Vaio Z VPCZ1 Clean Install

I picked up my new Z112GX last night and today after making sony's recovery discs i wiped and started a clean windows 7 professional install. After this guide you should have a clean windows install with no "yellow" devices under system.

Windows 7 X64 Professional ISO: http://msft-dnl.digitalrivercontent..../X15-65805.iso

Then use the key on your machine. It will give activation issues jsut run through the automated phone activation and you will be fine. SEE BOTTOM POST FOR EASIER METHOD

DRIVERS: http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/swu-list.pl?mdl=VPCZ112GX&LOC=3

Buttons:

The assist button doesn't do anything, as i assume it may be tied to some sony crapware feel free to chime in on this.
Silver VAIO Button Mutes sound and un-mutes sound (i forget what the out of the box behavior was with this i believe it loaded a sony media program)
Button in between assist and vaio, can be set in vaio control center.

All other FN keys work fine, wireless switch works fine, video selection works great as well.
Installed Windows 7 Professional with graphics switch set to auto and wireless set to on. Rebooted every time prompted

Drivers

-Audio (reboot)
-Bluetooth
-Lan (wired)
-Ricoh Card reader/writer SD CPRM
-Ricoh PCIe SD Bus
-Ricoh PCIe Mem. Stick
-Intel Chipset Driver
-Intel Turbo Boost Driver
-Intel ICH8M Raid Controller
-Trackpad (reboot)
-Intel WiFi

Then:


Sony Firmware Extension Parser Device
Sony Shared Library
Sony Notebook utilities
Intel Management
Nvidia Driver
UPEK Protetor Suite
Vaio MetaData

EDIT: Go into vaio control center and under power settings make sure to set it to resume when opening the lid (unless you don't want that) it seems to have been set to do nothing by default. Figured this might save someone a few minutes of trouble.

ACTIVATION TIP: Thanks Peteman100
The Windows 7 serial which came preactivated on your computer is actually different than the one listed on sticker. Using a simple utility called ABR, that serial can be backed up and later used to reactivate Windows 7 automatically. No need to call in to Microsoft to deal with reactivation hassles and your original serial is preserved. I've used it several times, and it works flawlessly. Give it a try!

http://directedge.us/content/abr-act...up-and-restore

(scroll to the bottom to find the Windows 7 version)

 

Ihtc

how about your boot time after the clean install?

 

this is me counting not using an actual timer, but i got 25 seconds until login screen and only another 6 seconds for desktop to show with a clear mouse pointer totalling 31 seconds. Im happy

 

egg-cerrent. thanks for this... did you get the drivers from the chinese sony site?

 

Drivers are up on sony usa

http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/swu-list.pl?mdl=VPCZ112GX&LOC=3

 

Thank you!

 

Just a question, did you download a Windows 7 ISO and then just used the key provided by Sony?

 

that would be the ideal way... just look for the key on the back of the computer

 

Yes downloaded X64 Windows 7 Professional from microsoft .

http://msft-dnl.digitalrivercontent.net/msvista/pub/X15-65805/X15-65805.iso

Then use the key on your machine. It will give activation issues jsut run through the automated phone activation and you will be fine.

 

Hi there, if we have purchased a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate instead, is there a way to download that ISO from microsoft instead of the Professional version? Thank you

 

Yes there is: http://174.129.85.117/data/Windows7Ultimate64bit.iso

Then you can purchase your key when it goes to activate.

 

very nice ihtc.
can you tell me if it has the german language(the iso)?

if not, is there a german version?

 

No german on that iso but there should be a download for it.

 

yeah i did look after it but without succes. how did you search it on the website?

or maybe you got a link 4 me

 

Since I have not even ordered my new Z11 I have not tried the image yet but I've found the following links:

Windows 7 Professional (x64) – DVD
(English) http://msft-dnl.digitalrivercontent.net/msvista/pub/X15-65805/X15-65805.iso

(German) http://msft-dnl.digitalrivercontent.net/msvista/pub/X15-65813/X15-65813.iso

(French) http://msft-dnl.digitalrivercontent.net/msvista/pub/X15-65811/X15-65811.iso

(Spanish) http://msft-dnl.digitalrivercontent.net/msvista/pub/X15-65843/X15-65843.iso

Give it a try and let me know if the German version works!

 

Thank you very much... but actually it seems to say file not found?

 

Sorry I can't seem to find an ultimate ISO link most i have googled have beeen the same dead amazon link. I am downloading home premium since i have some machines here running it, just to back it up incase that link dies.

 

i will report on the installation on my new ssd but first my new z needs to be shipped

should be today but i ain`t got ne email......hmmmmm
maybe tomorrow??
all i can do is wait now i guess.....

 

Used the pro link last night and spent a while installing all the sony stuff. One thing to note: One i installed the vaio control center i kept getting messages about the battery being incorrectly connected and pressing OK to go to hibernate. This popup was EXTREMELY annoying as it centered itself every 5 seconds and blocked all windows behind it. I installed a few things so I don't know exactly how i fixed it but i killed the process in process manager then reinstalled the control center + the nvidia graphics option and it went away upon reboot.

 

I haven't had that problem at all yet. strange.

 

Perhaps it was because I didn't follow the exact steps on the 1st page. I kinda went down the page of sony's site.

 

the order with sony's is always important.

 

Quick tip for all of you. The Windows 7 serial which came preactivated on your computer is actually different than the one listed on sticker. Using a simple utility called ABR, that serial can be backed up and later used to reactivate Windows 7 automatically. No need to call in to Microsoft to deal with reactivation hassles and your original serial is preserved. I've used it several times, and it works flawlessly. Give it a try!

http://directedge.us/content/abr-activation-backup-and-restore

(scroll to the bottom to find the Windows 7 version)

 

I completely forgot about that thanks for the reminder, I will add to the original post.

 

Thanks so much, ihtc. Followed your instructions to the letter and almost everything came out perfectly.

I'm curious about what a properly installed Bluetooth driver is supposed to look like? I see a BTTray.exe (Description: Bluetooth Tray Application) running in task manager, but nothing actually shows up in the notification area (I set all icons to always be shown). Nothing in 'Devices and Printers' either. I thought there was supposed to be some sort of settings pane available to disable Bluetooth broadcasting, etc.

Any ideas?

 

Did you try pairing anything yet? I admit i have not tried to pair anything I will later tonight after work and I will report back.

 

Yeah, it didn't work for me...

 

much thanks, Peteman100. very handy tip. you pay over $2k for your laptop, and you have to make your own disks - at least we can dodge the activation irritation.

 

I think it's to do with the wireless management software. It's one of the task bar items and when you click it it gives you two options: Turn on/off Bluetooth and Turn on/off Wifi. You gotta turn on bluetooth through there before you can use it.

Took me a second to figure out when i got my Z

 

If you do a clean install, do you still get battery drain issues? That is, after you charge your battery to 100%, turn off the machine, and unplug it from the power outlet, a few hours later (lets say over night) do you lose 4 to 5 % of the battery power?

 

???
The new Z has battery drain issues???

...The end of the world...!
That practically tells me not to buy the new Z now.

 

Yes it still has the battery drain issue. It doesn't seem to be the blutooth, I've tried the unplug the battery for a few minutes, plug it back in and that still consumes battery power. I haven't tried a bios shutdown yet to see if that will stop the battery drain but I've detached it from the computer right now and I'm going to plug it back in tomorrow morning to see if drain occurs without the battery plugged in.... I'm seriously considering returning the new Z. Either way its annoying and I'm hoping a clean install might fix it?

 

That really does suck......
This considering the fact that some i5 CPU CW series do NOT have the issue anymore (for them, I concluded that those machines use updated parts with new / revised firmware or something). If that theory serves correct, Sony's gonna try use all the older, 'draining' parts and then start producing / assembling using the revised ones.

We (the old Z users) all hoped a clean install would fix it. We played with BIOS, power states, drivers, everything. It never worked and Sony actually put out a statement saying that the battery drain was normal...

 

I saw the statement on the asia pacific site. That excuse might work for first time laptop buyers but anybody who's owned any other laptop previously would know that the amount of battery drain is absurd.

There are some i5 CW series that don't have this issue anymore!? Maybe I should return the laptop and hold out for a bit even if it means restocking fee.... Thanks for the info

 

I counted at least two people (in the first two pages) in the following thread who do NOT have the drainage issue on the newer i5 models. Some don't have issues with the C2D models as well...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=455551

Would love to see how this turns out with those who thought this was fixed... A mass return of the new Z would cause some reaction from Sony, I imagine.

 

What type of battery drain is going on, my battery life has been pretty decent. I haven't had a chance to search and find new Z owners with issues

 

The battery life on my laptop is spectacular so I'm not complaining there. I'm talking about battery drain when the machine is turned off.

Basically when you charge the battery to your maximum capacity (either 50/80/100% via battery care), unplug the machine, and turn it back on a few hours later (or overnight) the battery has drained by several percent on the order of 5~10%.

This is with a shutdown via windows not a hibernate or a sleep. Some have argued that its just from powering up the machine, but if you plug the AC back in before turning on the machine, but you will notice that you still have lost 5~10% of battery power.

It is crucial that you unplug the machine before you leave it overnight because as I understand it, if you leave the machine plugged in, the current draw will come from the plug and not the battery. Sony has put up a statement saying that it is normal in that the power button is a soft on/off switch and so it requires minimal power but it still requires a lot more than other manufacturers (Lenovo, Dell, etc).

Either way, do you think you can try this out tonight? It could be that I might have a "defective" system so I can always go and try to exchange it... Thanks!

 

My new Vaio Z Got nuked somehow yesterday.. I wish I knew how. It was working perfectly with all updates then just got overrun by Fake.Trojan... and my Antivirus was reading a million false positives.. not sure if it was Mozilla's Private Browsing that caused this that was the only thing I tried out yesterday.

Had to re-install the OS and fill up my 256GB SSD all over again *sigh*

 

Yesterday i finished my clean install with my z11.
Great description in this post!!
If there are any questions, feel free to ask me. i got everything intalled correctly including the rst 9.6 drivers which seem to enable trim on my intel x25-m
The benchmarks are graet, speed is crazy and boot times from buttonpush to everything loaded in the tray are 28 seconds!!!!

but one thing i could`nt achieve is the correct button assignement. its not that important butit would be great to have it like it was delivered by sony, meaning:

assist: vaio care( i assume this will work once you install vaio care which i havent done yet)

vaio-button: now mutes the pc. was vaio control center. ther must be a way to switch it in the registry, i am 100% sure. if anybody can help, i would be very very thankful!!!

the p button and the one between vaio and assist can be configured manually. so far so good but:

i want the p button to mute the pc. how can i do it??? again i am 100% sure i can do it via api-commands and am trying it right now!

then i can assign the "window"-button but not to do the aero snap thing.
when fresh out of the box the button putt 2 windows sidy-by-side and back. how can i do that??

 

If you get the Fresh Start option, is there any need to do a clean install? I've got a Windows 7 Pro license, I'm just debating whether the $50 it would cost to upgrade to Pro and get the Fresh Start is worth the time I would effectively save by not having to do a clean install.

 

Hi, Folks!

If you do the full clean install, you might see some unusual occasional lockups where the entire system hangs, the screen is black, and the Stamina light is illuminated, despite the switch setting on Dynamic Graphics. To get out of this, you'll have to hold down the power button for ~10 seconds to force the power off, which will also reset the unit. The fix appears to be trivial - at least it stopped this problem from occurring again here. Once you power on and boot up again, just slowly cycle through each of the three switch settings of Dynamic Graphics once.

The easy way to prevent this from ever occurring is just to always go through the Dynamic Graphics switch cycling after you've done a clean install.

EDIT: Note that this was a red herring. I've since chased down and identified the actual source of these lockups, and it's Intel's wireless drivers! See post #67, in this thread, for more details.

Cheers!
Mark

 

Has anyone had any luck getting the camera to work? I followed the driver/program install in the order of the first post but when I try to install the camera it displays a few dialog boxes say it is installing and then it seems to be done with no confirmation but it hasn't done anything that I can detect. I also can see the installer process running. I've let it sit for a half hour and it doesn't ever seem to complete. Any ideas? Anyone get it to work? Thanks.

 

I have not noticed this. I have kept my switch on auto. Once in a while when waking from a sleep i get a few flickers then the graphics auto/speed box pops on on screen for a second and goes away

 

I haven't had that problem either - I use all three settings.

 

Try running the driver install again after a reboot? When it's correctly installed, you will see no traces of it and no managing software. You'll just have to double check in the device manager. Install the ArcSoft WebCam software from Sony's site if you want to manage the camera directly.

 

sorry wrong thread.....

 

Hi DaveDaRook,

Congratulation to your new Z - so my link to the German version of Windows 7 worked and installed indeed a German version?

My Z was ordered last week via SonyStyle, so it's customized. Therefore two question:

1. Were did you get your drivers for the clean install? From the German Sony-site? If you model was also customized: Which model did you choose? My VPCZ11X5E is not listed!

2. Is there any special order one has to follow for installing the driver?

 

So guys, do you got any performance improvement instaling a clean Win7?
I did remove all the crapware from Sony and I'm feeling very happy with the performance of VPCZ1 (Raid SSD rocks!).

So I'm figuring out if I go or not with the Clean Win7.

 

I did a clean install to win7 ultimate. Honestly I don't see a lot of performance improvement. The bootup time seems to be the same if not longer for me. I had win7 home premium out of the box and removed all the sony bloatware before. Maybe it's the difference of win7 home premium and ultimate? Does ultimate load slower than the other versions(due to more security)?

I did notice there is about 10 less process running at idle than previously. But performance wise didn't notice much.

So I'm thinking maybe a clean install is only worthwhile if you want to change the OS from home to pro; or pro to ultimate. Just my 2 cents though.

 

My "Fresh Start" version of 7 Pro seems perfect. Fast, only necessary software installed, no odd processes doing odd things, and everything works exactly as it should.