VPCZ1 Battery Care Function Restoration

Does anyone out there have information or archived drivers to enable VAIO battery care functions in VAIO Control Center?

I understand Sony just removed all of the old drivers from their sites by claiming that windows 7 is unsupported, but I have previously been able to install various drivers under windows 10 and windows 7.

I installed Vaio power management, but these settings do not come up in control center, and my battery does not charge past 80%. If anyone has information about how to do this, or could upload the necessary packages and share, I'd appreciate it!

edit: I found that it was necessary to install windows 7, then downloading the Vaio control center version here, then first installing the Sony Shared Library, then Control Center, and finally VAIO Power Management. Now it works.This version of the control center seems to have more controls available than previous versions I have used. https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/downloads/W0009814

 

That was very useful, thanks. I stopped using my VAIO Z (which was still on Windows 7) last year when I got my new Razer laptop, but I've just had to send that back under the warranty, so I'm having to use the VAIO again. Decided it was best to try a fresh install of Windows 10. I'd already got it pretty much working without even installing any Sony software or drivers, but then realised it was charging all the way up to 100% which I didn't want. Found a thread on here saying which drivers etc were needed, but yeah, that's when I discovered they aren't actually available from the Sony website anymore (and that thread is now closed, the last reply was in 2016).

So for anyone else who might run into the same issues, here's my experience (on a VPCZ13V9E with a fresh install of Windows 10 version 20H2):

The download button(s) on the page(s) linked above didn't seem to do anything (in Chrome, both on the VAIO and on another computer). I used Chrome DevTools to see what was going on, and in the Network tab I found it was actually attempting to download, it just wasn't happening for some reason. I opened each download link from there in a new tab, and they downloaded fine that way.

So here are the direct download links from there:

Sony Shared Library: http://dlv.update.sony.net/US/pc/EP0000552217.exe
VAIO Control Center: http://dlv.update.sony.net/US/pc/EP0000552233.exe
VAIO Power Management: http://dlv.update.sony.net/US/pc/EP0000552234.exe

I installed them in that order. The Sony Shared Library one didn't actually seem to do anything (i.e. no actually installer came up, or any message saying it had been successful etc), but I found something in the Windows Logs/Application section of Event Viewer which suggested it had been installed successfully. VAIO Control Center launched an actual installer, as I would have expected. VAIO Power Management did the same as Sony Shared Library.

After that, VAIO Control Center opened ok but had hardly any options/sections in it (no Battery section at all) and some sort of sub-process of it kept using a lot of CPU. I suspected this was because I needed a driver for the Sony Firmware Extension Parser Device (which was still showing as Unknown Device in Device Manager at that point), but I tried various Sony installers for this (couldn't find any working links for any mentioned as working for the VPCZ1) and none of them worked (some launched an installer and seemed to install something, some didn't, but none installed anything which Device Manager could recognise as a compatible driver for it).

Eventually I found this page: https://sanitarac.com/portals/compo...river-windows-10-for-sony-vaio-vpcz12x9r.html

I downloaded the rar file linked from there, but used just the Sony Firmware Extension Parser Device Driver from it (as the other stuff seems to be older versions than what I've already got installed and working anyway, although I haven't tried to install everything yet). It says it's version 8.0.1.2, which is the same version number as one of the downloads I already tried from Sony which didn't work, but it's a zip file with actual drivers (i.e. .inf files etc) in it rather than an installer. Device Manager picked it up and installed it straight away, and now more stuff is showing in VAIO Control Center and it seems to be working correctly

Side note: It doesn't seem like VAIO Power Management is actually needed for the Battery Care function to work. I just did a System Restore back to before I did any of this (mainly because there seemed to be no way to remove the other non-working drivers I'd tried to install), then installed just the SFEP driver from the zip file, the Sony Shared Library and VAIO Control Center, and it all seems to be working fine and responding to changes to the Battery Care Function setting. I think VAIO Power Management just adds the extra tab to the Windows Power Plan advanced settings window, with just a couple of settings which I don't need.

Oooh and I've just realised that the Fn + brightness etc keys are now working (and even showing the onscreen bit) since installing the SFEP driver (I thought I was going to have to find and install something else for that). So I think that's pretty much covered everything for me, I don't need to install anything else