winXP sp3 64bit on Vaio Z?

Hi guys,

I had a strange thought today... but have anyone successfully managed to install win xp 64bit on their vaio Z11/12/13 ?

Is it possible to find all the drivers and such?

I am not discussing if its worth it or not... more if its actually possible to do properly ?

Cheers.

 

I just found this thread..

http://forum.notebookreview.com/son...ony-vaio-z-clean-install-downgrade-guide.html

EDIT:

It doesn't say much about 64bit xp though... hmm anyone?

 

It uses the x64 instruction set so yes, it would be theoretically possible I think, depending on driver availability (Vista/7 drivers won't work)

64 bit XP is one for the committed masochists only though.

 

Not sure why you want to use an ancient OS that's supposed to be dead by now and then a developer/tester version too that was never meant for a production environment....

-> In theory if you can find the drivers any OS will run on any computer... IF you can find the drivers. Sony won't be much help here.

 

32-bit XP is supported on the Z11 and Z12 by Sony, so there are official drivers and all. There are no 64-bit XP drivers.

Hence, my guess is you'll be able to install it, but you won't have NVidia 64-bit drivers. Intel ones may be possible to get from Intel.com.

Personally, I'm running 32-bit XP on my Z12 without any problems. I prefer it over 7 because I don't like Sony's Notebook Utilities/Tools for Windows 7.

 

Well i just realised that service pack 3 for XP is only for 32bit! which makes the 8gb ram in my z12 completely pointless.. no way around it, XP is dead.

 

It's over ten years old now, of course it's dead!

I liked using it as well, but if you want to take advantage of all the new technology you've got then you need a modern OS really.

 

XP is a huge problem.

 

It's sort of like spending a hundred grand on a Porsche, and then paying some fella to walk in front of you with a red flag while you drive it at 5mph.

 

Or buying a Ferrari Enzo and replacing the V12 with an engine from a Ford Transit

 

XP runs apps slightly faster than 7, not 30 times slower.

Another horrible analogy.

Anyway, XP works nice and clean on my Z12, whereas I couldn't stand the experience of using 7 on it. Too much bloat and other bs. Therefore, I prefer XP over 7 on my Z12. I'm not saying XP is better. It only has 4 GB of ram, so not much is wasted.

I don't know about you guys, but when using my laptop I use applications most of the time, not the OS. As long as the app runs on both OSes, there won't be any difference.

 

Which apps?

7 actually has a hell of a lot of the bloat stripped out, which is why it's much faster than Vista. It's actually tolerable on a P4 2.4 w/512MB if you turn Aero off, which is bloody impressive for an OS released this recently.

Specifically in the context of laptops, one of the main things you are missing out on is the power management in Windows 7 - it's far, far superior to XP.

Even when one of the OSes can't even use the hardware it's installed on?

It's not unusual for people to prefer to stick with what they know (see: Slashdot), but if you spend a bit of time using Windows 7 you will realise how much better it is than XP. Ten years is several lifetimes in technology terms.

 

Google Chrome, Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, Dropbox, OnLive, VLC, Skype, Gtalk, VNC, etc.

Agreed. 7 isn't a bad OS, and it's certainly much much better than Vista.

True to some degree. I get around 4 hours of wireless productivity on XP, and I think that can be pushed to 4.5-5.5 hours with 7.

XP supports all the hardware of Z12, except it uses less than 4 GB of ram. But given that XP itself doesn't use up as much RAM, it's a fair compromise. Even 64-bit 7 on Z12 can't make use of all RAM because some of it goes to Intel video card I think.

Yep. I've been using XP for some time, and being an advanced user, I have it tweaked _significantly_ to be the way I like it. I can't stand the default Windows XP after installation, it's really far off from the XP I use.

I am using Windows 7 on my desktop computer and I have nothing against it there. It's just that I really don't like the Sony utilities on the Z12 for Windows 7. It has nothing to do with W7 in general per se, it's all Sony's fault for making the W7 experience on Z12 subpar to my high standards.

I know what you're saying, but you also have to consider that while XP may be 10 years old, XP SP3 is only 3 years old.

 

So when you complained about bloat and BS, you're actually referring to the Sony crap that came installed on it?

Reverting back to a ten year old OS seems a bit of an extreme, not to say illogical, solution compared to, I dunno, installing a clean version of Windows 7? Every laptop comes with loads of crap pre-installed. I usually play around with a new laptop for a few days to see which of the pre-installed utilities I'm going to want to keep, then it's nuke/pave/clean OS install/make my own disk image.

I have nothing against XP btw; I would rate it (well, post-SP1 at least) as the second best ever OS Microsoft have ever made, after 7. I still use it on a fair few of my machines, including work, although that's dictated by corporate IT issues that are out of my hands. I just think it's stupid still using it on such advanced hardware.

 

I haven't used the original copy of 7 for more than 5 mins (uninstalling all the bloatware isn't enough for my high standards of a clean system).

All of my 7 attempts on Z12 were done via installing a clean 7 from scratch, and then installing Sony's utilities/drivers (since Windows 7 doesn't have any drivers for Z12 by default, there is no choice). But I could never get those utils to install properly. There were always some annoying bugs occurring, and the whole thing felt like a mess.

For example, after installing Sony Shared Libraries but before I got a chance to install the next thing, I would get these popups about my battery not being properly installed. They went away after I installed power management stuff, but what kind of crap is that in the first place. >_>

I did try to follow the recommended order of installation and stuff, but each time there were issues. Nothing deal breaking for most other people, as the system still worked fine, but I just don't like using a system that doesn't feel nice&clean. And I wasn't a fan of those ugly tray icons to turn on/off my DVD drive, etc.

Honestly, I've done my best to try XP and 7 on Z12, and I felt XP was making a better use of the hardware (more clean, less problems). This is my personal choice. In any case, I'm not gonna stick with XP all my life, but for the next half a year or so.

 

If you're gonna whine about it giving you power management-related errors before you installed the power management software, I can't really be bothered to respond to the rest of your post, apart from leaving you with a favourite quote of mine:

'It is impossible to reason someone out of a position that they did not reason themselves into'
-Jonathan Swift

 

Vista isn't a bad OS either - it had issues at the start because HARDWARE MANUFACTURERS couldn't be bothered to write decent drivers.

-> Your claim of a "very clean system"... another self proclaimed guru who thinks he knows the OS better than Microsoft.

-> Uninstall the Sony bloat, defragment and be done with it, Win7 or Vista for that matter will self optimize. On that note, if you do a recovery or especially get a new laptop with the factory install, it is very optimized - and very quick even with the bloat (your own install even with the same stuff interestingly will generally be slower)

And XP is a rubbish OS - also because it provides very little if any real security. It was great in it's time, but nowadays it's only used by companies that can't be bothered to upgrade their system...
(Although in some cases I'd doubt their capability to do so... - my university springs to mind...)