Just bought a SZ460N: need to do a clean install, help?

I just bought a sonxy sz460n and paid the premium for it because it was the only notebook that fit my needs. It is a beautiful machine physically in every way, but upon starting it I discovered the loads of bloatware, trial software, and crappy sony software. The first thing I did was start uninstalling all of this junk. I would have thought I might be sparred this nonsense buying a business grade notebook, but I guess not. It has vista business loaded on it and I got rid of a decent amount of crap, but there is still more. I started trying to install some new software but it is giving me nothing but trouble. Applications that work on my recently converted vista ultimate desktop won't install without errors or run without freezing on the SZ. I'm done trying to fix this thing and figure I should just do a clean install of vista. Now this didn't come with any recovery disks, I remember hearing they are on the hard drive and I can burn them somehow?

More importantly I need to know what the essential drivers and programs are I need on this thing and that is it. So the fingerprint reader software, drivers, maybe the built in camera software (not that i use it, but i might as well be able to), any anything else I would need. I'm hoping this will solve my problems but I want to make sure I do it right. Thanks for the help.

 

You can burn your own Recovery DVDs by going to "Vaio Support Central". It sounds like you want to restore your machine to factory condition and try again.

But rather than installing Vista from scratch, wouldn't it be easier to try and disable the offending applications/services? This would let you control what is running without being sure that you can find all the various drivers to reinstall from scratch. From the postings here, it can be done but it sounds more difficult than disabling what you don't want. Presumably, with 160GB of disk you care more about disabling the stuff than physically uninstalling them.

I recall that the Vista tool to display and control startup programs was very clear (or better than XP) on what things were getting started automagically. I forget the name of the tool (and I'm not home right now), but found it by going to Vista's Help and searching for "disable startup program". It showed all the Sony and non-Sony stuff.

 

it isnt just the crap, the system is giving me issues with whatever i am trying to do. it doesnt even show an optical drive and even when i installed daemon tools it wouldn't show a virtual drive when i ahd an image mounted. i can't run sketchup 5 pro without it hanging the moment i try to click something. i can't install my version of nero without errors. they all work fine on my vista machine i did a fresh install on so i dont see any other reason they wouldnt work here except the system is bloated and messed up somehow.

 

also if in install vista again i will just install a version of ultimate i have. i just want to know where i can download a pack of drivers and the minimal software i need.

 

i did a clean install of vista, got everything working again. programs are installing fine now but sketchup still hangs and i dont know why.

 

Try running it in compatibility mode...I'm not familiar with the app but always worth a shot.

Right click on the shortcut or .exe and go to Properties -> Advanced. You'll see the compatibility options there.