Sony Z series 32bit Vista Clean Install Guide (full functions & no windows activation)

Yes HDMI works fine in XP. I never checked the sound though.

 

Just recieved my xp sp3 downgrade disk . After the downgrade my S1 ,S2 & stamina - speed switch dont work at all . When i did the downgrade my pc was set to stamina mode , could that be why my pc isnt functioning correctly ?

 

Maybe. The instructions say you should be set to Speed mode (at least, the www.vaio-link.com instructions, which I followed).

Check in device manager to see if your graphics adapter(s) are showing OK - without yellow exclamation marks etc.

Did you install all of the drivers and utilities from Sony, in the correct order?

 

I ran the sony supplied downgrade disk again this time in speed mode . No dice . Have checked device manager & no exclamation marks anywhere .

Speed - Stamina switch does nothing. Same as the S1 & S2 buttons .

Everything was installed in the correct order since its a downgrade disk sony sent me .

Not a big deal , just reimaged it with vista took a whole 14 minutes to restore , gotta love acronis .

 

You probably did not follow the right order or forgot a driver. Missing one driver is enough.

If you follow all the numbers in this guide, everything works:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=309592

I'm guessing you forgot number 15 and 16. They're easy to miss because they don't show up with question marks. XP installs wrong drivers for them.

It does not really matter if you have speed or stamina set first.

 

The only annoying thing with XP is that you have to reboot for changing Stamina-Speed. HDMI works great though.

I will call Sony support to send me, if they can, the Vista recovery disks.

 

they'll send you the recovery discs for sure....for a fee lol

 

You're wrong, is for free.

I just bought it, is two days old. Well, didn't tell them of course that I was trying to do an attempt of Vista clean install...I told them that from the moment I opened it, it was written an error about the battery.

 

haha nice.

from my experience ( if you didn't lie LOL), they go on and on about how you should have made your own recovery disc right out of the box, and yada yada yada, you need to pay a nominal fee for a recovery disc for them to send to you, yada yada yada hahaha

try getting them to send you a windows vista disc...lol, its like all hell breaks loose at sony's customer service

again, from my personal experience and what i've read here

 

Does anyone have the VAIO Update program that came preinstalled on the machine? This is the only program I haven't been able to find on the net or the recovery CDs.

 

Hi guys, just bought my Z11WN/B laptop and i burnt the recovery disks then deleted the recovery partition to do a clean install of xp, however i now want to restore my vaio back to vista however my recovery disks have bad area's! I should have really tested them first before going for a clean install but i presumed that they would be okay considering there were no error messages when they burnt. Anyway i have emailed sony to get the recovery disks however they want to charge me 43 euros to get them sent out!!!! Has anyone had the same problem? Can someone let me know a work around solution for this, or to upload the disks to me etc?

Thanks, Ryan

 

One more thing too, im not sure if the ABR method would work as im currently in the downgraded version of xp. I have 2 vista disks, 32bit oem and 64bit oem however it says my cd key isnt valid for these versions when i try to activate it?

Thanks, Ryan

 

May be able to find help at this forum: http://forum.notebookreview.com/forumdisplay.php?f=30

 

i have a z520n and i downloaded all the drivers and utilities from the sony support page for my spacific model . are all the drivers and utilities their for a clean install for my model

 

I will do doing a clean install of my Z540 with a retail Biz Vista CD with SP1.

Does Vista pick up everything? I bet one of the thing it will not pick up is the Intel chipset from my past experience with other computers.

Everything else is OK?

 

im going to try clean install windows 7 pre beta will see how it will go ?

 

Hmmm... question about the Vista install disc.

I have a Home Premium installer disc... from OEM I believe. It basically permanently registers a product key into my mobo's memory, which is now tied to my Mobo, IIRC. Would I be able to use this disc to do a clean install on my laptop, or would I have to get a different disc?

 

After doing the clean install, and following all the steps. I realize that the SD card & memory stick reader is not functioning.
Any suggestions on how to make them work?

 

Update: Spent the last 15 hours or so trying to get them to work with various methods.
AFAIK,the only way to get the SD card reader and memory stick reader to be visible in explorer is to insert the cards before turning the laptop on. If you insert it after the laptop has been turned on, it will not appear on explorer.
I tried extracting the drivers from the factory software. Using sony provided drivers don't work as well.

 

**** i love my z, i did a clean install on my z, and all my stuff are working properly!!! about time!!!

 

...hmm... Ok... I'm not sure my current Vista installer will work... where can I buy one of those "Anytime Upgrade" discs?

...if anyone could pass a link to me, I'd really appreciate it.

 

We can help you out with one

 

Why do not we download the drivers and Utilities directly from sony website?
the sony website does not provide the all drivers and utilities?

Thanks

 

I dvd clean vista businness install on my z530 an my WMP 11 doesn't have sound when i play DVD. it plays cd's ok.

 

Ahh... I ended up ordering one from eBay... lol... thanks anyways.

 

Not sure if this has been mentioned, if you use the recovery dvds to restore your os on the Z, just remove it when it first boots into windows or cancel the processes on first boot then all the bloatware will not be installed. Worked for my case, very happy and also faster and without much hassle (vs installing drivers yourself manually)

 

Hmm... during my clean install... I couldn't see the recovery partition at all... did I do something wrong? Or is Sony just really good at hiding it?

 

Maybe it's late and I'm not thinking thoroughly ... But I would like to check, can you reinstall items removed with a clean install later on, using the recovery disks you make? Say I do a fresh install and love it, but then a week or two later decide I really wanted Sony's program xyz, will those disks allow me to choose that program and reinstall properly? Provided I don't want to do a full on recovery back to the original state. I think this is my only small concern ... the potential for a Sony program to be useful/nice and be taking away the option to use it. The rest of the crud, trial versions and stuff, I'm positive I would be happy to never see again.

 

Yes, just pop the recovery dvd in and select reinstall programs and you can select what Vaio programs you want.

 

I'm having problems with driver reinstallation. It seems that my Device Manager can't find a driver for a "Network Controller".

Can anyone help me out here?

Also having trouble getting the HDD protection to install.

EDIT

I also seem to have installed the Sony Firmware Extension Parser installed, as well as Sony Programmable IO Control prior to SP1 and completion of other drivers...? Is that going to break anything...? :S

EDIT 2:

I think I "borked" my clean install... I'm just gonna do the whole thing over again from installing Vista onwards.
If anyone knows what that "Network Controller" is, and where the driver is for it, I'd greatly appreciate it.

 

Stupid question...I can't seem to find a way to remove a lot of the pre-installed programs on my Z570. For instance, just about all the AOL pre-installed crapware do not appear in the Add/Remove Programs menus.

How do you get rid of these "hidden" programs?

 

Either do a clean install or right-click the icons for the crap, choose Properties and find out where they are located on disk... then delete them. Only a clean install will guarantee you've not left any crap.

Alternatively, there are free products which specialise in removing this type of junk from your system, such as PC Decrapifier. Never used one myself but seems popular.

 

Clean install is epic win! Thanks for the guide! Works flawlessly!

 

Hi.
I not so sure you in US but I still ask for help anyway.Can you walk me throught clean install procedure? I'm in california US I got Z591U
Thanks

 

Hey guys,

I'm doing a clean install of 64-bit Vista, this guide should still work, right?

The drivers on the Sony driver update site don't seem to differentiate between 32-bit or 64-bit installations, so there shouldn't be any problems?

I've already created the backup discs anyways, so worst case, I can just restore the system and do a semi-clean install I guess.

 

the drivers for the Intel graphics no longer work.

Is this the correct one: http://downloadcenter.intel.com/filter_results.aspx?strTypes=all&ProductID=2991&OSFullName=Windows+Vista*+Business%2C+32-bit+version&lang=eng&strOSs=154&submit=Go%21 ?

If not could someone kindly post the link to the correct Intel graphics driver?

Thanks!

 

That's the correct link for Vista Business.

 

Can someone tell me in german how to get my S1 + S2, Stamnia-Speed and Eject-Button work? thanks !

 

Is updating the intel video driver possible with the inf from the intel package? I´m not sure about that cause the special drivers needed in the z series...

 

Hey MegaMan X, nice job with the original post. I was wondering if you could please update some of the dead links, and if there are any other tweaks to the process since your last thread update?

 

I finally downgraded to XP SP3. After spending so many days on Vista though, XP just felt like a taste-less dish. It was relatively more responsive on startups and so on, but about the same when it came to running actual application (engineering types). So decided to go back to Vista.

But decided to do a clean Vista install, from a retail Vista CD instead. Following this guide, I was able to do this successfully. After all the drivers were installed and the utilities spoken of by the original thread, the number of processes was around low 60's. After installing McAffee (this introduces ~10 processes), Chrome, Matlab, Daemon Tools and latest Java, my # of processes were about low 70's (compared to low 90's with recovery cd).

 

Hi guys

I've just posted a complete guide for a clean install dual booting XP and Vista on an AR series machine, with links to all drivers and Sony Functions software. Might come in handy for anyone with this type of machine.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=344027

Cheers
RFE

 

Hey megaman, thanks for the awesome guide, and I got everything working. I do have a questions for you or for all those reading, although I guess someone probably already asked this before. But anyway, do you think we should install all the driver that is listed on the sony support site or which driver should be install as recommended? Thanks!

 

I didn't look back through the postings to see if this has been said before but the VISTA "64 Bit Only" disk does NOT contain 32 bit Vista, just like it says on the label. The initial instructions of this thread seem to imply that all Vista disks contain all versions. Not true for OEM 64 bit at least.

Using the 32 bit Vista Business key included with the Z seems to allow the business version of 64 to load and activate but of course some of the drivers don't work and using 64 bit with only 3GB is pointless. I did not actually turn on the networking so I don't know if Vista will call in and un-activate itself or what.

At any rate I don't have a 32bit disk so it's XP for me.

Doug

 

When I first started this guide, there were no drivers on the US SonyStyle Website. Thats why I thank IsamuX because he and I compiled all the drivers for the clean install.

Since then, Sony has updated their website so all the drivers can no be download through there. So I would just use the support site and download the drivers there.

I like to note the Sony's "Sony® Notebook Utilities" includes

* Battery Checker
* VAIO® Control Center
* Setting Utility Series
* VAIO Event Service
* VAIO Power Management

and it should be installed after Sony Shared Libraries in the instructions

You must not have read the 1st post thoroughly enough.

As in Home Premium, Business and Ultimate are all on the same disk, and there are 2 versions of each disk, one in 32bit and one in 64 bit.

You also use the ABR tool to backup your 32bit installation key and use it in your 64bit installation with NO problems. It will activate your windows installation, thus like the title says....full functions & no windows activation, meaning its not going to contact Microsoft for any reason. So go ahead and turn on networking, big brother isn't watching.

 

I thank you and appreciate that there was a very large amount of information to impart but I could not figure out anyway to load 32 bit Vista from my 64 bit disk. I tried both loading without the license key and with but both tries gave me 64 bit and I ran out of ideas.

I have to live with 64 bit on my home machine but definitely don't want it on a laptop with only 3GB. But if nothing else it pushed me to just load XP now and not do it all over again later. Since I already had a copy laying around I bought when MS was threatening to pull the plug it's a regular from scratch installation......

Thanks though for the very concise directions.
Doug

 

Thanks for the reply.

I wonder does the Sony@ Notebook Utilities include one file you didn't mention which was part of the guide in the z utility "ISB Utilities" or is it already list in the Sony@ Utilities.

 

Never mind about the above question about ISB Utility. Sony@ Utilities does come with all the utility for Z to work. One again thank for the guie and give my thanks as well too IsamuX.

 

I have a Sony Z and only have the recovery disk (which I burned) and the Sony XP downgrade disk.

Since I do not have a Vista anytime install disk, this guide will not work for me. Correct???

 

It won't work until you locate a Vista 32 bit disk from Microsoft. You don't have to order a disk if someone you know has one you can use. It's the license that matters, not the disk itself and you paid for one with your laptop -- just follow the instructions for saving and re-loading your license key.

Elsewhere I believe there are instructions for a semi-clean install from the recovery disks.