problems with reinstall

[adrian.lita]

hello

i just reinstalled vista, but this time the ultimate on my fz31z.
i managed ( hardly ) to install all drivers, except these ones:
- Wireless LAN Driver Atheros 7.2B - 7.2.0.215
- the AV-mode and S1 button, and the illumination change Fn Buttons. these one till now. but i think there are others

i needed to reinstall vista to get rid of the sony and vaio programs that i did not need ( something with music, etc ).

anybody have a solution ?

[corrected: i managed to install the camera. but still under Device Manager shows a Unknown device, and i don't know which device that is]

[Blencogo]

Hi adrian.lita and welcome to Club Vaio.

Unfortunately by making a fresh install, you not only get rid of a lot of preinstalled Sony programs you DO NOT want, you get rid of too many Sony preinstalled programs you DO want.

I don't think it is possible to successfully upgrade the FZ21 and FZ31 series of Vaios because Sony do not make all the necessary Utilities available for download. The most successful method is to Uninstall what you don't want from the original Sony OEM install. In addition, several have had difficulties getting everything to work with Vista Ultimate - but it should be possible but will take some perserverance.

All the drivers are available by downloading from here including your Ethernet, Camera and Atheros drivers: -

http://support.vaio.sony.co.uk/downloads/preinstalled/preinstalled.asp?site=voe_en_GB_cons&m=3059

but the Original Utilities Package is incomplete and the missing utilities are needed to work the Camera, Special Function Keys, Vaio Update, AV Mode etc. etc.

I can only suggest that you download the Original Utilities Package for the FZ11Z from here: -

http://support.vaio.sony.co.uk/downloads/preinstalled/preinstalled.asp?site=voe_en_GB_cons&c=-1&s=-1...

and try to install all the drivers that are missing from the FZ31Z download (you will see that the FZ11Z Utilities file is three times larger than the FZ31Z file).

Good Luck and let us know how you get on.

[adrian.lita]

thanks for the support, but i still have little things i don't know:

the atheros ( hope i write well ), what is it for ?
and how can i manually install atheros ?
if i try Add Hardware from CP, when i select have disk, nothing shows there in the list ( after i select atheros .inf ). that happened with other drivers too, but i read the readme of one, and it explained that i need to copy the files to Intel Chipset installation utility, and then run it, and so i managed to install almost everything that had no setup.exe

but with atheros, i did not manage to do anything.


i installed the Wireless switching utility from fz21z and it did not quite work. i will try some other variants.

besides atheros and some minimal features ( the av-mode ), everything works, i managed to install them.

[adrian.lita]

i managed to install everything except atheros wi-fi.

[Karlo206]

Hi Adrian,

Just a heads-up, you lose support for your VAIO when you install the OS yourself as it will be considered a '3rd party OS'.

Installing the latest NVidia graphics card drivers (for the FZ31Z) sorted my F button problems.

Cheers