How to Enable Intel VT and AHCI on a Napa/Santa Rosa platform Phoenix BIOS Vaio laptop

Does one of you know, where the default Vaio Z Bios can be downloaded? Sony download page is quite confusing...

 

It can't. Sony only publishes BIOS updates. So until an updated BIOS comes out (if it comes out) there is no place on their web site to download it.

Gary

 

... so is there another way of making a bios backup?

 

I've successfully enabled VT support on my VAIO VGN-TZ1RXN_B.

BIOS: R0061N7

Reg: 0363.

You ought to update the table on post #41.

 

Guys what is the positive side of enabling AHCI? I know VT helps a lot with multiple OSs, but what about AHCI?

 

Hello, has someone the register key to enable vt on a vaio ar21b ?
I tried every keys... but none seems to work.
The bios version : R0150J6.

I searched everywhere but nothing...

Thanks for you help

Lord_Altair

 

hello all,

I m trying to unlock Vt on my system and i not found the register.

I have a Sony vaio AR 730 E, VT is disabled.

BIOS Date: February 26th 2008

BIOS OEM: R2090J8
Chipset: Intel 2A00 rev 12
Manufacturer: Sony Corporation
Motherboard: VGN-AR730E

Do you have the register for this laptop ?

I m contacting sony and I have the same response (shame on sony woooooo):

Thank you for contacting Sony Support.

I'm sorry to inform you that the Sony VAIO computers do not currently support Virtualization Technology (VT).

Thank you for your time.

The Sony Email Response Team
C62J
Greg

sergio

 

Shame on sony, really disabling VT is probably their way to enforce trusted computing (see links below).. i.e. big brother. Thanks for the BIOS patch! I successfully enabled VT on my sz79.

Sony if you are reading this - Open up the BIOS, or my next computer will NOT be a sony.

-
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/can-you-trust.html
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html
http://www.infowars.com

 

While I agree that it was wrong headed for Sony to disable VT, I don't see ANY connection to the enforcement of trusted computing. The paranoid, black helicopter ramblings in the three links you provided mention virtual machines or VM a total of one, count 'em, one time. And even that mention offers no substantiation that trusted computing would in any way hinder Virtual machines. It makes the claim and never backs it up with any FACTS.

With so much of the IT infrastructure these days relying on virtualization, do you REALLY think that the PC, chip and software manufactures would go out of their way to hinder the use of virtual machines?

Sorry, I just don't believe there is a connection. But let me join you in urging Sony to give us control of VT at the BIOS level. That is a worthy quest, sans the black helicopters.

Gary

 

Hello there,

I don't know what you mean, You say:

change the register of your model from 0 to 1

What do i need to do? I don't understand.

I have a Vaio FZ21Z and I want to enable hardware virtualization. I found elswhere the settings for my model:

VGN-FZ21Z R1120J7 reg 02CD.

So do I change it to 12CD?

Thanks

 

I'm wondering if it is possible to use the Intel-AMT.
If I'm not wrong, then it was a requirement to have VT enabled.

 

No, check out the sample table that's attached in the first post. After generating a symbol table with symcmos from your own bios, you'll need to change the value located at 02CD (search for this in the table) to 0001 and update the nvram with this modified table.

 

Guys, does also include SZ280P? I'm not sure if my older generation of SZ has VT or not.

Thanks

 

Yes, your SZ280P (Napa version) supports VT as long as your CPU supports it as well. You can update the BIOS to R0112N0 then follow the rest of the instructions.

 

Hi! I have and Vaio VGN-FE28H. This laptop has a core duo without VT (from factory). But I've changed the cpu by a Core2 T5600 with VT. And I have the bios problem. My bios version is: R0174J3. How can I find the correct register to change? Thanks and sorry for my poor english!

 

Another one for the list:

VGN-TX3XP/B - R0034N3

VT-x: (03a2) [0000] ---> (03a2) [0001]

I don't care for AHCI, so...

 

Thanks for your reply. I managed to follow your instructions, but i am afraid it is not working. Here's what I did:

Started up using Hiren's startup disk
enabled NTFS
went to my c drive
started Symcmos
dumped the cmos
edited it to 0001
saved
checked if it really did it and it did
write it to nvram which it said was working

After that i have no result. VT is still disabled. I have no idea what is going wrong here. Can you help?

 

Does anyone know how which symbol one would use on the SZ to allow overclocking of the nvidia gpu? (I know that the laptop might get hotter than desired.)

 

hi, Killerzac

Can you do same with the bios R3041Q0 for the CR520E?
Thanks in advance!

 

The register definitely seems to be correlated with the firmware number which makes sense.

I haven't seen anyone post any success with BIOS version R0091N7 (which I have on my TZ31). Anyone had any luck with this one? Also, does anyone know how I could dump my BIOS, in order to be able to disassemble and take a look for myself? I'd rather look into the code and find out for sure rather than just plugging values as I don't want to have to pull this laptop apart if I get it wrong.

 

I would like to enable VT-X on my AR-730E too. However, I was doing some research on advantages of VT-X and saw this post

http://tombuntu.com/index.php/2007/10/01/should-you-enable-intels-vt-x-in-virtualbox/

After reding this, the question that comes to mind is that is it really worth the time and risk? Does any one have +VE experiences after enabling VT-X?

 

I have the exact same notebook and bios. I tried 027F becuase it worked for other AR owners although the BIOS is different. It didnt break anything , but Microsoft Virtual PC is still showing that Hardware Virtualization is disabled.
Also, when I modified the values, i did so in notepad (I created the initial table in DOS and also updated to bios in DOS).

Did you have any luck so far?

I am not sure how to find out exactly if the VT-X is indeed enabled after the bios hack. Can anyone help in determining this?

 

Hi,
I have a SZ71WN/C with the lastest BIOS and I want to enable Intel VT and AHCI as well. But the file I obtain from symcmos doesn't works. Can anyone help me with this?

 

I am at a loss here, and rapidly becoming desperate. I am pretty sure this laptop supports VT (cat /proc/cpuinfo shows vmx), but symcmos only gives this output:

This is build 643710-035. The older 643710-023 build only gives

as output. Can anyone please help me a bit here? What is going wrong? Is symcmos unable to read my cmos?

 

Hi guys, just registered to post this one.

I managed to activate ahci on my vaio tz :
BIOS : R0052N7
The ahci setting is at 0159

(0159) [0000] --> (0159) [0001]

with symcmos.

Big fat warnings :
1) if you use windows (XP/Vista) you might want to install some drivers or have them at hand on a usbkey, floppy or whatever to be able to boot. I didn't test this setting with any Microsoft OS so your machine may well blow up or become alive and eat your cat.

2) if you don't have a secondary hard-drive (that is if you have a dvd drive in your vaio) then this setting is not worth it. Your pata hard drive might get slower and since its pata there is little point to have ahci enabled for this drive.


If you use a modern linux distro, ahci is available by default (tested with Ubuntu, Fedora and Suse should be fine too).
You should see something like this in your kernel log after you boot with ahci :

[ 4.999261] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: version 3.0
[ 4.999291] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: PCI INT B -> GSI 22 (level, low) -> IRQ 22
[ 4.999388] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: irq 2298 for MSI/MSI-X
[ 4.999497] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: AHCI 0001.0100 32 slots 4 ports 1.5 Gbps 0x5 impl SATA mode
[ 4.999504] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: flags: 64bit ncq pm led clo pio slum part
[ 4.999513] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: setting latency timer to 64


Cheers,

 

Thanks.

Screaming black helicopters and paranoia is a sad attempt at 'bad jacketing' my very valid concern regarding large corporation say over what we can and can't have as far as technology.

Most things are hackable so i'll downgrade my 'paranoia' for you to just a simple compassion for those (with their inability to hack) who get abused by buying unutilized or redundant features in tech products.

Research 'planned obsolescence' if you think corporations are always looking out for the consumer.

 

The BIOS version of my AR71S is R2090J8. After I changed the value of register 0285 to 0001, VT was enabled.

After reading this thread over and over, trying to find the info for my BIOS, I decided to give it a shot. I was going to focus on register 027F because that worked for the AR series (except for the AR21S).

I opened the cmos dump file, created with symcmos, in the dos editor... and to my dismay register 027F has the value 0005! Not 0000.

Next I decided I was only going to try the registers starting with 02 but higher than 027F. The first register I tried was 0285. Did a cold boot. Checked VPC and, lo and behold, VT is enabled!

 

Hmm... did any one try this? please update!

 

In terms of performance and responsiveness of VPC 2007, I noticed some improvement (less sluggish that is) after VT was enabled. But what really made a big difference, was adding <enable_idle_thread type="boolean">true</enable_idle_thread> to options.xml. This was a tip by Ben Armstrong for improving performance of VPC on laptops.

I do not want to create the impression that enabling VT did not improve VPC's performance. It certainly did. But only after applying Ben Armstrong's tweak, I achieved snappy performance. I think it is the combo that did it.

I am very grateful to Bogart et al. for being so altruistic to post info here how to enable VT. Thank you for helping me liberate my VAIO!

 

Which tools to use? what is the process? please advice.

 

Did you even bother to follow the link in the original message? It has fully detailed instructions that could not posssibly be clearer on how to do this.

Gary

 

To enable VT: follow the excellent instructions by Bogart in the first post of this thread.

To max out your processor for VPC: follow the instructions as described by Virtual PC Guy (click on the link in my previous post).

HTH

 

It doesnt work on my 64bit VPC. There isnt even options.xml file.

 

Did you try it on BIOS version R2090J8? Since it is a BIOS setting, I am surprised it would work in 32 bit VPC (which I am using) and not in 64 bit VPC.

options.xml should be in a subdirectory "Virtual PC" located under your profile's directory. You could try finding options.xml in "C:\Users\<your_profile_name>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Virtual PC".

 

Sorry for the confusion, I actually own a sony vaio SR.
This model comes with AMI BIOS...

I am personally confused with this thread and its mixed BIOS revisions / makers.

Please advice!

 

Unfortunately I cannot offer any specific advice on enabling VT in the AMI BIOS. The BIOS of my machine is Phoenix BIOS version R2090J8. I was successful in enabling VT in large part thanks to the info, although not specific for my BIOS version, in this thread. Of course I dreaded the risk of bricking my machine to use trial by error to find the right register but I guess my annoyance that VT was disabled, was far more greater than my fears.

You might consider a multi-boot configuration as a (second-best?) alternative to VT. Good luck.

 

I found it now, thanks!

 

I have spilt this thread and moved the majority of posts about the Montevina VAIO Z, FW, AW, SR laptops over to this thread. http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=350209

Bogart was kind enough to start this a while back and this thread OP is pretty clear that this fix was intended for VAIO owners with Phoenix BIOS laptops. This fix will not work for you if you do not own a Phoneix BIOS vaio.

 

ARRGH!
I have the AR71ZU which has the same BIOS (R2090J8)

Following all the instructions with symcmos and register 0285 = 0001 using a DOS boot CD, I reboot and the machine doesn't boot. I power off the machine and when I restart it, the BIOS has reverted to the factory defaults.

Any ideas?

 

I am aware that you said you followed all the instructions, but just to double-check: did you coldboot after updating the NVRAM with -u flag?

I will post the symbol table of my NVRAM settings later here, so you may use it to compare it with yours.

 

Erm, I actually warm booted it first and that's when it didn't boot properly. The cold boot after that loaded the bios defaults.

I'll have to try that again.

 

Ok, I have done the cold boot immediately after the -U and when it reboots, it clearly is doing something, but the display is blank, and the illuminated SONY logo does not light up.

Again, another cold boot resets the BIOS to factory defaults.

 

It worked for me too on a SZ330P doing this way.

BIOS R0096N0: key 0399.

Thank you taphil.

 

Bios R0061N2 (Sony UX-90S)

VT-x trigger is located at address 0x366.

Sincerely,
Jerome Ibanes

 

Followed all the instructions on the first thread page and i believe i've got a similar issue to DrCrank a few posts above. I'm attempting to enable VT on a TZ90 (Japanese version of the TZ150) with the R0052N7 Bios, everything seems to work fine (changing register 0363 as per the table in this thread) but once i cold boot after -u i get the Vaio logo screen, it then takes loooong time to post but once it does it can't find any of my HDD drives as well as my USB drives. Any amount of cold boots after that ends in the same result. It does allow me access to the setup program if i hit F2 on boot and i can set defaults back to factory from there which leaves me back at square 1 without VT.

 

Okay, this seems weird to me but....in answering my own post above, i've been at this all day and was about to give up when i thought that it might be worth it to give the original VMware thread mentioned in this thread a read. So in said thread there was a user that was having a similar problem as i was; he claimed to have fixed it by doing all the work from within dos, including the edit. So i gave that a last ditch shot (took me a while to find an editor for some reason the one mentioned in the original post was a dead link) and the thing worked! All the VT errors i was getting within my virtualization program are now gone. Go figure.

 

I would like to know the AHCI reg code for the r1120j7 bios
(Vaio FZ21s), i just found the code for vt (reg 02cd),
needing the AHCI reg code.
Sorry for the poor english, i'm a brazilian.
Thanx in advance for all users for the help and info.
I've done vt enable for my vaio fz21s and it worked
fine.

 

Is it possible to download a version of the modified R0112N0 BIOS file for Napa SZs to use AHCI and VT-x right away - and to avoid mistakes by modifying the file by myself ?
Or can somebody provide me with the file by PN?

 

Hi
Successful with Sony Vaio VGN - CR520E (R3041Q0)

5BB 0000 -> 5BB 0001

Thank you.
GREMIO - NADA PODE SER MAIOR!!!!!!!

 

I can confirm VT is register 0363 for VGN-TZ27GN BIOS ver R0071N7