Just completed clean install on FZ190 CTO

I just received my FZ190 CTO today and am trying a clean install of Vista Home premium.

First off, let me point out that I am using a retail version of Vista that I already owned. I am not trying to extract Vista from the recovery disks.

Second, I have owned a FE series for the past year and have gone through this same thing to run a clean install on the FE. So I;m not new at this.

Step 1: Opened new laptop
Step 2: Booted up and made recovery DVDs from sony utility tool
Step 3: Rebooted with my retail vista
Step 4. Wiped entire hard drive and installed retail Vista
Step 5. Went to sony site http://esupport.sony.com/perl/model-home.pl?mdl=VGNFZ190&LOC=3 and downloaded drivers
Step 6. Installed drivers in this order:

Audio
wireless card
camera
touchpad
memory card reader
Modem
Shared libraries
Notebook utilities​

Step 7. Uninstalled crappy sony camera capture app, wireless settings app. These are automatically included with the notebook utilities and I installed that only to get the sony event service and utilities dll (this is what makes the volume, etc buttons work)
Step 8. Realized bluetooth does not work so downloaded and installed bluetooth drivers from the same sony site above

So now I have a very clean vista running on an FZ190. Much much much faster than the first time I booted up.

I have two problems remaining.

1. I don;t like this toshiba bluetooth app. I want Vista to use it's own bluetooth utility and don;t want the corny bluetooth transfer things when I go to My Computer. So I need to extract the drivers only from the Toshiba bluetooth driver package I got from the sony site and use device manager to manually install only the device drivers and forgo the toshiba apps.
2. I have the nvidea 8400M GT video card and for some reason, this driver is not available on sony's support site (and it is not on nvidia's site). So this driver is SOMEWHERE on my recovery dvds but I have no idea how to find it or how to extract it. Very frustrating!

So if anyone knows how to extract drivers from an .exe file (I've already tried winzip and winrar) please let me know.

 

for .exe's, don't u just install the exe file to a separate directory and then scour the files it creates for the drivers? Make a dummy directory.

 

Yes, I copied all the files from my Temp folder that were created by running the exe installer and tried to have windows look through those files for the bluetooth driver. No luck.

I've just spent the past few hours trying to find the 8400m GT drivers. I've even tried other manufacturers sites that use this video card. Guess what, sony fz seems to be the only laptop right now using this exact card and for some odd reason, none of their driver sites have the 8400m GT driver

Tried the recovery dvds and there was an option to re-install the drivers but I get an "Error 506:64" half way through and it dies.

Sometimes I really, really hate the world of PCs.

 

for vista reinstall. can i use any retail install cd with the keycode given on my laptop?

 

as other people have already pointed out, there is a driver for the Nvidia 8400M GT on laptopvideo2go.com.

http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=13441

Simply extract the driver file on your harddrive and then replace the nviv.inf with the "modded" INF file provided on the webpage. People who benchmarked their GPU before and after say, this driver works better than the one installed by Sony.

 

and yes, the webpage only lists the Nvidia 8400M GS, but the modded inf file makes it available for the GT as well.
According to the webpage Nvidia essentially makes only one driver for all its graphics cards, but does not list all models every time.
Anyway, my FZ works pretty well with it.
As an aside, is there really a difference between 8400M GT and 8600M GS? It seems their specs as published online are the same except for some clocking speeds.

 

Mine works well with the gpu driver version 101.28. I got a 3dmark06 score of 2650 (no overclocking), what is the tyical score from 8600GS?

 

The FZ Nvidia driver provided by Sony (v7.15.11.128) is only available at their Asian ftp servers at the moment.

ftp://ftp.vaio.sony.co.jp/pub/vaio/download/SP-011936-30/NVDVID-01193630-UN.exe

 

I just uploaded the nVidia and Bluetooth drivers as privided by Sony here:
http://rapidshare.com/users/79IN7K

It looks like the bluetooth stuff you want is in a .cab file.

 

According to notebookcheck.com the 8600M GS got a 3Dmark06 of:2743
(4765 for 3Dmark05)
Makes me wonder if 8400M GT and 8600M GS are really distinct chips or just the same thing at different clock speeds.

 

The 101.28 Driver (from laptopvideo2go) appears to work better than the pre-installed stock driver from Sony.

 

and what about newer drivers, don't they work better?? (165.01, 162.15....)??

 

I believe some of the higher numbered drivers are for XP. Also, one always has to check whether the inf file contains the 8400M GT.