Uninstalling Office 2003 Trial Assistant on SZ

Has anyone figured out how to uninstall Office 2003 Trial Assistant? it keeps asking me for this file called, "AssistantSetup.msi," to uninstall it. Unfortunately, it doesn't exist on the C:. It only exists in the unreadable restoration partition on the laptop. Microsoft says that since the software came OEM, I need to talk to Sony and Sony Support won't escalate my issue. All they can tell me is I'm SOL! Since Sony doesn't include the manufacturer CD's, anyone want to join me in a law suit?

According to endgadget.com:

If you're the owner of an HP PC purchased over the past few years, you may just be in line for a free Windows XP recovery CD, based on the settlement of a class-action lawsuit brought against HP over, of all things, hidden recovery partitions and missing Windows XP directories. The main allegations in the case, which was settled without HP admitting any wrongdoing, were that HP included undisclosed recovery partitions on PC hard drives, and didn't include the "ValueAdd" and "Support" folders that are included on standalone copies of XP.

http://www.computersettlement.com/

Unfortunately, the website seems to be down. I guess it was one of the terms of HP settling out of court on this case.

After convincing myself to shell out the cash for my VGN-SZ270P/C, I'm irked by the fact that I can't seem to get rid of all the annoying trial software that keeps popping up. I don't need all these trials. If I bought the premium version of their laptop, I can damn well afford to buy the full versions of the software if I haven't already.

And speaking of buying the premium version of their laptop. Why can't you customize the premium laptop? I ended up buying two sticks of my own memory from NewEgg.com because the "premium" version only comes with a slow 533MHz memory. You would think that the success of the largest manufacturer of PC's, Dell, revolving around its ability to customize each PC might give Sony a hint on how to offer its products.

I mean, how out of touch is Sony that you can buy an after-market upgrade of the stock 533MHz Qimonda-branded memory used intheir laptops from Sony Accessories under their own part number for $1198 (DDR2 memory is installed in pairs) when the same upgrade with the 667MHz higher quality Crucial-branded memory from NewEgg.com sells for $288 with shipping and tax(I mistankenly quoted paying $576 before)? That's more than four times the price for lower quality and speed memory!

What can I say? I'm a power user and that's why I insisted on getting the SZ with the Core Duo instead of the TX with the slower M processor. I can only dream of the day a TX will come with a Core Duo be sooner than later.

For any perspective buyers of Sony laptops, do your research or else you're gonna' get screwed with the options that Sony gives you.

 

Try doing a semi-restore to remove the software that you don't want or if you own a copy of Windows XP and want to start over, try this: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=46619

The SZ series do not support 667mhz ddr2 memory. If you use 667mhz memory it will be clocked down to 533mhz. I don't know where you got that $576 price tag as most quality 1gb 667mhz can be purchased at around $80, such as this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820231066 . Memory timings on 667mhz memory are all essentially the same.

Also even if customization was available on Sony's website, I'd opt to buy my upgraded parts for a considerably cheaper price at an out-of-state online store and do the upgrades myself.

 

I've already gone through all of this on my own and with Sony. Sony's restoration software is very limited. "Office 2003 Trial Assistant" is not listed in the applications to restore and a full C: restore results in the same dialog box asking for the "AssistantSetup.msi" package. I've even tried unhiding the hidden partition (without telling Sony, of course) and extracting the installation package that Sony uses to install Microsoft Office 2003 Small Business Edition. The AssistantSetup.msi file is nowhere to be found. Even in the cab files.

Hmmm, I wished Sony would have disclosed that the laptop doesn't support 667MHz memory since their marketing material clearly states a front-side bus of 667MHz.

As far as memory, I believe in reliable memory and thus, stay away from generic brands. I should have dropped Crucial for G.Skill? I haven't heard of G.Skill until now. Do you use their memory? How many crashes have you had? I've gotta' admit. $166 is pretty damn cheap if the memory can meet the same level of reliability.

As far as I've been able to figure, nothing is accessible to the user except for memory. As tempting as upgrading to a 7,200RPM hard drive is, the way everything is fit into such a small form factor, it looks like Sony had to use a heatpipe between the heatsink and the CPU. The heatpipe traverses the external casing in a way that would force the CPU and the heatpipe to lose contact with each other when opening the external laptop casing.

My understanding of thermal transfer materials tells me that once physical contact is lost, you can pretty much count your CPU as toast. Although you can replace it with your own thermal transfer material, Core Duo processors are pretty new and finding the right material that will prevent your CPU from frying won't be easy. Either way, opening up more than just the panels that Sony has provided which, in this case, is only memory, invalidates the warranty and we wouldn't want to do that, would we?

 

I personally have not tried to do a semi-restore and rather went with a clean installation of Windows XP, which is described in the link I gave to you earlier. If you're so uncomfortable about this uninstallation problem, I'd suggest you do the same. I did not encounter any problems during the clean installation and my system is running fine. All of the required drivers are located on Sony's support website.

If you wanted to save money, yes, you should've chosen the G.Skill brand. As far as I can tell, both Crucial and G.Skill models have the same memory timings, which is all I care about. I actually use the G.Skill memory and I've had zero crashes. Both of my modules pass Memtest86, so there are no problems with them. Read the reviews on Newegg if you feel unconvinced.

The CPU is also easily accessible by removing the second panel above the memory slots.

The fact that there's a heatpipe inbetween the heatsink and CPU has nothing to do with upgrading the hard drive, as the hard drive is located in a completely separate area.

I will make it easy for you: http://www.arcticsilver.com/as5.htm

The only upgrade that requires more than removing a panel is the hard drive upgrade, and Sony won't notice whether you did that or not if you simply remember to replace the old HDD in before you send in the laptop. But that doesn't matter, because no where does it state on the limited warranty card that opening the laptop or upgrading its parts will invalidate the warranty, as long as no physical or operational damage has been done during the process.

 

As whiny as I sound, I think, at this point, it is more about principle right now. I shouldn't have to spend a whole day downloading drivers, reinstalling my OS from scratch with the Windows CD that didn't come with my laptop and reinstalling all the application suites that I've loaded onto the laptop since I purchased it to get something to work the way that it should work.

Given that Sony decided to forego including CD's (see previous message about HP lawsuit), you would think they would get all their ducks in a row. I've worked in customer service before and what Sony provided is not! After several hours with the technician on the other end having me wait on the phone while he browses the Internet to research it, his final answer was, "What do you want me to do about it?" That is just so rude in so many ways. Let alone, not being able to offer an escalation path. Do they even have a tier 2 or a tier 3 technician? I guess I was spoiled working at a company that always won the JD Power and Associates customer service award in our industry. We owned problems. Being able to say to a customer if we couldn't solve the problem immediately, that we couldn't solve the problem but we'd follow up on it and get back to customer when we did. If a customer problem warranted it, we could escalate it up to product engineers and even executives if it got that far. Either way, we would treated the customer with respect and tried our best to resolve each customer's problem.

My previous employer where I worked customer service wasn't the only successful company to believe in treating the customer using the golden rule. One of the web's most successful company's president, eBay, strongly believes in running his business by following the golden rule when making business decisions that effect his customers, much to the dismay of many Wall Streeters.

Bottom line, the software should uninstall when I run the uninstaller. If the uninstaller should fail because of something that Sony did (by failing to either include all the packages needed to complete the uninstall on the hard drive or providing the original CD's), Sony should fix that wrong. Additionally, it should not train its representatives to tell the customer it doesn't care.

Without removing the heatpipe, you can't open the external casing any further than the two panels you mentioned to get to the hard drive. That's where I would run into a problem. I wouldn't think of ruining the thermal phase-change material that comes installed with the laptop to replace it with thermal grease. Although Arctic Silver 5 is a great material that performs better than other materials, AMD has written a white paper on thermal grease. For lidless processors, thermal greases will "pump-out" at high temperatures while phase-change material will not. The problem with phase-change material was mentioned in my previous post. Once physical contact is lost, the protective properties of the phase change material are lost.

The jist of the white paper though suggests that although greases initially outperform phase-change material, over the long term, pump-out causes greases to fail and therefore, AMD no longer uses nor recommends thermal greases on newer generation lidless processors. I can see how the overclocker would be interested in greases because of their initial performance profile but looking down the road at reliability, you may get burned. To me, it sounds like you're the type of guy that plays it fast and loose with his equipment. I guess I'm a bit more conservative.

http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/DownloadableAssets/section5-high.wmv

http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/white_papers_and_tech_docs/26951.pdf

Just because Sony may not notice that screws are worn on the inside of the laptop doesn't mean that the warranty still doesn't say, "it does not cover product issues caused by any other reason, including but not limited to acts of God, misuse, limitations of technology, or modification of or to any part of the SONY product." It does not say, "only if you remember to put everything back the way it was without managing to cause any physical or operational damage during the process". At that point, it'd be at Sony's discretion about how much service it wanted to provide and I've already covered my thoughts on how much service that is.

 

You can create your own 2-disc recovery dvds with the software that's included on the factory installed OS.

That's all true, but complaining about the quality of Sony's customer service won't do anything to help the problem at hand, which is uninstalling that software.

Although I still suggest you to perform a clean installation, or at least a semi-restore, to get rid of the other bloatware, if all you care about is uninstalling that software, then give this a try:
Uninstall any program that's related to Microsoft Office in add/remove programs. For the programs that you can't remove, use this http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb;en-us;290301
After uninstalling everything, use regedit to manually remove the microsoft office registry key (located in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\) and delete the microsoft office directory located in c:\program files. Reboot and then reinstall your own copy of MS Office.

Unfortunately, that's not true. You don't need to remove any of the bottom panels to replace the hard drive. I don't want to explain the whole process of replacing it again, but the instuctions are already on this forum. Try searching for them.

The "phase-change material" is, in other words, a thermal pad, which Sony doesn't use on the SZ, so your whole argument is moot. If you had actually tried to remove the heatsink and look for yourself, you'd find that Sony uses white thermal paste.

No white paper will pursuade me to switch to a thermal pad, because thermal paste is far superior in conducting heat. I'm pretty sure that there are just as many, if not more, white papers written by thermal paste companies that say thermal paste is safe to use in the long term. Besides that, I've been using thermal paste on my own hardware, which includes unlidded processors, for many years without any problems and so have other hardware enthusiasts, so I will further base my decision on experience.

Yes, it does say "it does not cover product issues caused by ... modification of or to any part of the SONY product," but if you're doing a modification (e.g., opening the case) to upgrade a certain part without causing product issues, then I don't see what the concern is.

Let's assume there's a problem with the lcd screen, which was wasn't caused by "God, misuse, limitations of technology, or modification." However modification was done to upgrade the hard drive or fix the space bar. Do you think Sony will say, "Sorry, the lcd repair isn't covered by the warranty because we've found that you'd done something to the space bar and partially stripped a screw?" I don't think so. As long as all the original parts are put in before the laptop is sent and no physical or operation damage was done during any modification, then the warranty would still be valid on the defective part.

 

I uninstalled the Office 2003 Trial (as I bought the retail package about a month prior).
I had no problem uninstalling the package. And then I deleted the directory Office in c:\Program Files.

JY