Hey,

Anyone in Bris with one of these ?

Just bought one, and went to do a clean install, then I found out that you can't get the drivers... Anywhere, only way to install is through Sony's recovery program / partition.. Which I of course blasted.

Will pay money to anyone that can make me a recovery disc for this model.

Taa

You're an idiot.

You don't format Brand name laptops.

I dont get it dident you get the cd's with it?, also it should have custom version of xp with all the drivers installed?!?!

btw driver wise all you need is Geforce Go 6400 drivers? unless its got some funky wireless card...

last edited by 0z at 18:57:45 19/Apr/06

You're an idiot.

You don't format Brand name laptops.

I don't have any problems formatting brand name laptops

I got my new dell laptop a couple of months ago, booted it with the XP cd, formatted and reinstalled.

Preinstalls are so yucky :P

Also, NEC, Toshiba, Acer, Asus and DELL all have drivers. Sony are just cocks.

I just formatted my dell c***y and it works all good. Hopped on my other comp and downloaded all the drivers off there site.

mongie you twat, who's to assume you don't get any cd's with the computer, and cant download them off the sony website...

It's not the case in the states, its some australia only bulls*** they're doing

The only way to get a cd/dvd to install off, is to run the vaio recovery program off the start menu, which steps you through creating a series of cd's or one dvd..

must be a f***load of bloatware on there, which is what i was trying to avoid..

i've got it working, geforce/wireless, but the rest of the drivers are sony specific and im f***ed

so im just going to ask a store to make me a cd i think

Every laptop I've seen usually comes with a couple of cd/dvd labelled something like 'recovery disk' or 'installation disk. I just bought a HP for example, wiped the HDD and used their installation disk to stick windows back on there, and they had an awesome driver/software install util that actually let you pick the bits you wanted and skip all the bloaty junk.

My dell laptop had something very similar, so does my wife's acer.

I've never bought a sony, but it'd seem unusual if they didn't have something similar, did you receive it all boxed up with everything included or did they open it up and possibly not give you everything?

I didn't say you had to live with their preinstalled software. I said you shouldn't format. While I don't have a laptop myself, I do sell them, and if I bought a new sony first thing I would do would be run through the recovery software and only install what I wanted.

Its all well and good to format your laptop if you're lucky enough to have a Windows CD with a "HP Operating System Recovery" label and another with "Application and Driver Recovery" with an install program that lets you pick exactly what you want on there... but when you don't get CD's with your laptop, well I guess thats what you get when you go from the land of white-box to a brand name pc.

Note to Jim. With laptop prices falling hard and margins becoming non-existant, manufacurers now often force the user to create their own recovery discs, and ship the laptop with just a HDD partition of "Recovery Data."

I didn't know Sony did that, but I know HP/Compaq/Acer do it a fair bit on their entry -> mid level pc's (especially desktops, but also often on notebooks) There is really no difference other than the fact you have to read the first box that pops up when you load windows the first time and burn your own discs.

last edited by mongie at 19:57:17 19/Apr/06

even after two edits your reply still didn't sound much less dopey than your previous one

even without the native reinstall cd's I'd happily format and install from a vanilla windows cd and then get drivers for whatever I need. he said he just bought the laptop, which means he's entitled to the drivers on some form of media like a floppy or a cd - he doesn't have to refrain from ever formatting his laptop as you seem to think he should.

yea i agree with everyone other than mongie,
while there should(if no cd) be a hidden partition with the recovery software on it, its prolly a good idea not to format that perticular partition(only about 4gig of space max) tho i dont see why he should be called stupid for wanting to unbloat his own laptop and expecting the huge company to provide drivers for those wanting to do so.
since that has always been the way in the past so why would it change now when more and more people are wanting to do so as the software gets more and more bloaty.

its always the first thing i do when buying a laptop, my asus is fantastic just grab em from their website, easy.

Every laptop I've seen usually comes with a couple of cd/dvd labelled something like 'recovery disk' or 'installation disk. I just bought a HP for example, wiped the HDD and used their installation disk to stick windows back on there, and they had an awesome driver/software install util that actually let you pick the bits you wanted and skip all the bloaty junk.

sony are fags, my friend got a sony laptop and they didnt give him any CD/DVD's either you have to make the recovery disks they dont give them to you.

Okay...

Tufnut, thats exactly what I said in another part of my post.

manufacurers now often force the user to create their own recovery discs, and ship the laptop with just a HDD partition of "Recovery Data."

Lets see if anyone can find them for me

This is whats left, just not sure which chipset the NIC is

http://intuit.net.au/hard.JPG

Note to Jim. With laptop prices falling hard and margins becoming non-existant, manufacurers now often force the user to create their own recovery discs, and ship the laptop with just a HDD partition of "Recovery Data."

Then don't buy from the the said manufacurers. Every Dell PCs I've ever bought (i.e. non-naked PCs) always have CDs that allow you to reinstall drivers and OS. Even when I bought a naked PC (super cheap Dell ala PowerEdge SC430) they *still* shipped some a CD with Diagnositic application to tell you what H/W you've got.

I think you're just generalisting waaaay too much here - that or you're selling crappy gear.

hahah

how is it convienient for someone to have to diagnose what hardware they have, then download the drivers, when you can just run a little program that burns you two recovery cd's anyway?

id say its all i915 based chipset, for the ethernet driver you need to run diagnostic utility of some sort to find out what it is.

EDIT: post a screen shot of system devices expanded, also powerstrip has a good feature to view everything on your system gives chipset details.

last edited by 0z at 09:19:06 20/Apr/06

how is it convienient for someone to have to diagnose what hardware they have, then download the drivers, when you can just run a little program that burns you two recovery cd's anyway?

two recovery cd's full of the original bloated crap he doesn't want anyway.
why is this so hard for you to understand?

mongie needs a comprehension lesson 101...

Im not really that experienced with this kinda preinstalled crap but did all you guys bashing mongie miss this line or something O.o

first thing I would do would be run through the recovery software and only install what I wanted.

Don't want bloat... don't choose the bloat... (providing it really is that simple)

I didn't miss it - it just wasn't relevant

mongie called this guy an idiot because he formatted a brand name laptop. but formatting a brand name laptop isn't idiotic at all, in fact it's a perfectly normal and reasonable action to take when you buy a computer, and has been for a long time.

Its not recommended by manufacturers. Not recommended by retailers and it doesn't seem like an inteligent thing to do to me anyway... but I may have been a bit harsh in calling him an idiot, so I'm sorry...

On the driver front... Being a centrino, its probably going to be a 915 like someone said and its going to probably have either 2200BG (Centrino = Intel CPU + Chipset + Wireless) and its not ABG so its not 2915.

I gather you already have that now anyway.

You would probably assume that the wired NIC will be Realtek 8139. I'd at least try that.

NFI on the other stuff...

last edited by mongie at 10:33:11 20/Apr/06

I've sorted it all out except for the audio,

I've actually found a site where I can download the drivers, but the audio driver doesnt seem to be working..

It's installed everything except the actual audio controller

Any tips ?

http://www.intuit.net.au/images/albums/userpics/10001/sys.JPG

Drivers found Here.
Once you have a fresh copy of xp installed i suggest you make a ghost image of it, burn it to dvd then never have this problem again.

last edited by 0z at 16:45:32 20/Apr/06

No joy :(

As you can see by above pic, I had already installed chipset drivers and audio drivers, which I got from here but they didnt work, fkn confused I am

Hmm seems it uses realtek ac97, all orginal drivers for your lappy are Here?
but you might want to try Realtek HD Audio Drivers Also...

EDIT: I think it might be good idea to leech all those drivers from sony site there some shared dll's libary files there and apps might be the problem.

last edited by 0z at 16:52:49 20/Apr/06

Ya done all that, maybe the Australian model is slightly diff

I'm downloading that Realtek driver you suggested, we'll see how that goes

Owe you a beer leg