japanese vaio fz change vista to english

anyone know how to do a fresh install of vista from a japanese version to an english version. where can i get the drivers from. i ve tried downloading from the american site and then updating model text file but i still get the error message. please help

 

which japanese fz do you have?

 

i have vgn fz90hs, blue ray and 7700cpu and 256gpu

 

I have the same model. It runs now under english vista premium without any problem and with all the drivers and hardware functioning optimum including the hotkeys. I did a clean install after formatting. I even restored my full harddisk space (200 Gb) by removing the hidden partition with the help of ideas from this forum. I won't need that partition as I will never need the japanese vista (though I made recover CDs just so). Sony warranty now only covers hardware problems and that's ok for me as I don't need their warranty regarding software.
Sorry for the long introduction, but when I installed English vista, I only needed the original drivers, which came with the laptop. These are found in the C drive in a folder called drivers (written as it is in English) and I needed to copy them away first before formatting. Sony support mentioned about these drivers for me when I contacted them. However, caution, no any software is provided in this folder and only the drivers are available. Some of these drivers e.g. Bluetooth and Felica port had executable files and they "spoke" in English during installation. Others were only inf files, so during their installation I had to direct the installer to where I copied them and it automatically installed them thereafter. Big caution: an important driver is missing, the Sony Vaio Notebook Utilities. Without this, no hotkeys, no camera and no wireless swiching will work. That was the only thing I needed from the sony US site. Editing of the model.txt worked for me and after downloading and unzipping, I replaced the modified file with the original one.
In fact, I have no idea about what software and bloatware sony originally put in this laptop in Japan, but anyway, I have now none (though I wished to have "Click to DVD BD" and the DVD BD burning program)

 

thanks for the info
by the way you can down load freeware blueray called express burn. did you buy vista upgrade disks. i was wondering if i can do a clean install with upgrade disks that i can purchase from the shop.

 

Yes, you can. Look for Brian Livingston's website (he's a former columnist for PC Magazine). (Here is the link: Install Vista with an Upgrade disk. ) He details how to legally install Vista with an upgrade disk. Then look at my signature below on the specifics of doing a clean install on an FZ190. Note there are a couple of things you need to do BEFORE you wipe out the existing instance of Vista.

Gary