Sony software help - Shared Libraries

After spending a day trying to get this to work I now resort to posting angry reviews on the distant corners of the interwebs.

Recently I acquired a vaio laptop model vpc f1290s. Although it was in a slightly dinged up condition, I figured that it had enough value in the i7 processor, 8 gigs of RAM and 300 gig HDD to deserve some much needed attention. My primary concern was the keyboard missing some keys; after a bit of research I found that the model supports a back-lit keyboard and ordered a replacement. I performed a clean install of windows 7 professional 64 bit and tried to continue from there.

And thus the ****storm began. Turns out, sony relied very much on the windows service to detect and install basic functions in these laptops (instead of doing the normal, reasonable and reliable thing by including the basics in the bios). My initial install of Win7 resulted in the touchpad not working under any circumstance along with numerous error messages about the battery being incompatible with the laptop, despite being a stock battery. Due to the fact that no driver was able to resolve these problems, I formatted the hard drive and reinstalled windows for round 2.

This time, the laptop was functional, so I moved on to installing drivers. Following the install instructions on the sony website went smoothly until I got around to the Sony Shared Library service, which is responsible for a few user interface controls. The installer app would proceed fine for the standard "do you want to install this" drivel, but then magically disappear mid install with neither an error message nor a confirmation. While the laptop is able to function without this service, it's far from an optimal or desirable outcome since there is no way to turn on the back-light function of the keyboard (a supported feature that I paid extra for), which is another thing those lazy damned jap engineers should have included into the bios function.

At this point I tried customer service, who in their infinite wisdom could only direct me to one of their partner companies to try and get me to buy some $50 dollar recovery disk that supplanted the array of drivers on their poorly organized web site.

I hope one of you esteemed internet individuals can help me find a solution to my Shared Library crisis afore I lose my temper and sell the laptop in its faulty condition to some dumb senior citizen for a quick 500 bucks

 

The thing about vaios is you have to follow a specific install order of the drivers to get everything working properly.

I see you can get all the drivers here:
https://esupport.sony.com/CA/p/model-home.pl?mdl=VPCF1290S

There is some info on doing a clean install here:
http://www.vaiofseries.com/Vaio_F_Clean_Install_Guide.htm

also a install order guide for the F13 here, which might work:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...ers-thread-part-5.521914/page-392#post7274304

 

Yes, those are the drivers I've been using, I used the install guide linked to that driver page, however I'll try to roll back and go through the f series guides you linked in. Thanks!

Edit: unfortunately the first guide wants me to use an f series recovery disk, which I do not possess. Gonna go to bed now since I have a calc exam tomorrow but I'll try the other method afterwards and update what happens. Thanks again.

 

Hey, does anyone have a clue how to get the shared library to install? After I start the installer application it mysteriously disappears without a success or error message

 

"including the basics in the bios" - there's nothing basic about these functions, and hence nothing "reasonable" to put them in BIOS. You're talking of putting advanced features in the BIOS, which is completely stupid. These features have inter-dependency, need higher level functions. This is not possible in BIOS. *NO* laptop manufacturer puts device-specific things in the *BIOS*. BIOS is only used for very specific, low-level hardware boot-up and initial config stuff, that's all.

 

Thats funny cause dell has the behavior of their fn keys set in the bios unless I misunderstand this :/

 

you do misunderstand this . In modern laptops, these behaviours are not set in BIOS. specifically wrt, VAIO, the way it works is: keyboard send a code. Keyboard is internally either on a PS/2 bus or an internal USB bus. The code is interpreted at 2 levels: normal key codes are sent to the OS drivers directly. Any control code (like using Fn key) is sent to the OS drivers (consisting of Sony firmware extension parser, shared library) as well as a on-board controller. The on-board controller is simple - it has a lookup table which looks at the code and takes a relevant action according to the ACPI specifications (like brightness up/down, etc). The BIOS really doesn't do anything here. WHat you see in the Dell link above, is BIOS switching ON/OFF a bit, which is read by the ACPI controller to do the relevant job.

The codes that are sent to the OS driver is then further interpreted - like when you press the volume up/down keys, it shows a pop-up with the new value.

 

Maybe try right-click "run as admin", or even try installing it in safe-mode.