Had to put the Vaio VPCZ13 inside the freezer to update to Fall Creators Update

EDITED: I mean to put the notebook/laptop INSIDE the freezer, not on top of it obviously.

Just a tip to those who have the Sony Vaio VPCZ13 or similar, and keeps shutting down when updating. In my case it happened because the Windows 10 updater does not respect the current power plan. Instead, it allows to use maximum energy (High performance). I had limited the Maximum Processor state to 80%, so it never reaches temperatures over 100 ℃ because this notebook overheats a lot, and didn't replace the thermal paste because it's a nightmare.

Beware then, that Windows 10 Upgrade Assistant does not respect Maximum Processor state or current power plan, so it may lead to computer shutdowns during the install/update of the operating system.

I have also Hackintosh on the VPCZ13, and I've noticed that macOS (formerly OSX), natively limits (throttles) the CPU frequency so it never reaches dangerous temperatures. Great job Apple, Microsoft has to learn a lot from you.

 

CPUs shouldn't be throttling in the first place, especially not during Windows update. Throttling is just a way to stop pathetic heat sink designs from frying your CPU.

 

Mine needs the fans to be greased every 3-4 months. I'll do that today before upgrading.

How is the Z1 behaving with this latest release of Windows? Any pitfalls you have observed? GPU behaving itself?

 

Well, after upgrading to Fall Creator Update 1709 I've found this:
- All the energy plans are missing except the current one you have at the moment of upgrade.
- The task manager now has a performance tab for the GPU.
- Has an option for gamers to prevent cheating.
- I had to reinstall the nvidia 330m patched drivers: VAIO_Z1_330M_INF_Patcher.exe.v4.8.zip mirror
- Some people are reporting that shortcuts to apps are missing in the Menu but the app is not deinstalled itself, just the shortcut.
- I couldn't upgrade using the Updates & security from Settings, because there's always this message "This app is preventing you from restarting". I'ts an unknown app which name is not shown and the icon is a generic icon, and after restart it just rolls back to the previous version. How it worked for me was to use the update assistant Windows10Upgrade9252.exe:
Windows 10 Fall Creators Update now available: The Update Assistant can help you update to the latest version of Windows 10. To get started, click Update now.
After it downloads the update and configures everything, you have a 30 minutes countdown until it automatically reboots. You can wait or hit reboot now, and then when it is just restarting again in the bios power off the computer and put it in the freezer, or you can put it directly. It restarts 3 times more to successfully upgrade.

I recommend you to check on websites or youtube all the new features of Fall Creators Update, there's a lot of stuff.

 

I see, but the hardware is what it is and there's little to be done now. In any case, I'm already using a MSI GT73VR as a replacement for the Z13, and love it because has a 120Hz screen refresh rate. It has really good thermals, I only regret it for having the HQ processor instead of the HK. The ghosting is very low compared to a Dell XPS 4k for example. Macbooks have very low ghosting I think even with 60Hz refresh rate.

In any case, any software like Windows installer, Windows updates, Linux installers, or software that boots from CDs, USBs or such, should have the option to CPU thermal throttle and monitor cores' temperatures so they don't exceed 95 celsius degrees for example.
Software like Acronis True Image or Macrium Reflect suffer the same issue and after a few minutes the Vaio VPCZ13 shuts down due to overheating. I use that software from within Windows instead of using a bootable usb because that way the energy plan does the throttling.

I've got the idea from Snazzy Labs, amazing guys:

 

Thanks. I expect a clean install will work better - always seems to. Registry corruption, I guess. They really should have a separate registry hive for the OS, which can be deleted during the upgrade and rebuilt from scratch, while the other hive retains the user installed applications and settings info, etc.

(btw. please edit the title if you can. I was wondering what putting a laptop ON the freezer would achieve.)

 

I'm not sure you will be better doing a clean install, provided that it works well for you now. I think Windowws 10 updates nowadays try perform pretty much like a clean install, so first try. i have so much installed apps and configured things that don't even bother, I just prefer to buy a new computer if I have to do that.

About the title, yeah it means INSIDE the freezer, I can't edit the title, let's see if admins do it for me.

 

Ok, I'll give it a shot.

 

I think the problem with that Sony is the thermal paste. Its a few years old now and that stock thermal paste turns to powder within two years. You'd likely see temperature drops of 10-15 degrees after a repaste.

 

I think it must be it, because I don't recall having the shutdown issue back in the 2011 when I bought it. Can you recommend me a good tutorial about how to do it?

 

http://www.insidemylaptop.com/taking-apart-sony-vaio-vpcz1-laptop/

Is this the same model?



another video here too.

 

Mine is the 13.3 inches screen (Z13), yours is apparently the 12 inches.
The video is great thank you very much.

 

Thermal problems can even be found in 2015 mobile phones. Just put my Sony Z5 into the freezer for some cache cleaning task which caused it to overheat and shutdown before.
Thanks for the hint!!




Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/vpc-z-change-thermal-paste.594314/

 

The upgrade to 1709 worked, but things are a little buggy. The NVIDIA driver 342.01 (duly patched) kept failing to install. Installed it manually via device manager, but some components were still missing, so I ran the NVIDIA installer again, and it uninstalled the driver and the installation failed again. Sigh! Anyway, installed the drivers through device manager again (for the graphics adapter and HD Audio separately). The NVIDIA control panel appeared in the desktop context menu after rebooting.

Windows Task Manager is showing TWO ethernet interfaces - I only have one. I think it is supposed to show the GPU performance graph also, which it isn't but that might be because the GPU is very old.

I have a third party firewall installed, but Windows doesn't know, and keeps bugging me to turn the Windows firewall on.

Some things that I don't like in this version: The power options panel only shows the currently selected plan - nothing else. To change the plan, you have to go to Windows Mobility, then choose the plan under 'battery status'.

 

You have to enable Test mode on Windows 10, enable installation of unsigned drivers, and uninstall previous nvidia driver. Also, patch first the driver with the INF patched link is on previous post.

The driver version is the nvidia nvidia 21.21.13.4201 which is filename 342.01-notebook-win10-64bit-international.exe

About the network interfaces, to me it's showing 6 because I have virtual adapters from Virtualbox and VMware and such so it's ok. If you go to Settings > Network > Ethernet > Change adapter options probably you have there 2 so they are shown on the task manager which is great.

Don't be so negative, it's not a big deal and sooner or later you will have to upgrade to have latest security updates and features.

 

I know all that - I've been doing it 7 years on this laptop, first with nautis' and Andrew08's hybrid drivers, then with the BIOS hack and ComputerCowboy's patched drivers.

Good point about the virtual ethernet adapters.

Wasn't moaning much about the new Windows release - just about upgrading (in place upgrade) as opposed to a clean install. IMHO upgrading (in place) is more likely to result in a buggy system. Little things like, I'm having to manually connect to my wifi every time I boot up. I'll do a clean install in a few days; let's see if that fares better.

I like this Windows release. Lots of cool stuff that's there on my Dell Vostro 3468 (i3 7th gen); some of it is not visible on my Z1. Maybe Dell did some customisation.

 

Off-topic, but can you share the instructions for the hackintosh? I could never find a completed guide for Z1.
Thanks a lot

 

I don't have the complete guide because I didn't do it personally. A tech guy did it entirely. It runs dual boot yosemite with windows 10.
If you want to use the nvidia 330m you can't control screen brightness, it's always at 100%.

I don't recommend doing it nowadays, it's only a dual core and struggles a lot even with basic web browsing, not to say playing 1080p60 youtube videos.

I guess if you are extremely interested I could take a look but I don't recommend it at all, Windows 10 works perfectly updated to fall creators update.

The Z13 had a great screen back in the day, but if you are buying a new computer I recommend you a 120Hz screen like the MSI GT73VR, it has much less screen ghosting (didn't try hackintosh on the msi, but Windows 10 and linux work perfectly).

 

Paloseco, I had the exact same problem as you, and came up with the same solution!

I own a Vaio VPCZ1 running Windows 10 which requires a little bit of work to set up but it's a great computer so I refuse to toss it aside. Problem is that the beast occasionally overheats and shuts off. I dealt with that by adjusting my power profile and reducing the CPU to 80% of normal. Problem solved, for most situations...

... Except for these damn Windows 10 updates which ignore my power settings, ramp the CPU all the way to 100%, which invariably causes the computer to overheat and shut off halfway through upgrades. Most recently I wasn't able to even boot up after an upgrade went south, so I was starting to get pissed off. Since the computer appeared to be overheating while upgrading, I figured, why don't I stick the computer in the freezer just before the upgrade and see if I can keep it cool enough to not shut down...

First time I didn't have the computer cool enough, and it still crashed. Damn! Was this the end of this machine, time to finally upgrade? I wasn't ready to give up! On try #2, I put the computer in the freezer even earlier, when the upgrade was at 80%. That gave it a good hour of frigid temperatures, by the time the upgrade started the laptop was like an ice block. I was worried a little that the screen may have been permanently damaged due to the cold (frost inside the screen), but THE UPGRADE WORKED! For the first time ever, it went all the way through the upgrade process without crashing! After defrosting, the screen was back to normal, BTW.

Microsoft definitely should be better about ensuring that these upgrades don't overheat computers, so hopefully in the future this is something they can revise in their code.

FYI after I came up with the freezer idea independently, but before I tried it, I googled freezer and Windows 10 update to see if anyone else had tried something crazy like that, so it was your note that gave me the confidence to go forward. Thanks again!

I'm now 8 years with this Z1 and still going strong! (Had to pull the DVD drive and replace it with a 2nd SSD once the original one died and was basically irreplaceable, but otherwise works well). Love this machine.