downgrade : what a shame....

[Geoff_33]

Hello,

I ask Sony e-support when they will provide the proper downgrade drivers and utilities for their vaio laptops... The answer is a big shame. The customers will have to be use to have Vista installed and use it.

So good luck for everybody that can't find the solution for their problem like I did with the FE41M in the downgrade process. I think I will try DELL or to turn to linux for my next laptop.

It will be better than a thing like Vista.

[andrewparkes]

Install the utilities, the brightness is in one of them i think. 

For the scrolls, go to device manager, click PS2 mouse and update driver, point it to USB mouse and thatll get the scrolls wotking!

Let me know how you get on if you need any further help


Hi andrewparkes,

I didn't find the solution you explained to me. Until I press "update driver" it's ok but then I don't understand which driver you are using or waht your are exactly doing. I assume you choose the driver yourself or use a specific path for a driver you downloaded.

Can you explain with more details what you did. At the moment I'm using the pointing driver which is in the FE31M package.

For you Thalamus, I downloaded the FE31M package and installed everything that wanted to be installed. But the brightness remain disabled. So I will have to install windows Xp another time and try again. But before I will try to make the scrolls working when Andrewparkes will help me.

Hi, sorry this is how i did it,
- Go to device manager
- Go to Mice & Other pointing devices,
- Go to the mouse that it says is installed (Cant remember the name off top of head)
- Click update driver, and domt connect to windows update
- Click install from specific location (Advanced)
- Clcik include this location in search, click browse
- Browse TO wherever you have the drivers downloaded to and then install the driver for USB mouse out of the downloaded drivers. It should say installing driver for ALPS device or someting similar and an icon should appear in system try for the scrolls etc. It should now work.

Hope that helps and is a bit easier to understand than my last rushed effort!

When youve sorted all the correct drivers etc, i recommend saving each required drivers, then copy them all to a disk, it will make life a lot easier if you need to reinstall everything again.

I will do a little write up of how i did it when i get time, and include the exact drivers i used to get mine running nicely.

[Geoff_33]

Hi,

Thalamus, the post you found is not of interest. On the contrary. I saw the fake driver SD/MMC and will now try to find were lapeness downloaded the patch he is speaking about to resolve this little problem.
And I assume then that the brightness problem is due to the video driver. I just need to be sure which one was installed by lapeness and in the meantime to try with the one I have.

Andrew, I have one last question. Did you use the USB mouse driver of the FE31 pack or did you find it in another manufacturer site?

I want the downgrade to run nicely as well and to correct modify the problems we had/have in order to make a guide for other user who would like to do the same and still have problems. It's the reason I'm inssiting on how to proceed and asking for the links.

I will try your tip and see hwat happened asap.
Thanks to both of you. I'm sure when I will have everything working other users will be very happy.

[andrewparkes]

Hi Geoff,

Yes use the USB mouse driver, it works fine.

Let me know if its working, any further questions?

[Geoff_33]

Hello again,

I had no time to reinstall Windows XP so I try with the one installed. Thalamus, thanks to the post you found, I managed to get the brightness working. I had to install again the Nvidia driver from the FE3_ package. Then I tried another time to install the utilities and it did work. So I concluded that my video driver was not the proper one.

However, I didn't managed to find the "Memory Card Drive Registry Patch" that lapeness was speaking about to remove the fake SD/MMC drive. you know maybe where I can find it? Otherwise, I will continu my research.

And the last point, I follow, your instructions Andrew but it's not working. When I point to the USB mouse driver, it says : "The specific location does not contain information about your hardware" I uninstalled the alps pointing device and tried again wihtout luck. So I will have to wait for this week end to install XP and do it again.

Anyway the most important problem is solve and I'm motivating to continue and find everything to make this laptop run and the document for other owner of this serie.

[Thalamus.]

Hi Geoff..

In the Download Original Drivers Package you should have the Alps mouse drivers..

Go to Start > Run type devmgmt.msc and press OK, Device Manager window should open, double click Mouse and Other Pointing Devices.

Is there a mouse listed, if so, right click once on the mouse and select properties.

Select the 'Driver' tab and click on Update driver.

A new Hardware Update Window will appear, select Install from a list or specific location (advanced) and click next

The window now changes select Search for the best driver in these locations, remove the tick from floppy, cd rom and browse to the location of the downloaded Alps driver folder to included it in the search and click next.

Wait for the driver to install then click Finish, a System Settings Change window should now appear prompting you to Restart your Computer and click Yes to restart.....

[Geoff_33]

That's how I did the first time with the Alps pointing driver I found in the pointing folder. It did work but with this one I had no scrolls.

So I tried Andrew's solution. And the computer doesn't want the USB driver indicated by Andrew. That's why I said I must intall Windows Again. I made so many tests that XP is not clean yet to install something properly.

I will come again with my problems if after this new set up I have something wrong. But I'm sure, I will just have that fake drive remaining and the rest ok.

Thanks again for your time and help.

[Thalamus.]

Thanks again for your time and help.

You're welcome..

[Geoff_33]

It was long, annoying, painful, ... but at last it works fine.

@ Andrew, the USB driver is not working on my computer. But after the new installation i used the pointing driver from the FE31 package again and this time it was ok. I think, like for the video I did to many tests and something was wrong to go ahead.

I just have the fake SD/MMC drive remaining. I didn't find the "Memory Card Drive Registry Patch" that lapeness was speaking about. But it's not that important.

I will now start a soon as I can to write a thread for other people.