# Sony Vaio a Mess after XP Professional Install



## Sodfather (Aug 17, 2005)

I purchased a Sony Vaio VGN-S460 just days ago and immediately began with formatting my drive and installing XP Professional as opposed to the stock XP Home. Everything went smoothly, booted up for the first time, and immediately realized that my system had no drivers installed.

I burned the networking drivers to a disc on another machine and installed them on my laptop so as to be able to download the rest of the required drivers from Sony's drivers page. All seemed to go smoothly except two items: audio and utilities. I still sit here with no sound card having been recognized on my system, and the majority if not all of my notebook's Vaio-specific features (hot keys, battery meter, et cetera) are absent.

I am out of ideas here. I installed the drivers; things ought to be running smoothly. Any suggestions or support links would be much appreciated. I'm sorry if this issue has been treated already.

Keith


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## ebackhus (Apr 21, 2005)

Did the entire HDD get wiped, or do you have any system CDs? I've found it hard to get replacement software for my Acer from their website. For now I'm limited to the restore partition, or if things get really bad, the XP Pro CD that it came with.


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## DirkDiggler (Aug 27, 2005)

HI there 

Right what you need to do is goto control panel and click add new hardware let windows search for new hardware when its done it will give you three options , tick I have already connected the new devices (it says something like that) then click next. windows will then show you all of your device's the ones without drivers will have a caution sign next to them , just click on the relevant devices and add or update driver then choose have disk and go to the dir you downloaded your sony driver pack ,,and voila should be able to get everything running thatway except your hotkeys , there is a hotkey utility in most sony driver packages but its hit and miss with them ,, hope this helps ..
regards Dirk


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## ezdude (Sep 4, 2005)

*Vgn-460b*

I have the same issue. I purchased the VGN-460, installed windows xp pro, followed the instruction from the Sony Website, downloaded the driver packs, installed the appropriate drivers. After installing the "sound driver", the laptop still does not recognize a sound card. I have contacted Sony Tech support via their Live Chat feature. They were of no help at all.

I am sorry I don't have any answers for you. I just wanted to let you know that there is someone else out there that has the same issue. If I find a resolution, I will be sure to make a post here.


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## ezdude (Sep 4, 2005)

DirkDiggler said:


> HI there
> 
> Right what you need to do is goto control panel and click add new hardware let windows search for new hardware when its done it will give you three options , tick I have already connected the new devices (it says something like that) then click next. windows will then show you all of your device's the ones without drivers will have a caution sign next to them , just click on the relevant devices and add or update driver then choose have disk and go to the dir you downloaded your sony driver pack ,,and voila should be able to get everything running thatway except your hotkeys , there is a hotkey utility in most sony driver packages but its hit and miss with them ,, hope this helps ..
> regards Dirk


 The download the drivers from the Sony website do not work like this. Unfortunately, the files that you download are not driver files. They are executables. So, you can not use the "add new hardware" feature.


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## Peter_UK (Aug 28, 2005)

Hi there

I have a Sony Vaio VGN-S4M and have installed XP Pro on it. In fact it has WIN 2000 pro on the C drive and XP Pro on the D drive and is dual bootable.

I just installed XP then downloaded the twelve "Utils Installer 1" to "Utils Installer 12" files from the Sony web site, installed them in order and it all seems to work fine.

Funny thing is I now cannot find a reference to the VGN-S4M on the Sony.com web site but I can buy one in the UK.

Go to this site and search for VGN-S4M 

http://shop.sonystyle-europe.com/

If you think it the drivers would work and you cannot find the drivers I used I could let you have a copies.

Peter


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## bam681 (Sep 7, 2005)

I was having the same problem with the audio after upgrading my s460 to XP Professional. I had installed the driver a number of times and it still wasn't working. I finally fixed mine by installing the intel chipset again and restarting the machine. This also cleared up the two other issues I had remaining - the modem and a USB controller. If you're having problems with multiple drivers on the system it might be worth giving the chipset driver another chance just in case something went wrong the first time around.


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## tinyhu (Sep 7, 2005)

Hate to tell you guys, but Sony systems- laptops and desktops- are very proprietary. Wiping the drive and installing XP Pro doesn't work as well as you would think it would. 

One thing you should have done BEFORE you wiped the drive was to create a set of restore CDs/DVD (unless you did do that), because their recovery system is on a separate partition on the hard drive and probably not accessible now that you wiped the primary partition and installed XP Pro (you might get lucky though and still be able to access it at bootup by pressing F11 I think it is. Those discs have the drivers on them, and may have helped at this point. 

Sony tech support won't really be of help because you changed the original configuration of the system and they won't support that now, they are usually pretty strict on that (I know because I worked at Best Buy in the tech department and I had a heck of a time dealing with them). I wish I had a solution for you. Whenever I worked with a Sony desktop or laptop, I used the restore CDs, and if those weren't available, I told the customer to order a set from Sony directly because there was nothing we could do. 

I've tried installing an OS by itself, then installing the drivers separately, and rarely did it work correctly. Their systems are set to work one way and only that way. It can sometimes be a pain just to install a nicer video card on one of those things, ack!


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## llvllastermind (Feb 20, 2006)

*(NO AUDIO) due to XP PRO upgrade!! [SOLUTION]*



tinyhu said:


> Hate to tell you guys, but Sony systems- laptops and desktops- are very proprietary. Wiping the drive and installing XP Pro doesn't work as well as you would think it would.
> 
> One thing you should have done BEFORE you wiped the drive was to create a set of restore CDs/DVD (unless you did do that), because their recovery system is on a separate partition on the hard drive and probably not accessible now that you wiped the primary partition and installed XP Pro (you might get lucky though and still be able to access it at bootup by pressing F11 I think it is. Those discs have the drivers on them, and may have helped at this point.
> 
> ...



Hey phoks.. :laugh: 

*Today i Figured out how to correct the stupid mistake we all seem to be makin,, Sony Did infact give us the *Correct* Drivers..:sayyes: *But as someone said above first youl have to install the 11 folders of utilitys by simply loadin each excution file in each 11 folders! *To Install your Audio Drivers Correctly. You must fully Extract the Fs2_Audio file wich is in the 'Preinstalled Drivers Untilities Secion' *of the Sony Website > http://www.vaio-link.com/downloads/info/info.asp?l=en&url=Vaio/Original/FS2_Audio.zip& < I made the mistake of not doin this and it costed me 3 hours of confusion! *when you do Extract the 'Audio' Files YOU MUST FIRST INSTALL THE kb835221.EXE in the "UAA High Definition Audio Class driver" folder! Then your just run the setup.exe in the main "Audio" *folder and System restarts and you will be please to hear the Windows closin theme!! 

Hope this helps all you sony upgraders! 

*JoNNIE D*:wink:


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