SZ's first glitch

I've had the SZ for five days - flawless performance until...

I close the screen, the machince shuts down (hibernates), I open the screen, press the power botton, desktop screen reappears and.... 3 out of five times FREEZES/SHUTS DOWN (sometimes on AOL, sometimes on Word, etc.). When I do a full shutdown/restart - not a problem. I have Norton, Word, Photoshop, and a screenplay program - that's about it.

I assume this is a software issue.

Anyone else with the same problem?

Any ideas as to what could be causing this?

Please help - I cannot figure out what is going on.

 

I have only been on mine for a day now but have gone into hibernate 5 or 6 times with no issues.

Because Norton is known to cause problems I removed it from my system and installed AVG. Perhaps Norton is the cause?

 

How can you live with Norton? Bloody system hoging program!

 

I would change it to NOD32......great virus guard!

 

I haven't had that problem with hibernation (I've had mine for 6 days now). So far my glitch happened today when I was restarting (when switching between processors). The screen was stuck on the shutdown screen for a long time (a few minutes). I had to resort to pressing the power button down for a few seconds to shutdown. It worked fine after that. ALso, I noticed the cd/dvd-rom is noisier than I hoped. I was running a CD-Rom for my Histology class and it sounded a bit sluggish. Anyone else having the same issue? Other than that...everyone seems to be oogling at my new toy!

 

Norton AV, etc. is annoying in the extreme. There is a pop up winow every 5 seconds and it took me 10 minutes to get past all the crap it had me doing when I first booted this thing up.

The only "glitch" I've noticed is the sound you get when you attach a USB device sounds once or twice after boot even though I don't have a USB device plugged in. I'm assuming it is the camera.

 

I've used Norton for years and can be a culprit for sure. I recently stated using the McAffee program i get free with Comcast. Norton is a resource hog. My order for the SZ160 through J&R is in processing as of this morning. I really think i want to do a clean install of XP pro with the necessary drivers. Is it fairly easy or what? Do you get promted to make recovery discs on first boot? Sort of irritating that for this kind of money they don't provide you with a copy of XP pro and a proper driver disc.
Boy would that make it easier.. On a side note, can i buy 2 gigs of 667 200 pin ram from New Egg and install it without issues? I think i read one guy here that had trouble installing 667 ram...curious. Thanks guys.

This is my first laptop. I've used Dell desktops for years, and still do.

 

I did not re-install windows (personal preference but the machine is too new for me to screw it up. ) but after I got rid of the crap-ware, ran CCCleaner, defragged, etc., performance was much improved.

You do not get prompted to make a back-up but it is easy enough to do.

I was going to get the Mushkin 2x 1GB 533 pack but Newegg is out of stock again! Crucial is considerably more expensive.

I can't imagine what the trouble would be in swapping memory unless he got some bad sticks.

 

I'm wondering what exactly qualifies as 'crapware' on a sony? I don't do major picture editing, so when I get my FE would I see a performance gain from removing all the adobe? image editing related software? I realise that definitions of crap will vary according to how the laptop is used, but any general recs for stuff that can *definitely* be taken off? And is it true that it can be difficult to remove pre-installed software? What happens if I take it off before making the recovery disk?

 

I saw similar problems when my SZ came back from hibernation. One time, it was so bad that I even got a blue screen. I then attached a debugger and looked at the dump file and the OS crashed in some TCP/IP calls originated from Norton AV. I then removed Norton AV and the crash went away but once a while my machine couldn't come back from hibernation saying the restore point is not valid. Now I change the setting so it will only go to standby mode instead of hibernate and the problem goes away.

 

I didn't have that problem in hibernating so far. I did have the hanging system problem after installing twice after installing some stuff but I don't see it as persistent and the laptop shuts down fine now.

I didn't reinstall either - I just took things out of auto start under 'msconfig' and uninstalled most of the bloatware I thought was crap on getting the laptop - ESPECIALLY THE NORTON! I use Zone Labs and find it quite annoying too... I'm interested in alternatives that just do virus and spyware protection...I mean do I really need all that program running protections stuff?? I don't know but I own ZL and will use it for the moment. It takes much less resources than Norton or Mcafee (I've had both) and you can shut it down - not just disable it - when you want it off.

 

I'll be honest, I don't see what the big problem is with Norton AV. I've been using it without issue for many years now. I will say that there are certainly a few settings you should tinker with, as well as disabling certain portions of the "active" scanning, but once that's done it resides quietly in the background and causes no grief. It's never caused any of my other programs to crash (although a specific Creative Labs driver once caused *it* to crash).