S4XP and Switcher

Hello,

I had problems with my wireless connection dropping on my S4XP. I noticed that Sony have just released a new driver for the wireless on my machine. I installed it and appears to have resolved my disconnection issues. However, the switcher utility used to turn on/off the wireless card/bluetooth no longer works, it just crashes when you try to start the program. To be fair, this was expected since Sony do say it may no longer work. No updates to the switcher program is available for this machine.

I know that I can turn the wireless off via the driver, but does anyone know how I can turn off the bluetooth whilst still leaving the wireless on? This does seem rather poor that Sony do not supply compatible software.

I have tried switcher version 3.3 and that just crashes too.

 

Tried SmartWi yet? Maybe this one works.

 

SmartWi? Never heard of it. The only thing I can find on it on the sony website is some subscription based service. Is this what you are referring to?

 

No no, its another switcher app used on some sony sz models. You can dl it here:

http://rapidshare.de/files/24669308/SmartWi_1.2.0.020706.zip.html

It basically does the same job and offers new ways to switch. You can set bt, wifi, bt+wifi using fn+f1 after installation. Its very nice indeed but very ram hungry compared to the wireless switch toll. It uses 30MB of Ram in the background while the switcher uses less than 10MB.

Not sure if it will work on the s model, but you can give it a try.

 

Oh ok. I'll give it a shot but hogging 30MB or ram seems like rather a lot considering what it does.

I have seen on the US sony website that they are working on a fix for the switcher app. I'll probably wait for that.

Thanks.

 

Can you give me the link to that sony site? I'm missing the 802.11a function of the switcher. Any idea if that is coming back or where to find an older switcher that still has the a-band?

 

I don't know how relevant it is to you and a-band, but here is the link. http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/swu-download.pl?mdl=VGNS460&upd_id=2253&os_id=7

It is a link for a wireless driver update for the s460 (similar to my s4xp, I believe).

The bit I read is:
"This driver update remedies the security vulnerability issue. However, some parts of the pre-installed VAIO Wireless Switching Utility may no longer function properly after installing the update. Sony is working to provide an update to the Wireless Switching Utility that will restore full functionality. Please check your model update page periodically for new updates.
Please click here for instructions on how to manually switch between wireless services."