In response to the last post I made about Sony, new Vista compatible software/driver updates from Sony are still slow. This made me go around the Internet and look all over for some kind of solution, and guess what - I found it.
It does not solve all of the issues, but a lot of them for sure. For one, my fingerprint login finally works again :)
Here:
Install the following FIRST:
**a. Sony Utilities DLL Update
**b. Sony Shared Library Update
**Should be installed first no matter what, they are used by all the other Sony Utilities.
c. VAIO Event Services Update
d. SigmaTel High Def Audio Codec Update
e. VAIO Camera & Camera Utility Update
f. S1/S2 Buttons
g. VAIO Power Management
h. Wireless Switching Utility
i. Texas Instruments® PCI7411 Integrated FlashMedia Controller Driver (XP driver - works fine)
j. Sony® Visual Communication Camera VGP-VCC2 Driver
k. ALPS Pointing Device (Touchpad) Driver and Control Utility (XP driver - works fine)
l. UPek TouchStrip Driver
m. GeForce Go7400 Drivers . There's also an updated Nvidia driver that adds better performance, no video skipping/lag and just better but still works nicely with the Fn Keys and Power Management brightness. It's 100.40 and it's right here.
n. Intel GMA950 (I currently get better performance with the 950 than the GeForce 7400 (subjectively at least which speaks to state of drivers) -> The Intel drivers don't seem to support brightness power management control, even the Sony ones. Manual brightness control does work however.
o. Latest drivers from Intel for Intel Pro Wireless Drivers
p. 1GB MS Duo Pro in the card reader with ReadyBoost - I see activity and some things seem faster but may not be utilized well because it's a regular MS Stick Pro Duo (yellow gaming one from Sandisk)...
q. Bluetooth works out of the box - no drivers needed. Didn't install Toshiba BT stack because my Blackberry only works with MS BT stack - works great btw. My BT mouse works great too. Much better BT implementation than XP.
r. HDD Protection
I did not need to install all of the things mentioned above - since some were already available on my Sony Vaio support page, but I was quite happy to get the Fingerprint working.
I also went to a Microcenter with my 4 gig flash drive and copied from their Vista powered laptops just like mine all of the drivers and installation utilities. One thing sucks though - I could not find Cingular and SmartWi installation ANYWHERE on the damn computer :) So, the whole thing was for nothing really since SmartWi is the only thing I really needed.
Two cool things I did find on-line were solutions for that Sony Memory Stick icon which was not displayed correctly in My Computer (download the fix here), and I also figured out that you can browse Sony's FTP server and get any other things that come out as well ... Some were even not available on-line for download, but they are available here: ftp://ftp.vaio-link.com/pub/OS/VistaUpgrade/
Hope this helps someone. If anyone has a full installation for SmartWi for Vista - PLEASE SEND IT TO ME! Heck, I'll even pay you for it :) I do need it to be free of the Sony's installation wrapper which detects which model I am on, since if it is not specifically for Vaio SZ-370 I have - it won't work. I know there is a workaround for this - run the installer, go to %temp% directory on your computer and copy installation from there - but it does not work at all times :)
Source: http://forums.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=103875
