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xpvaio

Hello all. I am new to this forum. Hi to everyone around the world.

I recently purchased a new AR71M from an online retailer. It was preinstalled with VISTA home. Not surprisingly it wasn't long before I removed it in favour of XP-Pro. I purchased a new hard drive to stick in the second drive bay and a new copy of XP pro and set about the 'UPGRADE'.

Everything went fine. Had to swap hard drives from one slot to the other as Bios wouldn't boot from the slave drive. I knew in advance about the problems with the Nvidia drivers (the laptops2go driver worked out of the box first time). Also knew that the sigmatel/realtek audio needed the hotfix to get sound working. WiFi and Network adaptor XP drivers were downloaded from Intel and Marvell's websites and also gave no problems. I can't get the modem to function, but I haven't used dialup for about 5 years so thats not a big deal.

The function keys don't work but that's not a big deal either (I can adjust the brightness with the NVIDIA driver). I would like to fix the headphone jack problem (where it doesn't mute) reported here elsewhere - but not high on my priority list as I use an external rack mount audio interface. It runs blisteringly fast with XP and seems a lot more stable - I use my Vaio for music and audio work. Cubase, VST apps and Soundforge etc absolutely scream along.

What is upsetting me is when I close my Vaio down normally from the start menu I get the normal message "windows is shutting down... etc" then it just hangs with a black screen. It does the same when I close down as a restart, logoff user, and annoyingly when it goes into powersave.

I would love to get it fixed as it really bugs me and I'm afraid I'll loose some data at some point. When I first ran XP setup it was fine. It seemed to start happening when I was messing around with audio drivers trying to get them to work. Since then I can't get rid of the problem. I have tried removing the audio drivers, and the NVIDIA Drivers.

I know this could just be a contaminated registry but I really don't want to have to do a clean install, does anyone know a fix to avoid this or is it a known bug with XP on AR71?

I haven't installed any frills like vaio media centre as I'm trying to keep the installation as bare as possible so it's not cluttered.

Any replies would be greatly appreciated.
Many thanks in advance.

Blencogo

Hi xpvaio and welcome to Club Vaio.

This can often caused by the webcam power management. Try this: -

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 Vaio 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.
5. Reboot

Alternatively, there is a Microsoft Hotfix for the problem here: -

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/909667

Have a look here for the Brightness Keys problem: -

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=195238

Good Luck

xpvaio

Hi Blencogo

Thanks so much for the quick reply. Awesome - and thanks for the welcome too.

Ok, so I did what you suggested - the Vaio camera is listed as a Ricoh camera device and didn't have a power management tab, so I just disabled it.

Hey presto it's cured! I don't think I have ever used the built in web cam so this loss won't cause much pain. Thanks yet again.

I read your link to using a different Nvidia driver, it's downloading now and I'll give that a go later.

Spurred on by your help I may try to get the headphone socket working now. If I play music through the built in speakers it's fine. When I plug in headphones the sound comes from both headphone jack and speakers. I have read another post about this to do with the fact that Sony in their wisdom break the signal path to the speakers via a software app, as opposed to the rest of the world who uses the contacts in the jack socket. In this post it talks about loding the sigmatel driver (even though it doesn't work) going into the registry and looking for a 'PIN' command, exporting this section to a file, reloading the audio driver that works and pasting the PIN commands into the new installation.

Frankly I'm a bit nervous. Is there another way?

Again any help would be appreciated.
Fond regards
XP Vaio.

Blencogo

Hi XP Vaio,

That's good news - you can always download the Microsoft hotfix if you need to use the camera. It is available here: -

http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=909667&kbln=en-us

I think the registry fix is the only way to sort the sound - is this the thread you have already seen? If not it may help.

http://club.vaio.sony.co.uk/clubvaio/GB/en/forum/viewthread?thread=44938&offset=0

Let us know how you get on.

EDIT: I attach the Hotfix below - Microsoft make you jump through hoops to get it!

xpvaio

Hi again,

Found the link again thanks for the reminder - backed up the registry (just in case).
Downloaded the pin.reg file.
Ran it (with everything crossed - I don't like playing in the registry)
Rebooted
All fixed - again. I can't believe it.
What a wonderful forum.

You know this Vaio now with XP is a really nice machine.
So fast. With Vista running the HD light never went off! Now it boots like lightning. Wifi connects real quick too, and doesn't knock my wifes PC off the network when I connect.

It's so much better.

I would like to copy my windows mail messages from my Vista installation (on my slave disc) onto to Outlook on my XP installation. I was having trouble with this. As this is a different subject I will raise post new thread.

Thankyou again Blencogo