still routing through some residual connections from the trip.

Gary

 

Thanks Gary for the reply. I've tried what you suggested but still get the problem. I'm connected to my network for sure, during my trip I was connected at my sister's house, no proxy. I connected the laptop to the router with an ethernet cable and the download speed is perfect. I put my desktop on wired and then laptop wireless in case there was a conflict. Still the same thing. I guess short of a clean install, which I did following your guide, there's not much else I can do. I tried my friend's laptop and it downloads fine. Are there any other settings I can change? I can't find anything really and am completely stumped. Once again. Thanks again Gary.

 

I am at a loss on this. I had the OPPOSITE thing happen today at my office. When in the office I connect my laptop to the internet via an ethernet cable. On my desk is a "desktop" machine which connects the same way. Both go through a Win 2003 Server (SBS) before hitting the internet. The laptop was running around 700k download and the desktop was running at 3.5 meg down. I rebooted the laptop and got the same result. Despite the fact that the desktop connects through the same server and the desktop was running fine I decided to reboot the server. No change... laptop 700k desktop 3.5meg.

Now it gets odd. I also have a wireless connection to the same ADSL line that feeds the Win2003 server. It bypasses the server and connects directly to the ADSL (I use it for guests in the office since they have no password to connect through the server.) I pulled the ethernet connection from the laptop and connected via wireless and voilà' I had 3.5 meg down! Switched back to wired and it was back at 700k. I did everything I could think of to figure this out when all of the sudden the wired connection jumped up to about 2.5 meg. I needed to get some work done so I stopped troubleshooting at that point. But this was STRANGE!

Gary

 

Hello Guys:

I have search this huge thread and everywhere else lookin for answers to this problem and havent found any, so if it *has* been discussed somewhere around here i apologize.

i got an fz180e with blu ray about a month ago. it replaced my old dell inspiron 8600...

I use laptops for gaming , but i mostly play Final Fantasy XI online, a fairly old game which, my old inspiron, would run with no problems. my new vaio surpasses my dell by far, and scored much higher in the game benchmark being qualified as an "incredibly tough" pc that should play the game pretty well at good settings.

problem is im getting terrible frame rate lag on the game..sometimes dropping all the way to 4 or 3 fps.

i tried updating the drivers from laptop2go and it didnt solve the problem...even when i set the game at the lowest settings possible, it still has the same issue...and with the new driver for some reason my Blu-ray movies wouldnt play. i rolled back the driver and blu-ray plays fine now but still have problems with gaming.

i have looked everywhere for an answer...some people say its vista..some people say that the NVIDIA card just simply wont play the game well..but it sounds weird , particularly when this is a more powerful machine than my old one was.

anybody has issues with this? im kind of scared of buying any games for this laptop that would not run well or force me to download a modified driver that screws up my blu-ray. not to mention i cant understand why such an old game wont play well in this lappy.

thanks for any input. this is driving me insane >.<

*edit* just for the record i did install the drivers from laptopvideo2go correctly with the modded inf file and all.

 

I am unable to run phtoshop color rendering. It creates extra pixels in the shape of warms and grey dirty pixels. I removed all programs and fresh install my copy of ulimate vista w only vdeo running. Same thing. My wife has HP w/8400GT same thing. My son has sony w/7400 go no problems.

 

My FZ's battery charge reduces at the rate of 2-3%/minute with brightness turned 2 bars down. How can a notebook's battery drain this crazy?

 

Check your advanced settings for your power profile.
Make sure:
1. Processor power management - minimum is set to like 5% (i recommend for both plugged in and on battery)
2. PCI Express - Link State Power Management is set to "Maximum power saving" for on Battery

The 8400GT is a pretty huge power drain.

 

Heres a screenshot:


nvaksman: how do you run color rendering in PS? I have CS3 and I can try it if you tell me how and see if it does that.

 

AV Mode is not supported on lappys with the 8400 GT card. The brightness can be adjusted from the nvidia control panel and since it's like a once in a life time setting i can totally do without the shortcut. Everything else is functional and way fast, and did i say fast and i dont feel like i'm barefoot in egypt using vista...

 

Thanks for the suggestion. I use Vaio optimized power plan (which has 5% min. processor state by default). I changed the indexing option to power saver for the battery. I will try changing the PCI option too.

 

Hi, a just bought a new Sony VAIO VGN−FZ21M.
It was full with pre-installed sony programs and it came with a Vista Home Premium OS. It was pretty slow, especialy if we consider the fact that it has a core 2 duo 2ghz cpu and 2gb of RAM.
So i decided to get rid of the pre installed stuff and to install either Vista Ultimate either XP media center.
So far so good.
( i came acros an interestin thing, that so called recovery partition -11gb on my notebook-. I never had something similar and i don't realy know what is that good for. But I red the user manual and decided to be safe to burn the content of the partition on DVDs. So I made 2 DVD - so called recovery discs )

Then I inserted the Vista Ultimate DVD and started the installation process.
I formated C: and the wizzard started to install the OS. Then it stopped and showed an error code named: 0x80070017...
then I tried to install XP.... but neither did it worked... it showed some message saying that there is no hard drive in my notebook or something like that. I even tried to run Kubuntu live disk, but neither did it worked.

So pls help me by answareing to my question.
1. What does that recovery partition stands for ? Does it include only the drivers and sony soft... or it has a Vista instalation someware ?

2. how can I delete that recovery partition and what happens if I delete it ?

3. will I be able to install Vista Ultimate properly if I try with another Disc or version ?

4. will I have acces to all the drivers from sony ?
any other ideas ?

 

Search is your friend. There is a thread here with specific instructions on how to do a clean install of Vista. There is a link to that thread in my signature below. You will FIRST need to restore the machine to it's original out of the box state, because there is a driver that you will need to begin the process. (Specifically the Intel SATA disk controller driver.)

Get the document from the clean install thread. Read through it. Restore your machine to the "out of box" state. (To do this power off, during the boot process hit F10. This will cause the machine to boot from the restore partition and allow you to restore the machine.) Then download the drivers and apps specified in the document. Copy off the SATA driver as instructed in the doc. And then you should be able to do a clean install following the steps provided.

Gary

 

*bump* anyone ? seems ive run into one of those "wont be able to solve" problems

 

How can I stop SQL server loading automatically when windows start ? I want to put it on manual start.

Also, I have normally 74 Processes running on my Laptop when it loads windows. Please tell me which processes like above should be stopped loading automatically

 

@dare2dream: Go to All Programs->Microsoft SQL Server->Service Manager and uncheck the box about Auto Start Service When OS Starts.


I'm considering the purchase of FZ21M (european model).
Is it possible to install a second (USB) 802.11g adapter?
Has anyone tried anything like it?
Do you have to uninstall the driver of the onboard wireless?
Any help appreciated!

 

While that might work on older versions of SQL server, on SQL Server 2005 the Service manager no longer exists, and copying one from an old SQL 200 instance to Vista doesn't work. (I know, I tried!)

But this can be done by going to "Administrative tools | Services" and setting the SQL Server service to MANUAL instead of AUTOMATIC.

But this begs the question, dare2dream, why do you have SQL Server installed and why do you wish to turn it to manual? Was this because of the VAIO media sharing? If so, are you NOT using the VAIO media sharing? If not, you can uninstall it and it will automatically un-install SQL server as well.

Now if there is some other reason you are running SQL Server, and you would like to have a Vista compatible equivalent of the SQL Manager that burtzovlaxos mentioned go to: http://www.sqldbatips.com/showarticle.asp?ID=46

This little gem works just like the old one from SQL 2000. You add it to your Vista Startup folder. It sits in your system tray and allows you to start and stop SQL Service at will. It will also, as burtzovlaxos mentioned, allow you to set the service for manual start.

Gary

 

This doesn't uninstall the SQL server 2005 automatically. You have to do it manually though.

 

I mispoke a bit... On an FZ, if you install the VAIO media sharing application it also needs the Vaio Entertainment Platform. The Platform in turn automatically installs a named instance of Sql Server 2005 Express edition (this is the MSDE replacement). If you then uninstall Vaio Entertainment Platform, it will automatically uninstall the named instance of SQL Server it installed. If there is another named instance or an default instance of SQL Server the uninstall of Vaio Entertainment platform will leave them alone. But if it finds no other instances, it will uninstall SQL server completely.

I am absolutely certain of this. I have done it. I make my living with SQL server and when I saw that there was a named instance of it installed on my FZ, I had to dig into this to be certain how it would affect my development work.

Gary

 

I just bought this laptop for my wife from OfficeDepot. I have the Sony FZ240 model with 2 gig Ram and C2D T7250 with Vista Home Premium

My question is this:

This computer runs really really slow. I have taken off all the crapware. I have switched off Indexing and I have switched off SuperFetch. The system is still SLOW.

I expected this thing to fly, but it is not. I almost want to go back to XP.

I have tried numerous tweaks and nothing works. My wife uses this for Photoshop CS2 and it is painfully slow.

Truth be told, I didn't expect to see the progress bar on this computer for simple things.

So, what is the secret to get this baby running fast? XP Pro?

Edit: Can I add a 7200rpm SATA drive on this to make it go faster? I think it has 4200RPM one.

 

Switching off SuperFetch will actually make it slower not faster. Super fetch tries to preload the things you use most often and will free up the memory it uses if and when that memry is needed.

Gary

 

when i tried to uninstall Adobe Acrobat 8.0 from add/remove programs, it crashed the explorer and rebooted the notebook, now how do i uninstall acrobat since it has been removed from the add/remove program list but did'nt get uninstalled completly the first time and the uninstaller is nowhere to be found in the acrobat folder.

thankx

 

Hey guys I posted before but noone answered...
Is it possible to use a wireless usb adapter with a vaio?
Thus, not using its embedded wireless but the adapter?
Please guys...

 

^^why do you want to use a separate adapter when there is one built in already? Do you mean a mobile broadband usb adapter? You should be able to use it.

 

Did you defragment your hard drive after removing all the crapware? If no do it first. Use a free registry cleaner like CCleaner, windows one care safety center to clean up the registry. Using the msconfig utility remove unnecessary start up programs/processes. Doing the above things will definitely speed up your baby.

 

Yeah I know. I have tried it both ways and I do not notice a difference. The one difference that I do see is that with SuperFetch off, my HD activity has died down quite a bit. With it on, the HD was just running away all the time.

Thanx. I have tried all that, but no improvements.

I think it has to be the slow HD. If I replace the HD with a 7200 RPM, will that overheat this one? I know we can customize on Sony site to get it with that...but not sure if it would be the same mobo and cooling system and so on.

 

How many processes do you have running in your notebook after start up? What is the start up time?

You can try disabling automatic or (never check) windows update. That's the one which contributes to increased CPU activity minutes after start up.

 

hi, finaly I managed to get a clean install.
I just tried with another version of windows vista ultimate and it worked.
After instalation I was wondering how to install all the drivers and some sony software... and after 1-2 hours of headacke I managed to find the utility for driver instalation ( it's on the 1st recovery DVD ).
So I instaled all the drivers ( graphics card, sound etc ).
But there is a problem: the integrated webcam and the card reader just refuse to work. I installed all the drivers, rebooted the system and nothing happens, there ar still 2 unknow devices in my device manager.
So my question is "where could I download any drivers or newer drivers to the camera and card reader"
?

PS. note that ( at least according to my knowledge ) you can't restore the system to it's original configuration if you hace no C:.
I mean when I formated the C: and tried to restore the OS and other stuff it just didn't worked...
Now that I have an OS on C: it would work ( I tested it )

 

Your questions are all answered in the document in the FZ clean install thread. The link to that thread is in my signature below.

Lets take any further discussion of this clean install to that thread so other folks with similar questions will benefit as well.

Gary

 

What is the use of the setup.exe application in the C:\windows\sonysys\?

When I ran it, it installs windows vista again. But I cancelled the installation process.

 

You ran BEFORE you had any idea what it does?????

On my clean install of Vista on and FZ190, I have no such file. I am not sure what you mean when you said in installs Vista again?

Gary

 

Here are some of the snapshots of the setup file and the window that I got after I opened the setup. When I clicked the install button a full screen windows vista installation opened up.

 

I see it was sonysys\wau not sonysys. Check this thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=172294

So any idea HOW this folder got there. Refresh my memory are you running Vista as preinstalled, semi-clean or clean installed?

Gary

P.S. Just realized WAU = Windows Anytime Upgrade. So now how does THIS figure into the equation???

 

^^ I am running vista pre-installed. I was wondering whether I can do semi-clean/clean install using that setup file. It it is related to Windows anytime upgrade that might not work.

 

Now wait a second. If you are still running the pre-installed Vista how did this WAU directory get there???

You cannot do a semi-clean install or a clean install with that file it is for UPDATES only. But I still don't understand HOW it got there. I am pretty sure a preinstall should not have that there. But I may be wrong about that.

Can any one else on an FZ series machine, running the Sony installed instance of Vista, please check for this directory?

Gary

 

This is in my windows/sonysys folder






Sorry, my Vista is Sony installed

 

No that is EXACTLY what I was lookimg for. I wanted to see what it looked like on a Sony installed version of Vista.

Thanks a bunch!

Gary

 

Directories in WAU\boot\

 

Ehm, sorry guys, but i stiil use my FZ with the pre-installed OS, and i don't have that sonysys folder in my Windows folder...

Just to make things a little more complicated

 

Ok, nevermind about the SONYSYS folder. The WAU that is there, on SOME machines apparently, is not going to pan out for what I had HOPED it might do.

Sorry... We now take you back to your regularly scheduled "Vaio FZ owners thread" already in progress.

Gary

 

Do a search in help and support on your Vaio for Windows Anytime Upgrade. The folder seems to used to help upgrade to another version of Vista. Not to reinstall Vista. Although, you still need a disc to upgrade. . At least that is how I read it. But, I am not good at that stuff.


Ken

 

I'm a student and I have already based my project on the specificate adapter's chipset. Recoding for another chipset will be a major pain in the @ss. Plus, the fact that I still can't find out upon which chipset the Vaio's wireless is based...

 

I doubt you will find anyone else who has tried a different card, since all of us are using the builtin one and no one has a need similar to yours. You are going to have to try this yourself, I am afraid.

Gary

 

Has any One got FZ290 CTO with 200gb 7200 rpm HD? If yes does the notebook get hot?

 

I currently have the FZ290 CTO and I'm not to sure if it runs too hot. I would have to check. But, I was wondering if it was SLI compatible. And if so would I be able to put anything higher than the 8400m Gt in it such as the 8600 or 8700.

 

You cant, 8400gt having bugs, so you have problems run 2D applications required color palet mixing.

 

Were you able to get verification of that? I know you were having some issues, but hadn't seen if you found out yet whether it was a hardware, driver or software issue.

Gary

 

Hello fellow FZ owners. I bought an FZ160 open box and have switched it 3 times for other open box computers due to a high pitch noise that comes from the lower left of the keyboard. It seems to occur in high perormance mode (with the processor power management set to 100% for both min and max power state). When I reduce the minimum power state to 5% (power saver options), the noise seems to go away until I make it do a task (likely causing the processor to hit 100%). Any tips? I am planning to return it for good. The unfortunate thing is that I really like the computer other than this problem and there are no more 160's and I wonder if all the open box computers were returned for this reason. I was thinking to return it and buy the 240 when it comes out. However, spec wise, the 240 is not as good. Any help/advice asap is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

I dont think i have any use of this SQL service in daily usage also in order to speed-up my OS and reduce settle time when OS loads I want to prevent it from loading automatically.

by the way can you mention disadvantage from preventing it starting automatically ?? in normal daily operations ?