s580b: hardware and vista upgrades

sorry for the lenth

I have an s580b with 2 gigs ram, a 6400 nvidia and 60 (6 being used by the restore partition) gig hard drive.

• Anyone know where I can get a new or used (working) mat****a uj 832d?
• Is this a user replaceable part? I only ask the second questions, because sony seems to think only mem should be updated by the user. on the same note, can i update the harddrive? will and harddrive do?
• previous to installing vista, i ran the getvaioinfo from sony. it said the laptop met the minimum requirements for video memory. which it said was 64. now, it says i only have 32. why the change?
• do you think sony will eventually release more drivers for this laptop?

My Vista Saga:

the laptop works pretty well. but twice now, running xp, sound would play choppy after months of working great. it seemed to happen after a divx upgrade, and even though i uninstall it, the sound still was choppy.

I cant say it was definitely divx, it just seems that both time the sound became choppy was after installing the latest divx bundle.

not life threatening, just annoying.

The first time it happened, I re-installed xp using the sony restore options.

This time around, I decided to install vista premium upgrade clean.

skipping ahead to the install after some cleaning up.

I come to find that I cant boot from the dvd. Even though I change the order in the bios. it seems to want to read it, but after a bit just goes to the hard drive.

I try again from with in xp. it seems to languish trying to extract files. I stop it after it get stuck a 3% for a long time.

It seems the cd can read cd without issues, but has issues with dvd.

Anyone know where I can get a new or used (working) mat****a uj 832d? Is this a user replaceable part? I only ask the second questions, because sony seems to think only mem should be updated by the user.

after searching on the web, the best method for me to update to vista is over the network using a shared dvd from another pc. it tooks about 50 minutes for the install to extract the files, but the install went smoothly.

first thing vista tells me is that they might be an issue with real tek audio drivers. so, why install it. It asks if it should go online to check online for help. i let t and it takes me to a web site where I download the drivers. on next boot the error doesnt come up.

btw, windows update has a realtek driver and if you install it it gives you the same error as above causing your to re-install the first one you installed.

okay, so sony only have 4 files/driver sets on their os migration page for this laptop. I installed all 4. even though bluetooth was already working.

I still had 3 exclamation mark in device manager. 2 unknown and one mass storage.

for the 2 unknown, i just had vista try again. this time it found the drivers and both installed. thanks to this site I install the xp version of memory stick. all devices seem to be found.

the fn keys dont work, but everything else seems to be running well.

 

The DVD-Drive and the harddrive are both user replaceable. There was a detailed guide on how to replace the harddrive on the S-Series in these forums, so try a search for that.
The change in Video memory should be of no concern, the S5xx have 32MB onboard the rest is taken from the RAM.
Sony will release more drivers but it could be April till they are all released. Check for drivers for the S660, they should also work for your S580. I installed them and my Fn keys for volume work.

 

thanx for the info. i'll look for that guide.