This thread is a help for all of you that are planning to change operative system on your Vaio laptops. When I first bought my Vaio AR 11 B I had no clue it would be almost impossible to get a clean working installation of XP Pro (11B comes with MCE). Now I know and I want to thank “Mike Rebel” and “decoy” for helping me.
First part is for those that are using SATA discs. If using PATA (IDE) disc you can skip the first step.
Trying to install XP but get the message “No hard drive could be detected, please restart your system.”? Then your laptop probably uses a SATA disc. Since the SATA disc is not detected by the installation program you need to follow these instructions (the alternative is using a USB floppy drive and copy the SATA and RAID drivers to a floppy disc. During first part of windows installation you press F6 to install the SATA/RAID drivers):
1. There is a program called nLite http://www.nliteos.com/ download it!
2. Copy the files from The Win XP Pro to your disk :
a)Make a folder on your C Drive C:\Win XP
b)Copy all the files from the CD to this folder
3. Download the drivers for your notebook.
4. Install nLite and by this program use the option to make a installation of win XP by adding the drivers for your model.
5. Then you must make a bootable CD by burning it from the ISO which you made by nLite.
6. Restart your computer, boot from the CD and make a new installation of the operating system.
IMPORTANT: If you are using a external device such a USB mouse, disconnect it or the installation program will freeze during the final step, before entering windows. If this happens, just restart manually by holding down the power button. The installation will after the reboot continue in a normal way.
Why does my system stop responding/freezes when I’m trying to shut it down, put it in standby or hibernation mode?
The freezing during shutdown is caused by a hardware conflict in the USB ports.
According to Microsoft’s website (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/909667) it’s caused by a external or internal USB camera but I would say it’s not only limited to a camera but to all USB devices. If you don’t have any USB devices connected to your laptop, it won’t freeze. Most of us do connect some devices and to get rid of the freezing problem you must download the patch below (only English operative systems are supported):
http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/swu-download.pl?mdl=VGNUX180P&upd_id=2228&os_id=7
So, what about all of us that are using a none English operative system?
Sony didn’t think of us so we have to solve this problem manually. To do so you need a USB hub to which you connect all your external USB devices like mouse, external harddrive or whatever it might be. Then this hub is connected to the laptop in a normal way. Since the data from the external devices first pass through the hub the freezing problem will be avoided.
Microsoft suggests a workaround solution but at least on the AR 11 B it’s not possible to execute:
Disable the "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" option for the USB camera. To do this, follow these steps:
1. Click Start, click Run, type devmgmt.msc in the Open box, and then click OK.
2. In Device Manager, expand Imaging devices.
3. Right-click the USB camera, and then click Properties.
4. Click the Power Management tab, and then click to clear the Allow this computer to turn off this device to save power check box.
Hopefully this thread could help all of those who want a clean install and the freedom to do whatever they want to with their Vaio.
// CrazyCow
