SZ - Make your own Vista ISO with integrated drivers

Guys I'm new here so hello to you all.

I got myself a Vaio SZ61MN and how I wish I hadnt now!

I followed the method where you backup the OEM license and I then installed a clean version of Vista retail version. Restored the OEM license and everything was going fine.

I downloaded all the drivers from Sony's support site and everything was still going good untill I installed ISB Utility! After I installed this now I keep getting a message telling me that the battery connected to my computer might not be compatible etc! And it asks me to click on the OK button and when I do, it hybernates!

The bizzare thing is, the battery is a Sony battery which came with my laptop and I never had a problem over the last 2 days since I bought it!

I know there are a lot of people complaining about this but from what I read, all of these people are using 3rd party batteries and not an original battery.

I'm baffled as it works fine when I use the recovery CD to re-install Vista but when I do a clean install it keeps throwing this error.

I can disable ISBUtility.exe from starting up and this fixes the problem but I have read that this isnt recommended and that it should be running.

Anybody here have any ideas as to how I can get this utility to work with a clean install?

I would be very grateful and thanks in advance. Bloody SONY!

 

Anybody?

 

No idea what the ISBUtility.exe is. If you've searched and not found and answer elsewhere then you might get more help starting a new thread.

I can only answer questions which are relevant to this thread, sorry.

 

Hi, just finished the clean install on my SZ5 - Thanks for your description!

The only problem left now is that there is no vaio recovery utility on my notebook and I would like to install Adobe Acrobat 8 Standard from the recovery dvds. Is there any way to restore the vaio recovery utility or to extract this program from the dvds without the recovery utility?

Thanks!

 

Hi there, I came across this thread when i was looking for a way to do a clean install of vista without all the crap sony has to offer. i currently have a sz483n, and i had trouble with the first step of your guide.
now when it says that it shows me to download a legal copy of vista, it just wont work, i mean where do i download from? link? i tried clicking on the links that were underneath step 1 but i just kept getting a big fat denied sign on a new browser page. i've tried using both firefox and ie but i get the same result. please help me because im getting terribly frustrated. where do i download vista from!? thanks

 

Hi do the drivers on page one of the thread work with vista 64bit? THANKS

 

I agree with superbad.

The links in step 1 do not work for me. I get a message that says you must be logged in.

 

Didn't realise anyone was still using this guide.

The links have now changed, if you look in the Windows section of this forum you'll find a large thread with new links to Vista ISO. I'll update my first page when I'm not at work.

 

No, you'll need 64-bit drivers.

Most of the utlities will work on Vista x64 though.

 

ISB utility is useless and you can safely uninstall it. It's purpose is to monitor the battery status.

 

I followed the tutorial but I had some problems with the memory card reader, the camera, they didn't work. Besides that, I couldn't use the Fn + F3 to turn down the volume on the keyboard. Please help me, thank you

 

Hi, great thread.

Just before I started I was wondering if this will work with the Vaio SZ71WN/c?
I'm pretty sure it's very similar to the SZ6

 

What model is your SZ?

 

James, I have the same model as you now. I've only this week has a chance to finalise a set of tested and working drivers and utils which I will upload shortly, maybe next 24 hours. The current set of drivers and utils in this guide won't work with the newer hardware. The Bluetooth, card reader and camera etc are different models.

You could use the new set to create an integrated ISO but I'm happy with just a normal install as there isn't much I want to remove. With bigger HDDs, more RAM and faster CPUs it's not like the old days where every MB saved and processes reduced counted.

 

James, drivers for SZ7 now uploaded in a new thread, check my sig for the link.

Also, note my updates on page 1. You should download and integrate SP1 via vLite or start with a Vista+SP1 ISO. You won't be able to install SP1 otherwise.

 

Mujja thanks very much for getting back to me. I followed your SZ7 Drivers Guide and I'm very happy to say that I was able to install and update every single driver manually. I just copied the whole Drivers folder to my USB pen drive and manually installed all the drivers provided by Sony within Device Manager.

And guess what else? After installing all the drivers as you instructed, followed by the installations of the necessary utilities, the error about the wrong battery being used no longer pops up! I have decided to not install Battery Checker as you suggested as so many others have. If only the battery did die or something then it would at least give me an excuse to buy the extended battery! :laugh:

I thought I'd post this here as I know there are other people out there who have, and probably are still having, the same problems as I did, and whilst I did find lots of sites out there showing how to install drivers, none of them were as simple and quick as as Mujja's guide.

Thanks to you Mujja, problem solved!

Kind regards

DC

 

Thanks for the update, happy it all worked for you.

Which drivers did you use, the driver's on page 1 or the SZ7 drivers from my other thread, or a mix.

Would be useful for other SZ6 owners to know.

If you had to add a few drivers of your own let me know which versions and we could create an SZ6 driver pack.

 

SZ460N/C
vlite_6.jpg pic is missing.
On the step 4 you gave us the order in which we should install the drivers
But in 5j you proposed to integrate the drivers in vlite. How can I place the order to install the drivers? Or i should not do that and will install the drivers after installation of vista?
Thank you

 

Hi Muj,

I'm having a few difficulties after my fresh install of 32-bit Vista. I have a Sony VGN-SZ650N/C. I created an install disk with drivers integrated from the zip file on the first page of this thread. After installing vista, I installed the 10 sony utilities in the order described. I did not install the additional utilities. Once I installed the utilities, I updated all of the drivers using the SZ7 drivers, including the Nvidia driver. I also had previously extracted Click to DVD, WinDVD, and Roxio from my recovery CD's, and I installed them after updating all my drivers. All 3 of the programs work just fine, and everything else works fine except for the following.

1) Brightness Function keys are not working
2) S1 and S2 buttons are not working
3) Webcam isn't working in the Sony Video capture utility.

I'm not sure what the problem is since I followed the write-up exactly. Can you help? Do you have any ideas?

Thanks for your time.

 

edit
mirror removed

 

Hey,
Mujja, this is how it should be done, youve probably spent a lot of time figuring things up, and ive seen its almost a year and this post is still active. Its very humain thought, sony are not so thank you on behalf on eveyone!
I have this sz750N, i love it but its pain in the a.. with all the keys notworking and wireless not working. I formated and intalled different 4 vistas and XPs in the first 24h I tried some of your tips but it didnt work. I still have problem with the all Fn & S keys and smartWi swicher, actually with many things. So will these drivers work with my SZ on vista ultimate, and is the Vista download still available, so I can make the ISO you specified.
Cheers mate!

 

Hi Chichich

You'll need the drivers and utils from my VistaX86 thread to get a 100% working install.

I gave up on integrating the drivers and removing unwanted components because a few GBs aren't worth saving now on a 200GB+ disk. When that guide was written most laptops still only shipped with 80GB disks.

There was also the issue of not being able to install service packs. Follow my guide in the other post but you'll need to find a copy of Vista yourself.

 

Ok, so I get all the drivers and utilities...I have the vista ultimate running. Im kind a tired of trying to make this work right, so do you think it will work if i didnt reinstall vista, but rather installing all your drivers and utilities manualy by removing the previous ones?
Also should they be installed in the order they are listed.
One more thing... mine came with the WWAN, i was reading a lot on this feature in many different forums, this SZ series as many other newer ones, dont come with SIM card slot (behind the battery pack), they are Shmrint integrated. Do you think it will be ever possible to somehow override that shmrint service and be able to use it with other 3g networks, maybe with some software or a usb sim card adapter, just guessin?
cheers
oh and I have vista with integrated SP1.
And something usefull for everybody if you are interested. I upgraded the memory to 4gb and higher bus 800mhz, works great. You can get the whole 4gb from crucial for 58 bucks, it looked decent and high quality.

 

Hi, I have followed Mujja's instructions and installed my vaio SZ650 correctly. When i say correctly, i mean i have not experienced any popups displaying errors. I have however come across a problem regarding the wireless network adapter. after installing and updating the driver, I am not able to detect any connections at all. When i go into my wireless device properties, it says that the device is installed correctly. When I diagnose the device, it displays "The network adapter "Wireless Network Connection" is not correctly configured to use the IP protocol.
the available options are:
1. The network adapter "Intel(R)......" is experiencing driver or hardware related issues.
2. Make sure your Internet protocol Bindings are correct.....ensure that "Internet Protocol Version 4 and 6 (this was paraphrased)" are selected in configuration for the network adapter.....

any help guys? im afraid it might have something to do with the components I may have left out when using vlite. I checked off the same things Mujja did.

Also, im not sure if this will be helpful, but when i go to "Details..." in Wireless Network Connection, i get no list at all of the property and values.

 

AskGin,

If you used the drivers in linked in this thread, they are a year old and the Intel WLAN drivers won't support your hardware. You'll need the newer WLAN drivers.

I created this thread when I owned a SZ2 and I think the SZ6 had only just been released. If you open the .inf file in the WLAN folder you'll see a list of supported WLAN adapters, check if yours is listed.

 

Hi Mujja,

I wasn't sure if the driver was the latest in this thread, so i went ahead and downloaded the latest version of the wireless driver from the Intel website. I downloaded the driver for Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN driver version v12.1.2.0. This also did not fix the problem. Do you have any other suggestions? In your steps, one of the images (vlite_4.jpg) you checked off "drivers" because you said we had our own drivers for the sony laptop. I noticed that under the "drivers" section there was a "Ethernet network adapter" option. Do you know if it is because I removed that option and so the protocols werent installed?

 

AskGin

You've got the correct driver installed now. Does Device Manager show any errors next to the WLAN adapter?

Vista/Xp etc contains drivers for 1000's of hardware devices. Because the ISO being created will only be for use on your SZ laptop and we are adding our own drivers we can remove all included drivers.

BTW, why not follow the guide in *** SZ7 - Vistax86 Drivers and Utilities ***. I still see lots of downloads for the drivers and utils linked in this thread but are people still using vlite to strip the OS down?

vlite and nlite were useful a couple of years ago when HDD space was limited and CPUs were single core & <2Ghz.

 

Ok, I guess my next step now is to use the SZ7 drivers. Since my laptop is SZ650, can you tell me if all SZ7 driver swill work for SZ650?

And since i used vlite to create this iso, should i create another one? if so what software should/could i use?

This was the first time i used vlite, and when i was using it i did not notice anything about HDD space specifications or options on the number of CPUs or <2Ghz. I thought vlite was just a software that can simplify a vista install such that we can remove options we do not want?

If i were to use the SZ7 Vistax86 Drivers and Utilities, what software should i use to follow this through?

Thanks.

 

Those aren't options in vlite, I was just saying the vlite method now seems like a lot of work for very little benefit. When shipped HDD sizes 160GB+ now saving 3GB on a Vista install seems pointless. And with fast dual core CPUs a saving few extra background processes also isn't worth the effort.

If you have a Vista ISO and and SZ6/7 then follow the new SZ7 guide. Just install Vista as normal, install the drivers and then the utils in the order listed.

 

Hey Mujja long time no see

I agree with Mujja, even the first time round when I got my Vaio laptop, I followed Mujja's guide but I never used Vlite, I simply had a copy of Vista on DVD so I installed a clean copy of Vista, then installed all the drivers and utils as per Mujja's instructions in the correct order. Done!

I didnt see the need to use Vlite in the first place and space was never an issue as I had 160GB on my Vaio and my main PC was my desktop.

I now have a Vista DVD with SP2 integrated so I think its time to clean install again

Keep up the good work Mujja

 

Sorry for kinda such stupid question, but, can i tweak this procedure to do the same with a NW one? (vgn-nw120aj)

getting the drivers here
http://esupport.sony.com/BR/perl/swu-list.pl?mdl=VGNNW120AJ

And finding elsewhere the wim files that have gone...
thanks!

 

Yes this will work for any vista installation on any pc/laptop. You just need the right drivers for your model.

The WIM files were just a away to get a iso direct from MS. If you've got a Vista disc through some other means that'll work with vlite too.