Hello, I have an SVE1511B1EW.

I remember my previous laptop. It came with a "drivers" disk and all I had to do is install an OS and then the drivers and it would work perfectly.

This one comes with the silly recovery partition which installs an image including the OS and drivers and millions of other useless programs.

Unfortunately, I am a systems developer and I need to install a specific configuration on my laptop. It is impossible to get to my required configuration from the available image.

The Sony support page includes a fraction of the drivers I need. Right now, my laptop has no f-keys, no hdd protection, no smart recharger and it's slower and more unstable than a cleaned up recovery image (if I invested 4-5 hours of cleaning and optimizing it).

I was wondering if there's a way I could install the Sony drivers and control applications perfectly outside of the poor recovery image installer.

If Sony provided all the drivers and utility programs (as nice direct links, not "go get that thing if you can find it" AND a good list that describes which does what and in what order they should go) - it would have been a really nice computer.