Vaio FZ Owners Official Owners Thread

when i insert video DVD in my FZ, the default player (windows media player) gives following error:

"windows media player cannot play dvd. you might need to adjust your windows display settings.................... try lowering screen resolution and color quality settings"

please suggest a solution ?

i have FZ with stock windows vista biz and blu-ray player.

It may be noted that the dvd plays fine on WinDVd prog.

 

Hello, I have owned a FZ for about three months now, and there is a whistle like sound coming from the bottom part of the lcd enclosure. I know that there is some hardware there, but why would it whistle!?! And when I touch that area it stops then after a while starts again. I relieve pressure and it stops. Could it be that it is sound coming from between the lid panels? This post is similar to other posts here about weird whistling high-pitched sounds, but they were referring to the CPU. Could you guys possibly help me figure this out?

 

Shadow, I think it's just some vibration sound that the harddrive makes while it is processing, so when you put your hand on it, you are dampening the vibration. I think it's normal though for the FZ laptops at least

 

I just want to buy a FZ but many people say that it is hot and noisy. Is it true?

 

if I use 9 cell battery, is it heavy?

 

My FZ is quiet and does not get hot. I am very satisfied with it.

 

I don't think it's the harddrive. As far as i know they don't whistle, and besides that it's located underneath the right palm rest and not near the screen. It does sound like a possible resonation problem if touching or pressing the casing stops it, or a bad backlight maybe. Are you sure it's not the screen itself? I would have it looked at by Sony before the problem gets worse, it isn't normal or a known problem as far as i know. Assuming that it's not your fan ofcourse.

I do know that condensators also make a whistling noise before they are about to blow(as in explode), if it gets louder or higher pitched turn of your machine at once and take out the power cord and battery and don't turn it on again before you have somebody look at it.

 

Hi everyone,

I recently bought an FZ18E, which I'm absolutely delighted with - style, performance, portability...everything!

However, I'm noticing that when I use any Vista "Power Plan" other than "Power Saver", there's an intermittent hum-cum-buzz sort of noise coming from beside the processor.

I've had a search and it seems to be a problem with Core 2 Duo's in a lot of notebooks from all manufacturers and not just Sony. But is there any Sony-specific fix for this?

Normally, it's OK because I'm either on the move or sitting on the sofa, and so select "Power Saver" to keep the battery. But when I'm at my desk, I'd like to be able to get as much performance as possible.

(PS - sorry for the highly unoriginal username!)

 

To update on the above, I went into the power options and have changed the "Minimum processor state" to 5% for the High Performance plan and the noise is much less frequent and less noticeable at the same time. Not entirely gone, but given time I'll probably not even notice it.

 

Perhaps try reinstalling the driver? or even a new updated driver from Sony? Other than that there are REAL technitions on the Live Online Support at esupport.sony.com

 

I've tried these. It appears to be missing the video driver. And the video drivers i've tested from the video2go site do NOT work for me. Does anyone know what the issue might be?

 

Hi.I'm new in this forum and owner of FZ21M.I have one question.Is it possible to downgrade to xp?.Thanks.

 

it is but it's hard. if you search this forum I have a pretty in depth tutorial on how to do it. I used other people's tutorials on how to make XP recognize the SATA hard drive and other problems I had while doing it.

 

I have a FZ21E, and I just did my downgrade to XP. Read here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=2630474#post2630474

For drivers I used this -> ftp://ftp.vaio-link.com/PUB/OS/XPDOWNGRADE/FZ19

The only issues are the graphics card and audio driver, since i have a 8400M GT, so I download these -> http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=15902 and forced 8400M GS, work fine so far.

**EDIT** For audio driver, the FZ19 driver is reconizable, and installs the driver, win xp doesn't accept it properly for the first time, i only got the sound working after unistalling and reinstalling the device like 5 times!**EDIT**

And forget Fn key.. those dont work... if anyone has suggestions.. would be appreciated!

 

Thanks all for the replys.About audio FZ21M use HDMI digital audio.I read somewhere the driver from FZ19 is not compatible with this interface.I have all ready fix my Win xp CD with SATA driver (tested) and all hotfixs till now and everything else.Can anyone confirm this about audio HDMI?

 

In what way do they not work for you? Can't you get them installed, or are you just not satisfied with how they perform? There are so many different drivers you could try on laptopvideotogo, i can't imagine that there isn't one that wouldn't work for you. They seem to work for everyone else.
If you have trouble installing them; read the Quickstart guide on the website, and the FAQ's. It really isn't that hard.

 

Can anyone check this. ftp://ftp.vaio-link.com/pub/OS/XPDOWNGRADE/FZ29/.Is this better than FZ19 DOWNGRADE?.

 

is the FZ21s santa rosa based?
is the 8600m gs any good in it? is it DX10? can it play bioshock?

is it worth spending about £100 more to get this FZ over the 17" cheaper (8400m nvidia GPU) AR51E?

thanks

 

bump^^^^^^^^??

 

Singh100,

I don't own an FZ but yes the FZ21s is Santa Rosa based, and has the 2.2GHz T7500 processor. I think it looks fairly reasonable for graphics, you can see some benchmarks here for the 8600M GS -> Benchmarks.

Personally I would prefer the FZ21s over the AR51E as it would be more portable (2.8Kg v 3.8Kg), a bit faster due to the faster processor (2.2Ghz v 2.0Ghz with 4MB cache v 2MB cache), faster hard drive (5400rpm v 4200rpm) and according to those benchmarks better graphics (8600M GS v 8400M GT) plus it comes with Bluetooth built in - I think all of that is worth the 10% extra cost, although the AR51E does have a higher res screen of 1440x900 v 1280x800 so that may be of importance to you.

 

i have been searching for a good laptop since 2 months !!!

finally i have found the japanise vaio fz


my q is : is the 8400m gt upgradable

i mean can i remove it later

 

thanks for your reply
screen size was of importance until i saw the FZ and its components.
Im now swaying towards the FZ because of the better graphics and HDD and cpu + blu-ray, however i think i need to go to the sony store 1 more time to make sure im happy with the 15.4" screen.

oh and 1 more question about the fz21s Blu-Ray drive.. the specs say its a BD-ROM, does this mean i can write to blu-ray aswell? because most of the reviews which i have found have said its capable..

 

No, the FZ21S has a blu-ray reader only, you'll need a FZ21Z if you also want to burn blu-ray. The write speed on that drive is very slow though, only 2x for normal blu-ray disks and 1x for dl blu-ray's. Maximum write speeds for cd's for that drive is 8x.

On the size matter; before i owned my FZ i used a HP 17" notebook for 3 years or so. I was a little reluctant to settle for a smaller screen at first, but i decided to go for it since i was tired of carrying around something that large and heavy. The first two days i was so sorry i had chosen a smaller size notebook every time i was working on it, the screen just seemed so tiny after what i was used to, but after two days i didn't notice it anymore to be honest. And it fits in my backpack so i can take with me much easier, even when i want to leave the car at home

 

First of all; why do you use these annoying big letters? I'm sure the shortsighted people on this thread have reading glasses so there's really no need for that.

Good question though, i'm not entirely sure, but i don't think so. You would say so because it's available with different gpu's, but i'm afraid Sony welded them solid to the motherboard and it's probably impossible to get a fitting replacement gpu.

 

reading around the forum,i found out that many of you have changed their hd.i have an fz11z uk version and thinking of upgading the 4200 hd with a 7200 one(hitachi).my questions are:where is the hd located on the specific model?is it easily replaceable?are there any walkthroughs available?
would appreciate all the input i can get on the matter!
thanks

 

It's not that hard to do. Just open the lid that's underneath the notebook at the hight of the right palmrest and take out the hdd. Take it out of the bracket and put the new one on the bracket, then put it all together like you took it apart but then with the new harddrive. You just need one screwdriver to open the lid and remove the bracket from the hdd.

 

cool!thanks for the info and the quick reply!you guys rock!!!!!!!!!!

 

after installing new HDD, what are next steps ??

how to install HDD driver?
is it possible to load image from recovery discs ?

 

good question.also,can we do an exact copy of the existing hd and copy all data to the new one via an external enclosure and then switch discs?

 

Yes you can do an exact copy of the original hdd, but you'd have to buy a separate kit. there's a tutorial about that on cnet.com, I don't know the link to it though.

 

J bought in europe FZ21Z with 8600 GS. In 3dmark06 i have 2940 points on driver 169.04. After OC 800/700mhz 3890 points.

 

Yeh, I got 2788 with using default drivers on my 21S. Seems like the 8600GS is actually a decent and not far behind the 8600GT.
So far, I very much liking my new FZ - it has 'premium' feel about it. Performance wise, it seems to be top notch. The screen is sublime and I believe the x-black double lamp screens are the best on the market.

My only complaint is, a 'whine' sound seems to appear when I put the screen brightness down. Is this normal?

 

for all 8400 gt owners:which drivers do you use for best performance?links would help
cheers!

 

169.01 is my favorite. Here's a link. http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=15707

I haven't tried the newest one yet (169.04) since I didn't know about it until just now. I'll be downloading it and we'll see how it goes

 

I searched for a long time to see if anyone had any experience using the FZ with Microsoft Flight Simulator X, but couldn’t turn up any threads that directly answered the question. However, I just got my new FZ 290 on Nov 2, 2007 and FINALLY had a chance to see first hand what it could really do with this infamous piece of software – or to see how bad it could be, whichever the case.

Well, I am very happy to report back to you that not only is it possible to run it on this machine….it runs well! I was shocked! I was fully expecting it to have god-awful frame rates, choppy movement, etc, but I had almost all settings on “High” and got frame rates of between 25 fps and 35 fps. Now, I am by no means a gamer, so I guess it depends what you’re comfortable with, but for me it was plenty to enjoy the game on a screen that size. (Specifically, all settings were at “High” except for the weather, which was on the “Medium High” setting). I did install SP1 right off the bat (which supposedly increases performance dramatically), so I have no idea to what extent this improved things. Also, when I got my machine, I configured the power management setting to “high performance,” which allows the CPU to run at 100%....so when I was running FSX, my FZ got REALLY hot near the vent.

My FZ’s specs:

2.2 Ghz Core Duo
2 GB RAM
200 GB Hard Drive @ 7200 rpm (a new option that appeared towards the end of October ’07 on their website!)
nVidia 8400 GT graphics card
Windows Vista Premium
Hi-Color screen
DVD drive (decided not to get the Blue-Ray drive).

I remember also reading somewhere that another program, Adobe Professional 4, had some trouble with Vista. Again, I’m happy to report that it worked just fine on my machine last night – maybe they made some recent changes or something. I uploaded around 500 high-rez photos last night and did some basic editing, and had no problems whatsoever.

Finally, on the topic of bloatware….yep, it had a lot of bloatware for sure, but I didn’t have quite the same list of software as others’ experiences – seemed like it was reduced somewhat from what others were reporting (?). Or maybe there’s a lot left I haven’t found yet (?).

Anyway, I am quite pleased with my new machine as you can tell...

Cheers,

 

For the video card driver question, I updated to 169.04 and everything works fine, my 3dmark06 went up by 10 points which isn't as big of an increase as when I upgraded from 163.75 to 169.01 which went up by almost 100 points. Hope that helps

 

Well fz21m might have blu ray support but what happens with the sound output? does it support hdmi 1.3? Can it output for example Dolby HD or DTS hd?

 

Thanks for the quick reveiw Ptan, that was very helpful! Do you have a black or white keyboard? Take some pictures?

 

Quick question about the video drivers from laptopvideo2go guys.

Do your configurations include Blu - Ray drive? Mine does and i have tried different versions of these drivers.

The problem is that when any of these drivers is installed, the laptop wont play Blu-ray movies. the player will pop up, but video will not play at all. Also, soon as the player runs, the Color scheme is also changed to vista basic. Under these circumstances, i have no choice but to go back to the factory provided drivers that will have no problem with blu ray video.

anybody had any experiences with this?

** my lappie is an fz180e with 8400m gt card

 

Sorry I don't have a blueray disc and the drivers from laptopvideo2go all worked fine for my laptop and each one has improved my laptop's video performance. I think your question should also be posted on laptopvideo2go forum.

 

Hey guys,
I'm wanting to use MAC address filtering on my router and therefore need to find out what my MAC address is.
I've tried running ipconfig however whats I tried to open it, it quickly opens and shuts down again. Does anyone else have this problem?
And also, is there any other way in getting your MAC address, apart from using ipconfig and calling your ISP.

 

Your ISP does not assign your MAC address so calling them is probably going to be greeted by a laugh. (Yes, they CAN get it for you but most likely won't be too happy with the request.)

But you needn't do that anyway, read on.

Like any other "dos"/console command that requires no other user input, IPCONFIG will display its info and immediately terminate. If you use the "Start | Run" box to invoke IPCONFIG it will popup, do its thing and then immediately disappear. The same thing will happen if you use the "Start | Start search" to find IPCONFIG.EXE and execute it.

Instead you need to FIRST bring up a command prompt. Click "Start" and in the "Start Search" box type "cmd" (without the quotes). Hit enter and you will get a command prompt, looking for all the world like a good old DOS prompt. Now in that windowed command prompt box, type IPCONFIG and hit enter. Voilà! You have the info from IPCONFIG and it will remain on the screen until you type EXIT and hit enter or until you close the window.

This works great if all you need to do is SEE the info from IPCONFIG. But what if you want to run "IPCONFIG /RELEASE" or "IPCONFIG /RENEW"? These require admin level permissions for the command prompt. You will get a message stating "The requested operation requires elevation." (The default permissions are NOT at the ADMIN level.) To get ADMIN level, you need to jump through a bit of a hoop. Click on Start and in the "Start Search" box type "CMD" (again no quotes) but do NOT hit enter. Instead, in the list above the "Start Search" box you will see CMD.EXE appear. Right click on that and select "Run as administrator". You will get a UAC popup to which you will select OK. And then you will get a command prompt box like we saw above, but this one will have full admin rights!

Hope this helps.

Gary

 

Thanks a lot Gary.

 

Hi!

I've been following this line since a time and I find all that work you do very useful, thanks a lot.

I own an european FZ-19VN machine, (low-end one, X3100). I just write to tell you that this fantastic AV button up there is totally unuseful for anyone, not only for Nvidia users. It just boots Vista and the multimedia bar at the top of the screen on my laptop, and it is the same problem I've heard from other FZ-X3100 users in different forums.

It has probably no solution and proves to be a great failure in Sony's behaviour. I though about upgrading BIOS to solve this, but AFAIK Sony doesn't provide BIOS upgrades. I entered Phoenix page and with their BIOS update utility they kindly offered me a nice upgrade for my system. They don't tell what's new (for example, if it solves the AV issue), but they ask for money in exchange. I bought the laptop a month ago. WTF is this? Has somebody though about BIOS upgrades?

I'd love to have the computer all time upgraded, but I'm not going to pay every some months for it. What do you think?

Thanks a lot

 

Just another question about MAC address's -
I've ran the ipconfig utility and can see two possible MAC address's (Physical address). For using mac address filtering on my router, which address do I use - The one under "Ethernet Adapter Local Area Connection" or "Wireless LAN Adapter Wireless Network Connection" ?

Thanks, jam.

 

Remember your machine has two network "cards" in it. One for a wired connection and one for a wireless connection. So, armed with that reminder, which one do you THINK you should use?

The ethernet MAC address is for your WIRED connection to a network. The wireless MAC address is for your... wait for it... wireless connection to a network.

I bet by now you know which one, right?

Gary

 

No I don't.... ha ha ha.

Thanks Gary.

 

Hey guys, I bought the FZ140 nearly 4 months ago but after having it for only a couple weeks, my idiotic friend accidently dropped the tip of a barbell on the external cover of the notebook and it created a tiny dent on the outside. Luckily, I hadn't experienced any problems or couldn't find any malfunctions since then; it just didn't look as good as it did before with the dent and what not. However, 3 months later, I started having problems with the screen. It started with the screen blinking many times when I would initially open the notebook cover but eventually it would stop when I moved the notebook cover back and forth a few times. But nowadays the notebook screen doesn't turn on altogether and I would have to restart it to get it to work again. I'm worried that this thing will just get worst and the screen will never turn on again. Do you guys know if my warrantly could help me fix it. I don't know for sure if it was the dropped bar that caused this because the time of the incident was over 3 months apart from when I started experiencing these problems. Shouldn't the problems have occurred right away? Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

 

I have a question. I tried doing a clean install using the recovery disks that I burned. It gave an error at the end Meanwhile I had already deleted the vaio partition on my laptop, so all I have are the recovery disks. So basically I gave up at that point. It's been a while now since and I just had a thought. What if I copy all files and directories from all 3 recovery disks onto a newly created separate partition, and then startup the clean install from there. Would that possibly give the same effect and possibility of a clean install ?

Could anyone help me out and provide a screenshot of their hidden partition, so I can see the tree structure of dirs and files. I attached a dirlist of my recovery folder. The total size of the recovery folder is 9,09Gb.

Also should I name the partition a certain way. Any other conditions I should consider ? I have Vista Home Premium edition.

Many thanks for the input and help.

 

That sucks...sounds like that blow did do some internal damage after all. But this isn't something that fall's under warranty but under insurance. You should ask your friend to call his insurance company how to handle this, assuming he has insurance for this sort of accidents.