XP Drivers for VGn-FZ190

Hi everybody,

I have been straggling wih my new VAIO FZ190, since i need to install XP instead of Vista and i could not find any proper drivers, what i managed is the chipset, bluetooth, wifi, and thats it..... no more graphics card (Nvidia GM 8400GT), or sound card and a lot more!!!!

so if any one can help me with this, ill be veeeeeeeeeeeeeery thankful

 

Why do you NEED to install XP? Be specific. I am not trying to be a smarmy or smug. Seriously, depending on what you "need" it for, I might have an alternate solution. I need XP for some development work I do, but I chose to install Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 (it is FREE). I installed XP as a virtual machine which meant I needed NO XP drivers at all. It works REALLY well and is actually faster than my old laptop was. Especially if I run XP in full screen mode.

If this is an option for you drop me a note I have a list of tips for making XP run well under Virtual PC.

Gary

 

Let's hear more about this M$ Virtual PC. How did you go about the install? Have you done any benchmarking with it?
What do you mean about not needing XP drivers? what does it do for drivers?

I did read M$s site on this and it doesn't seem to answer these types of questions.

 

The install is quite easy, download and run the installer, done. (That's all done on Vista (or whatever host OS you want to use. Then you start Virtual PC, it opens a window that looks like a BIOS boot screen. In that window you run the installation of whatever "guest" OS you want. In my case XP. Then, and this is THE MOST IMPORTANT step. There is an ISO image that is part of the Virtual PC install, you select an option that will mount that ISO and make it available to your guest OS. The guest OS will see that ISO as a CD drive. This ISO will install the "Virtual Machine Additions". These are the "drivers" the guest OS will use to "connect" to the host OS drivers. That is why you don't need any XP drivers for an FZ190 for example. The entire virtual machine aka guest OS is contained in a single disk file on the host OS. My XP installation, Visual Studio, Visio and MS Project all take up a 5 gig file.

Benchmarks? No, I haven't. It is not anywhere NEAR as fast as a native installation of XP would ever be, but it doesn't pretend or need to be. That's why I asked the original poster why they NEEDED XP on an FZ190. For things like running Visual Studio and certain VS addon's (my reason for needing XP) it is plenty fast enough. For video or audio editing it would be ridiculous to try.

One cool use: I initially installed an XP virtual machine. It created a 2 gig file. I stashed a copy and then loaded the rest of my development environment as listed above. The other day I needed to evaluate some third party software. I didn't really want to install it on my Vista OS, in case it didn't play well with others". So I made a copy of my stashed "virgin" XP OS and installed the third party stuff there. When I was done testing all I had to do was delete the virtual machine file.

Gary

 

Interesting...

So, this on a SZ where I need XP performance CAD apps that won't play nice with Vista and are resource hogs.

Xp is not and may never be fully functional on this laptop. I got pretty far, but Fn brightness control is not there.

If I install Vista as the guest could it control brightness? or are all the drivers the ones from XP?

I'm getting real concerned that this SZ is going to have to go back if I can't get it fully functional in XP

 

Well first off a technicality: it is not the "drivers" that control the Fn brightness or other Fn keys. It is a Sony application. That app MAy require specific hooks in the video driver, I don't know.

Now back to VPC. The true drivers are ALWAYS the ones of the host OS. The guest OS uses "virtual" drivers which connect to the host ones. But since, as I said the Fn keys are not controlled by drivers but by an application it MIGHT work. But I have heard of issues between the Fn Brightness and specific drivers even in a native Vista install without VPC being in the picture. This would indicate that the Fn key app may have some specific dependency on the driver so there might be issues with trying to use the Fn with Vista as the guest OS. I just don't know. I suspect the Fn key for brightness in particular may not work, but it might be worth a try. I am not familiar enough with the inner workings of VPC to know if the host was XP and the XP driver had the proper hooks for controlling brightness, if Vista as a guest would have access to those hooks. (This is of course assuming that such a tight interplay between the Fn brightness app and the drivers is even required.) It might work, and there is only one way to know... grin...

And since your needs for XP are VERY processor/graphics intensive they are NOT a candidate for running on XP as a guest OS under Vista.


Gary

 

Yea, I knew it was a util, pardon my mistake.

Yes, my needs are very intensive. A final FEA analysis will take an hour (full throttle on my fastest machine.) My cad station has 2gb of ram and it runs out at times = sw crash. No way I can run it in the guest mode. That would be for Vista which IMHO is a novelty toy at this point in time, another year of maturing and it'll probably be worthy, but not yet, not for me.

I fear that this nice little Sony is going to have to go back...unless Sony steps up and offers XP downgrade drivers.

 

Don't hold your breath, it's not Sony that you will be waiting on, they don't write ANY drivers. It will be the folks who OEM the various pieces of hardware TO Sony. Alps, Nvidia, TI etc. would have to supply the drivers to Sony and then Sony would have to supply the installer pacakage and possibly the .INF files required. So, like I said don't hold your breath. You'd have BETTER luck pushing on the CAD software folks to upgrade. Is this Dassault by any chance? I partnered with them for a while on some extensions to SmartTeam.

Gary

 

Yes, it's Dessault. Yes they are working on a Vista version, but they have such a bad habit of releasing buggy software that even if they released it today I wouldn't touch it for a year - and that's IF the community blesses this release. They have had lemons (2005 was a horrible release and 2007 isn't looking good.)

I really think it's at the point where I'm going to have to return the Sony
Too bad, I like it, but if Sony refuses to support XP and tries to FORCE Vista on me I have no choice but to return it.


Now here's a trick question for you.
Assuming the Thinkpad is fully XP supported (since they sell it with XP I think that's a safe assumption.)
XP being the host OS.
Do you think Vista B64 will install in the VPC? Being as how XP is 32bit I have my doubts.

 

No one is forcing Vista on you. You bought a machine with Vista on it. There was never any claim that you could downgrade to XP. Sony is not refusing to support XP, they never claimed to support it in the first place. This is a common occurance with many vendors and users. I am not sure I understand where this expectation comes from, that folks are thinking that there is supposed to be this automatic support for an older OS and then being upset with the vendors when it doesn't magically materialize. If you want XP you need to do as you are aparrently about to do and buy a machine that does support XP.

I can sympathize with the Dassault stuff. They really have shot themselves in the foot a few times.

As to the Vista 64 question, absoultely NOT. I don't think there is ANY 64 bit support in VPC at all. And certainly not 64 bit guest on a 32 bit host. The other way round MIGHT be plausible. But even that I doubt.

Gary

 

I figured the 32host 64client would be a nogo.

I do think that M$ is forcing Vista on the world prematurely. There was a big flap about discontinuing XP all together in the spring of this year until the big vendors like Dell & Lenovo complained. M$ clearly had the intent of forcing Vista on everyone.

It's a shame. Vista has it's place. Every time I play with it I find more features I like, but it's just too new to mainstream yet. Another year or two of maturation and it'll probably be a nice stable OS, but not today.

And FYI, I had my 'defect list' convo with Sony today. Got TS1, moved to TS1.5 then to TS2 and got a nice intelligent person Level 2 who knew WTF was going on. My hardware issues will take a depot service which I consider unacceptable on a new machine. What i did get out of him is that XP will be supported (though not sold.) The drivers are planned to be released at the end of October.

Unfortunatly these hardware issues are forcing me to return it. I have the RMA, but still have some time to muck around with it before sending it back so I'll continue fighting the good fight and share the relevant data with you all.

 

I agree that Microsoft is forcing the issue, no question.

RE: mainstreaming it. Like every other OS before it the mainstreaming will occur with SP1.

Glad to hear you got to talk to a level 2 person. I've had GREAT support from Sony once I get to L2. And equally great news that XP support is coming. Like I said here or maybe some other thread this XP driver issue is one shared by Sony and all the folks who OEM the various assemblies that make up a particular machine. So getting all of them to the table is no small feat. Sony doesn't write any of the drivers all they do is package them.

What hardware issues do you have?

Gary

 

Hardware issues are
Severe light leakage at top and bottom of screen
6 hours to charge battery (other users report 2hrs)
Shaking of display on an external monitor. (L2 says it may be a bios issue)

They are unwilling to upgrade me to onsite service. Having dealt with Sony's depot service in the past I'm unwilling to do so again on a brand new machine. (last time was 3.5 months of dicking around before I finally got CDW involved and returned the machine)

 

thanx a lot Gary....

to be honest i just read ur post now, and im really interested in trying ur method. actually i needed XP for arichcad, since it was not compatible with vista, thats y i needed to downgrade to XP.

i went through a lot of hardship and manage to find all the drivers (well most of them!!!) except for the sound card: sigmatel high definition codecs... unfortuniatlly im going on my annual leave next week and i won't be able to recover vista and try your way now!!! it will be a petty to live with no sound card for the time beeing!!!!

anyway, when i come back i will try to use your method and thanx again for the advise

 

I really can't say how either of these programs will fare under Virtual PC. My hunch is not very well as both of these are very processor intensive. It really would depend a LOT on the specifics of what your are doing with both of them. Only way to know for sure is to try it.


Gary

 

UPDATE:

I made it!!!!!

now the sound card is working fine!!! after some search in the net i found one post regarding installing the Microsoft's KB835221 hotfix first then install the driver for an older vaio machine...and now it is working fine with me....

but here come another headache.... now i can't put the laptop on standby or hibernate!!!! when ever i try it give me a blue screen that roles fast and say: "error in windows xp need to restart to solve the problem " (well not exactly like this but this is the meaning of the massage)

so anyone knows y this is happening

 

Hi has anybody managed to get XP running OK on an FZ18?

I was trying to do this yesterday but I couldn't get the slipstreamed drivers to work? Does anybody have advice for doing this using the software that is on the FZ18 (Roxio easy media creator 9 - it doesn't allow me to change the boot emulation mode). I have been unable to make a disc the boots. I did try swapping out the genuine xp disc for my modified one (straight after 'press any key to boot from cd') but although this seemed to work, I had no hard disc support.

It seems a lot of drivers are available for the FZ19 will these work ok on the FZ18?

Where can i get the nvidia graphics card drivers in xp form from?

Has anybody tried installing the vista utilities on an xp install - i have been able to install vista software on an xp machine before - is this a possibility in this case?

If i am going to install XP i would like the pc to have full functionally including all the function keys, power management etc...

If this is not possible I will have to persevere with vista, which is probably the sensible choice ;-) .... if this is to be the case... how do I get rid of the 10G restore partition so i can add this to my main hard drive giving me 160G (approx) in total? It appears that as the partition is at the 'beginning' of the drive i cannot delete it.

Am i going to be better off getting a copy of vista and performing a clean install with that? (can i get a media kit and use my serial number?)

I have noticed when the laptop goes to sleep it doesn't always wakeup with the wireless working and I have to restart. I have switched of the function that allows the wireless card to be put to sleep, will that fix the problem?

Does anybody have any tips for setting up vista? I'm guessing switch of the Aero interface etc... and disable all the effects...

I am using this PC mainly for on site audio recordings, do acheive this I am using a USB audio interface to get audio in and out from my mixing desk. Sometimes I am required to play background music and whilst doing this it is beneficial to lock the PC to prevent anyone from fiddling, however when I unlock it the audio drops out momentarily as it unlocks - this is obviously not ideal (my old FS215 running xp didn't do it).

Final point regarding the FZ18 is that it has a nasty earth loop on the power supply. When i run it into an external amp or mixer it is fine until i plug it into the power supply then it sounds like a fax machine. After trying the old FS215 power supply I found this didn't cause the same problem this power supply does not use an earth. I resolve the problem by chopping the plug off the new power supply and putting a new plug on but not connecting the earth - silence!