Downgrade Any Sony Vaio To Xp (very Important Thread)

Hey people, yeah as the title says this is very important for all of those who can't downgrade your brand new notebooks to a more stable operating system like Windows XP.

TO READ THIS GUIDE YOU MUST HAVE GENERAL KNOWLEDGE OF HOW TO PERFORM A CLEAN INSTALLATION OF WINDOWS


Little introduction:
I live in Argentina and a few weeks ago i went to USA for a work meeting. Since i had extra time i went to see the notebooks and after a small research i decided to buy a SONY VAIO VGN-FZ490 which comes with a GeForce 8400M (this is the main reason why i bought this machine, the cost was fine for it specs) and it came with Windows Vista Home Premium, which realy confident i though "well i can easily downgrade this" I was totaly wrong, i spent the last 3 weeks comeing home after work and doing nothing else than trying to downgrade it, until finaly last night i made it work with FULL drivers and functionality including Fn keys and the S1 and AV buttons with all the manufacturer software and drivers which are almost imposible to find, and when you ask the tech support they don't answer. Ok so now lets see the steps this will probably help most VAIO owners.

Oh but first i want to say one more thing, depending on were you bought your computer (US, UK, ASIA, and others) sony gives downgrade support for some regions, so first check if your region gives support for your machine and it will make your life easier.

STEP 1: FINDING THE DRIVERS
I found the manufacturer drivers in SONY ASIA SUPPORT site this is the link:
http://www.sony-asia.com/section/downloads?site=hp_en_AP_i
Since ASIA does not make my computer model (VGN-FZ490) i had to look in the main ASIA web site for computers similar to mine (similar hardware), i found out that even if the model number is diferent they all start the same, if you have a VGN-AR select and compare all the models that they sell and look for one similar to yours, in my case i compared all the VGN-F models and the series 300 is the same as the 490 in USA. So now is simple go to the support site again and type in the model that is similar to your computer, there select the Downgrade drivers to XP, for my compueter there was a zip including all the drivers and another including the aplications, also there was a manual to see the installation order.

NOTE: I been looking for the manual and i couldn't find it, but the installation order for the drivers and aplications its the same that the download order shown in the site.

STEP 2: INSTALLING THE DRIVERS
Now here you may think you just need to run them (this is only the case if you have the exact same model number that they give support to in the web) but when you install it, it tells you that the driver is not intend to be for your system (this is annoying because we already know that we have the same hardware so the drivers should work) so here comes the magic, how do you bypass this silly protection.

STEP 3: FIGHTING SONY! EXTRACTING THE DRIVERS FROM THE EXE (those selfish b#&$%)
For this you will need a very important program: Universal Extractor
http://www.legroom.net/software/uniextract
Follow carefuly:
1. Install Universal Extractor and integrate to shell.

2. Unzip the drivers if you downloaded the full pack and place all the exe files for drivers in one folder and the aplications in another folder (just to know that we are going to install the drivers first)

3. Right click on one driver and select "Extract to subfolder" the program will launch and will ask you to select an option for unpacking, leave it as it is (first option selected) after a small process (a DOS window will popup) you will have a new folder with the install pack unpacked (make sure the aplication finished unpacking, you will see the taskbar icon disapear).

4. Do the same process with all the drivers and extract to a folder the zip files too.

5. In the end you will have 2 directories, one with the aplications and another with the drivers, and in each of them one folder per aplication/drivers unpacked.

6. So now we have them! all the drivers, if you open one of the folders you will see a small aplication "VERSION CHECK" this is the silly protection that was blocking you from installing the drivers, in the folder "TEMP" if you open it you will find the drivers and in some cases an installation wizard for them. (For example the chipset driver will have an "Intel" installation EXE)

STEP 4: SKIP THIS STEP IF YOU KNOW HOW TO INSTALL WINDOWS AND YOU HAVE THE INSTALLATION ORDER SECUENCE (THAT YOU GOT FROM THE SITE) FOR THE DRIVERS

WARNING: Make sure that you have the unpacked drivers and apps in a disk or pendrive if you are going to format your computer.

Now to make windows detect your SATAII hard drive during a clean install i suggest that you download "nLite" and make a custom installation with the driver loaded, or save the driver SATAII to a floppy disk and when installing windows press F6 to install ThirdParty drivers (i did the nLite thing so i can't explain how to do it with the floppy)
nLite can be found here: http://www.nliteos.com/download.html
The steps are simple just follow the setup and it will guide you, at the end you should have a new Windows XP cd with the driver already installed so all you have to do now is install as you always do.

STEP 5: FINISH THE INSTALLATION
Once you are in the blessed Windows XP use the driver installation guide from the sony website (sorry i don't have the exact link here, you may have to do a little research, but almost any manual will be good, find it in the ASIA website that i mentioned earlier), oh and some drivers don't have an installer or they have a DOS installer (some for windows 2000) so you will have to right click the .INF and click install in those cases. And you are done! Omg finaly! LOL

STEP 6: BACKUP EVERYTHING! (optional)
I realy suggest that you make an image of your hard drive (i use norton ghost version 2003) there are a lot of softwares for doing this, also backup your drivers folder, clean the protected EXEs that you got from sony's site if you want, well all of this is up to you.

I hope that this guide realy helped you (it helped me skipping some hours here at work, LOL) and that you don't have to suffer like i did when i tryed to install XP. Sony worldwide should be more considered of their customers, all of this issue will be in my mind before buying another Sony product. Oh and pass this guide to other forums if you can, other people need as much help as we do.



Good luck to all
grupoapunte, also known as DamX9.

PS: If i missed something please reply, i just registered in this forum to write this guide so i won't come often but i will come. Thanks to others that gave support because thanks to them i could find the pieces to make this guide.

By the way, stick this post please so people can easly find it, Thanks!

IMPORTANT NOTE
Member "Mercerhead" provided a posible solution for audio driver issues, he downloaded Realtek High Definition Audio drivers for his laptop.

Thanks a lot for the feedback!

 

nice guide

 

Sony will most likely not provide XP drivers for their upcoming models, but I hope
we can find the drivers ourselves to get XP on the new models!

 

They will for any of the models that will fall under their VAIO Professional line - Currently BX, TZ and SZ's all have XP options (i.e. XP downgrade disks in the boxes and drivers online), and this will stay the same in the future for the newer models.

Their more consumer driven lines (NR, FZ, AR, and CR and their replacements) have had no XP support here in the US.

 

No, sony usa does that but sony asia is providing drivers for all their models, which is stupid that sony usa dont use them because they sell the same hardware. Thanks to asia website i been able to install factory drivers and utils and that why i wrote this guide. I bought the machine in usa and installed the drivers from the equivalent in asia

 

Just keeping the post alive so more people can read it

 

nice post drivers are available for XP on the sony esupport site (USA, coz my model is a USA model, and it wont allow me to install any other)

 

How about my Vaio VGN-FE855E? can it be downgrade to XP Pro? help me please, what steps should i take....

 

Not for my model, like many others in usa support site, i talked to a support agent and i got no answer i been fighting to get my laptop work with xp for 3 weeks and i made it without their help. Some old machines have the drivers in that site but they stoped giving support to the new ones.

Im prety sure you can, how old is your computer? you should read carefuly my tutorial i made it generic, if you follow the steps you will probably find what you need, check the asia support site for a machine with the same hardware as yours and then look for drivers for that computer and once you have them do what the tut says. Good luck!

 

Thank you for this detailed guide. I followed your instructions exactly and installed windows xp with adequate drivers. Everything works perfect except the FN keys, any idea how to fix this problem? Thanks.

 

Hmm thats weird, besides the drivers, are you sure you installed all the aplications in the other they should be? i think VAIO event service takes care of that, please send me the link of the machine you downloaded drivers from and your exact computer model and in what country you bought it (or the link to your computer model) so i can give you a better answer

 

Im checking it often these days so ask me if you need

 

dude... it's not good forum etiquette to keep bumping your own thread without any fresh input. I'm no moderator or anything but just getting bored of checking this thread only to see nothing new.

 

LOL, yeah you are right but im trying to help as much people as posible

 

So I just got my FZ-290 today and I thought "well, maybe I can deal with Vista." No, no no. I simply refuse at this point in time, and would rather go through the hassle of getting my beloved XP on here. I was looking around on the Asia site, and I've narrowed down my driver getting choices to one of the 4 following: VGN-FZ25G; VGN-FZ25GN; VGN-FZ25S; VGN-FZ17G.

None seem to match perfectly, or maybe it was the 4 hours of sleep that I got. Perhaps this could begin a model-matching informational post/thread?

Any help would be very <3.

 

Why do people have to go through so many steps to downgrade to XP? Do the downgrade disks that come with the laptops not work? I am still using vista because it actually isn't causing me any problems, runs fine for what I use it for (Office, web), with the only minor annoyance being how long it takes to boot up. I have the downgrade disks, and they tempt me, but haven't yet found the need to downgrade my TZ170. If I run these disks, since they are straight from SONY, shouldn't XP work flawlessly?

 

The official downgrade discs are only provided with certain PCs. I believe it's a MS licensing issue - I think only Vista Business and Vista Ultimate licenses allow the facility to downgrade without buying a separate XP license. Something like that, anyway. If your laptop comes with Vista Home OEM, you will need to downgrade yourself and try to find appropriate drivers. At least that's how I understand it.

 

Thats right, downgrade disks come onely with some versions, specialy in USA where they want you to use Vista, i bought my laptop there and i got no downgrade disk nor support from sony when i attemped to downgrade my laptop, so i had to work a lot in order to downgrade it and keep all the features working, so i made the tutorial to help others in the same conditions to solve the problem.


to: ennuideblase
Just check that the chipset and grapics card are the same, oh and the wireless adaptor, the rest is almost always the same, if the drivers you found match by 80 to 90% with you computer then try them because they are probably the same with diferent names.

Good luck!

 

Hi all, firstly, I'd like to say that I read with interest the different work-arounds everyone has come up with so far.
Right then, this is my 2 penie's worth. I have a Vaio FZ21M. Didnt like Vista (which came already installed). Mainly because I dont see the point of "taxing" the puter's resources just to run the OS, when the said resources could be "taxed" for running my music aps.
Anyways, I've found a few work-arounds my self.... they are: Using the FZ219 & FZ229 XP drivers (google for d/l location), for the Nvidia Geforce 8400M GT I got the drivers here ( http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/).
Even got the (Storage Controller) which I think is the mem stick read/write function installed with afore mentioned FZ229 Drivers (havent got mem stick, so cant test!!!). I havent got the Function Keys ( S1, AV) to work as yet, so any ideas please throw them up, thanks.
If any of you cant find any of the drivers Ive mentioned please ask and I'll dig them out and upload them somewhere.....
best wishes all.......

 

I actualy made everything work in my laptop its like if it came with XP installed from the factory, check the asia site for drivers and unpack them, i did it with my new computer bought only 1 month ago, im sure you can find a computer in their site with a similar hardware configuration like yours.

Anyway and to save you time, the sony aplications have the drivers for special function keys, download them from any FZ model seemed to your machine, unpack and install in the specified order and you'll be fine, you can even adjust the brightness!

 

Does anyone know, if I use the Sony provided XP "Downgrade" disks, will it over write the restore partition that's on my drive? Reason i ask, if XP is too much of a pain to setup, which it shouldnt' be, I'd like to have Vista recovery still available. I'll be traveling next week and should anything go wrong, it's nice to have the restore partition. Thanks!

 

Make a vista recovery disk with sony recovery (backup or something) aplications installed in your computer, you will probably need 2 dvd's for this and after install XP.

Anyway the recovery disk is in a separate partition so if you don't delete it while installing XP you shouldn't lose the data, but it's useless if you don't have a boot disk to restore Vista using that partition, you should have something to do it, take all precautions before doing anything.

Good luck!

 

I managed to get a downgrade disk and its the same stuff, unless the disk is compatible with your machine line and that you have the exact machine model that the disk supports, even if you have the same hardware as that model, you wont be able to use it

 

I buy the same laptop (vgn-fz490), could you tell me witch 300 series drivers download?

Thk!!

 

Hey, i got the drivers from this site:

http://www.sony-asia.com/support/download/product/vgn-fz35g?site=hp_en_AP_i

Then i did what's specified in the tutorial.

 

Hello,

I'm looking for XP downgradable drivers for a VGN-CR515E/B notebook.

I checked at the Asian site and am getting the nearest drivers I can find.

Any chance I can find the exact XP drivers for the above model?


Thanks,


Alan

 

I'm actually surprised how much I'm liking Vista on my FW in spite of some particularities specific to the interface of it versus XP.

 

Hi..i have downgraded to Xp but i haven't been able to all the function keys working, only the Volume keys, FN+F2 are the ones i got working, but the rest so ill uninstall it all again, and i will try it again, with this method.
Tnx, for this excellent guide, anyway.

 

Hi all..here i am again.
I have installed all my drivers and everything works great, exept the FN keys. I got al the Multimedia control keys(play,stop..etc)working, alse the FN+F2 is working the only ones that dont work are the FN+F5 and F6..also known as the brightness controls. Maybe someone can help me out...i got a Vaio FW11M...from Holland. And there are no official drivers for the downgrade.
Please help me....

 

No idea, but if you have found drivers for the same hardware then im sure you can full install with this method. Make a backup or kep your restore disks at hand in case you need them.

If you installed sony aplications you should be able to use them, i think you have to enable this function keys with one of these aplications. Anyway the problem could be that sony dosn't provide monitor drivers, (notice that your monitor is detected by xp as plug and play), maybe in the original vista drivers the monitor driver can be extracted and hopefully used in XP. I didn't pay much attention to this matter because i adjusted my brihtness with nvidia software but if you get to solve this problem ill gladly add the solution to the tutorial.

Good luck!

 

Ok, well i have a ATI graphics card, and i have found drivers for XP. But i didn't get it to work, with this driver.
So tonight i will try it with the sony vista driver. But with which app can i extract it????
Tnx anyway.

 

What we actualy need is not the graphics driver, we need the lcd screen drivers. To open the driver package (that you downloaded from sony official support page for you model) you have to use the same aplications specified in the tutorial http://www.legroom.net/software/uniextract

 

I found the vaio utilities package for my notebook. And i extracted it, and in the install.ini file i found a line which said:

NUM_SUPPORT_MODELS=1
[SUPPORT_OS]
Win2K=0
WinXP=0
WinVista=1
and i think the WINXP=0 has to be WINXP=1, so i changed it, but i don't know how to put this file in the installer or how to create a similar installar...am i going in the right direction???

 

I truly don't know, maybe not, what you need to find is the driver itself, the .inf of the lcd screen driver, ill start searching for it too, ill post my findings as well, keep up the good work

 

On a page called driverguide i found LCD driver for some sony notebooks, but they are not for this resolution. And it still doesn't work..
All keys execp the FN F5/6 are working almost, at least the most important.
So im triyng to find info on other models to compare and try.

 

Yeah i been playing with my laptop too and you are right, brightness keys arent working and im sure it has to do with the lcd driver, if we solve this issue xp downgrade will be complete, ill sit down for a few hours this weekend to try to find this driver, sony screens are all the same so there must be something out there

 

I downloaded the sony LCD driver i found them on a page called driverguide, but they aren't working with me. But ill keep looking for a solution

 

Hi guys. Trying to downgrade a VGN-NR31J and not having much luck. I get to the 2nd reboot during the installation, after it installs the drivers, and I then get a BSOD. It could very well be the xp disk I have, but does anyone have any idea why it would do this?

 

Did you press F6 during the initial boot from the XP disc and load the AHCI SATA drivers? If not then that is your problem.

 

I streamlined the SATA drivers onto the XP disk using nLite, so I know that isn't the problem. When I tried it first time it couldn't even find the hard disk. So that's when I added the SATA drivers.

 

OK, just got XP to install.. seems the issue was with the install of XP I was using.

Just need to install the drivers now.

 

ok, everything has installed ok apart from the Ethernet Controller, the Mass Storage Controller, the Network Controller (Wireless?) and the Audio Device on High Definition Audio Bus.

Anyone got any ideas regarding these?

 

make sure you have all the sony controlers so you can use the keyboard properly

 

Hi,
do you know if the problem are your drivers, because i have also installed installed Xp on my FW, and everything works ok, execpt the FN keys..but i am working on that.
Maybe you can try the drivers posted somewhere in this thread i don't know exactly on which page. And try installing them from the device manager, bacause for me it worked this way.

 

Is there any collection of XP drivers for FW that you can post and thanks.

Gary

 

If i am right that somewhere in this tread there is already a driver package, for XP, i can upload it tonight for you if you can't finf it.(because currently i am at work).

 

Thank you and I will look through this thread later today when I get back and try to find. But, if you get a chance to upload, that would be wonderful and thanks.

Gary

 

Hye, whats your exact computer model? and tech specs too so we can help you find suitable drivers

 

Sorry but I won't know for sure until I get my laptop in a few days. When I am sure and I remember this, will post if I decide to go with XP and thanks for your help.

Gary

 

No problem.