FS515B Drivers for XP Pro

[SimonLea]

I just bought an FS515B and I am a VERY UNHAPPY CUSTOMER.

To be fair to Sony, I was badly misadvised by PC World who told me that I could install XP Pro over the factory installed XP Home. Indeed I could and almost everything worked VERY well and I was starting to rave to people about the VAIO - until I discovered that sound and modem would not work; I could not find a suitable driver from the recovery disc I had created (as advised in the documentation) or the Sony download site.

The Sony support site response to my case was (in summary) "we don't support XP Pro - try our download site again sometime if you're feeling lucky".

Is there an XP Pro driver for this device and if so why is it different to the XP Home driver? What is the device? Can Sony really expect customers to just stick with factory installed software?

I will never buy from PC World again for sure and the irony is that I was starting to really like my new VAIO. If anyone can help I would be really grateful.

[tonybeard]

Welcome to the forum,
Don't panic I'm in the same boat with Vista X64 drivers except in your case the drivers will be available but you may need to install them manually. Go to the Device manager by right clicking My Computer>>hardware>>Device manager and right click on the devices that have question marks and exclamation marks. Reinstall drivers option will advise you and go with 'No I have a disk' then browse to the drivers folder you downloaded from Vaio link (making sure they are extracted first) The drivers will be for both platforms. Click on any appropriate .inf files.

[SimonLea]

Tony,

Many thanks for this tip! I will try it at once. But wait... I am at home in the sticks with only a VAIO modem that doesn't work and my recovery and download discs are at my office However, I have been through the process that you suggested and I can see that there is at least some hope. The process I have followed so far only allowed me to select directories rather than .inf files.

I will let you know the outcome (whatever) by a post to this thread. If it works, I will suggest a new advertising campaign to Sony along the lines of:

"Our products are great; our retailers will lie through their back teeth to sell them to you; we won't help in the slightest but you can always ask another user". It's actually a rather powerful message!

If I had not spent 12 hours yesterday rebuilding my laptop (my Dell was stolen and I needed to have a working laptop for a sales meeting on Monday - sound and modem not required thankfully), I would have taken the VAIO back to PC World and demanded my money back with menaces.

But I would prefer to keep it! I am fascinated by this and there is probably someone at Sony who understands the power of community communication who must be up against a corporate lawyer who insists that support staff can only give certain answers to certain questions.

Thanks again

[rich912]

If that doesn't help then this thread may provide a solution.