Loss of Brightness Controls After Hibernate Win7 - Offending Software Found

First my thanks to all who contribute to this forum. Your posts have helped me achieve my goal of upgrading my very old VGN-S4XP from XP to Win7. However, I have a small problem I require guidance/assistance resolving. Please read below....

My goal was to upgrade my VGN-S4XP to Win7 32-bit retaining all its in-built functions. I have pretty much achieved this by a clean Win7 install and using some of the original XP drivers from the Sony site. To get the graphics working (Go 6200 TurboCache) I searched for a newer Vaio model (VGN-FE28B) with the same card and Vista support. I tweaked the INF file to recognise my specific card and it installed perfectly. I also used the FE28Bs Setting Utilities DLLs and Event Service to get all the Fn button functionality working.

Everything was fine. I had full Aero support, could set the brightness in the Mobilty Centre, Power Options and the Fn buttons. BUT whenever I hibernated the laptop by closing the lid ALL brightness controls (Fn key, Mobility Centre, etc) were lost.

I see from this forum and others that this is a common problem with Vista and Win7, but liking a challenge I set to the task to find a solution. After a lot of investigating I have found the problem, but not a full solution. Here's what I have discovered so far -

1. The brightness controls disappear whenever the screen blanks from closing the lid. If I set 'do nothing' on lid close in the power options, close then reopen the lid, all the brightness controls have gone until I reboot the laptop.

2. I had a hunch it may be either the Event Service or the Utility DLLs. Uninstalling the Utility DLLs solved the problem. But I had no Fn control......

3. I installed the original XP Utility DLLs, keeping the Vista Event Service and I now have all the Fn key functions except brightness which isn't a problem because the Mobilty Centre, Power Options work and keep working even after closing the lid.

Although I can live with the minor inconvenience of the loss of Fn key brightness control, I stuck with the challenge of finding a fix for the problem. I examined the install log for the Utility DLLs installation and found SnyUtils.dll was installed and a huge amount of registry keys were configured. I looked at the DLL with Resource Tuner, but just found a lot of Japanese in it. So I'm kind of hoping that it is one of the registry keys, but I'm not sure what to search for.

I would be most grateful if someone could provide a bit of guidance to help me find a solution to this problem.

Many Thanks.

 

Are you using the WSSU (wireless switch settings utility) by any chance? Over in the FZ Win 7 discussions, we went thru a problem first in getting that old utility to run under Win7 and then finding a way to modify it and use a second copy of an older DLL that it needs to get it to function. The only problem was with that app and the old dll in memory when we hibernate we then loose the brightness controls like you are having. The fix for us was to make sure the WSSU was not running when we hibernate. I now only use WSSU at boot time to turn off bluetooth and then immediately shut it down. Here's a link into a thread where you will see some discussion of this:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/429745-windows-7-clean-install-guide-vaio-fz-33.html Look starting at message #326.

Gary

 

Thanks for the tip and link Gary. A very long but interesting thread.

Yes, I am using the WSSU and I tried disabling it before hibernating as you suggested, but I'm afraid it didn't solve my problem.

As per my previous post, I don't think the problem isn't really associated with hibernating. I believe it happens when the screen cuts out on closing the lid, because the brightness controls vanish not matter what I set the Close Lid action to - Standby, Hibernate, or Do Nothing.

Also, you'll note that I'm using the Vista Utilities DLLs and Event Service. I cannot find a Win7 Utilities DLLs, and when I use the Win7 Event Service I loose all Fn, WSSU, etc functionality. I suspect Sony took a different approach with the Win7 Vaios as this seems about the time they introduced the Firmware Extension Parser. However, thats only a guess.

Any further suggestions, tips, ideas, will be gratefully received....

 

Firmware exension parser has existed for a while at least since Vista. (See my clean install guide for Vista on an FZ model.) I too am using the Vista WSSU albiet modified to use a different (i.e. older) version of the snyutils.dll. And it is THAT dll tha causes the issue. I actually have two verisons of that dll in memory. The newer one which does not cause the issue and the older one needed by the version of WSSU that I need to run. When I kill WSSU it unloads the problematic version of the dll since it is the only app that is using that version. I have a feeling if you can get that vista dll out of memory before you close the lid the OSD issue will go away. But that is just a hunch.

Gary

 

My SSD arrived at the weekend so I've done a clean Win 7 HP build on it and took the opportunity to confirm which Sony driver/app causes the problem.
I did not install the WSSU, just Sony Shared Library, Event Service and Setting Utility Service and NVIDIA driver - all Vista versions. As soon as the Utiils DLL (Vista) goes on, the brightness controls work initially, but then vanish when the lid is closed.
Like I said above, if I use the XP version of the Sony Utils DLL, I don't lose the brightness controls when closing the lid, but this has the (acceptable) side effect of losing Fn key control of brightness. All other Fn keys work.
From this I strongly believe that it is the Vista version Sony Utils DLL.