Old Problem S1 / S2 butttons don't work

Hello,

I seem to have a new "old" problem. I have been looking around and it looks like all the threads on this stop about a year ago, but my SZ780U (Vista Ultimate) is only about 6 months old and developed the problem somewhere around 3 months ago. I do not know what I did to disable the S1 / S2 buttons but they do not work. If I look in VAIO Central they are not listed.

I have tried every combination of download(s) suggested in old threads and every time something else goes bad....like the Fn buttons stop working....and the S1 / S2 buttons still don't work. Almost invariably they are reassigned a VAIO Launcher Setting, instead of special functions (which work just fine, and are programable on my older SZ280P (XP Pro)). If I click on the Vaio Launcher Setting I get a dialog box in Japanese / Chinese. See attached screen shots:
View attachment 27060

View attachment 27061

I always have to system restore to before the downloads and everything works fine again except S1 / S2.

Any new ideas?

 

Install the utils in my Vistax86 thread, see sig, in the order listed.

I also found mixing different / newer vers of some utils broke some functions like the S buttons. After lots and lots of testing I found all the util versions in my pack play nicely together.

 

Thanks Mujja, I'll give it a try.

A couple of questions however.....Do I need to uninstall the existing utilities first or will the ones you provide overwrite / uninstall without having to do so? If I do need to unisnstall the existing ones, can you refresh my memory as to how?.....It's been a couple of years since I've played with utilities on my SZ280 with XP, and never on this Vista notebook. Secondly, do I need to install everything you list, or can I stop at Vaio Control Center (#5) since everything beyond that is working fine.

It appears that some of the downloaded files contain zipped information within their folders that cannot be extracted.....is this correct?

 

Another question Mujja,

The utilities downloaded just fine into a folder that contains the zip files. Just for the sake of having them available I downloaded the Drivers file and it arrived as an unknow file type which I can't open. What happened?

 

Rob,

It's best to uninstall all the old utilities first. Uninstall them from the Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs. It might be best to do a fresh install because some utils don't have an uninstaller, don't remember which ones now.

You only need to extract the downloaded utilities file once, no need to extract anything in the subfolders, same for the drivers.

The drivers are in two parts (rapidshare limit of 100MB) .001 & .002. Use 7-Zip, Winrar or Winzip and extract file .001.

 

Thanks for the help Mujja. I'll git it a try this weekend

 

Well Mujja,

I tried your Sony Utilities, installed in the order perscribed, and it did not bring back my S1 & S2 buttons. I checked Vaio Central and they still aren't listed - nor do they work. The interesting part of the experiment is that your utilities didn't cause any other malfucntions (like deactivating the Fn keys) as Sony's downloads did.

I guess I'll just have to be satisfied with a laptop that runs extremely well except for this function.

 

Hi Rob

There must be a conflict with an older util. If you do get the chance to do a clean install the S buttons will work.

It for you to decide if the S buttons are worth the trouble. I only used them to lauch the VAIO Control Centre and the Smart Network util which can easliy be launched from the Start Menu.

 

Hi Mujja,

You are correct. I don't use the S1 / S2 buttons on my older SZ that much either.....mute and stand by. It's just that I am sort of a perfectionist and when something doesn't work it bothers me.

I have thought about the clean install, but I have some proprietary programs (Catia, AutoCAD, etc.) that are a real hassle to reinstall. So I will most likely just live with the non-functioning special buttons unless I suffer a catastrophic crash that requires a re-install.

Thanks for the willingness to help!!