Hardware

..:: Disclaimer ::..

Some tricks and tips that I learned and would like to share with others as well as a reminder for myself. This are things that worked for me but it may not work for you.

Note: I do not bear any responsibilities for any results that you (may) experience. Try my tips on your own risk!

Reinstalling drivers for Sony Vaio from Japan

Ok, I bought a Sony Vaio from Japan and it comes with a preinstalled Japanese windows.. So, i decided to reformat it.

The main hardware drivers are located at C:\windows\drivers

Be sure to copy them out to a safe place before reformatting the computer.

Also, the special function buttons will not work with these drivers.

More effort is necessary.

To restore the features of the special buttons (volume, Fn, projector, etc), one has to install:

  • Sony Shared Library
  • Vaio Event Services (might be bundled up with Sony Notebook Utilities).

Strangely, Japan's Sony Support does not provide driver. So,try to search for these drivers from US or UK and find the nearest matching model..

For example, my model is VPCEA4AFJ while the one i installed is VPCEA4AFX (the difference is only the last alphabet).

Installed both programs and my special keys are working without any problems.

Problem writing into flash/thumb/pen drive

I had a flash drive that somehow went corrupted. I can detect it, it is visible in "My computer" but every time i try to copy things or modify the contents, it "disconnects" and "reconnects". So every operation that I tried failed. I don't think the device is physically (hardware) faulty because i managed to copy a lot of files into it previously without a glitch.

Here is a list of others things that i tried and their results:

  1. Accessed without autorun to check for virus - nothing
  2. Accessed in command prompt - no virus
  3. Tried to delete something in command prompt - failed
  4. Quick and Full Format in windows - failed
  5. Deleting Partition in windows - failed
  6. Quick and Full Format in command prompt - failed
  7. Low level format with zeros - failed
  8. Clean and Delete partition using Diskpart in command prompt - failed
  9. Tried using Mac to delete the partition - failed
  10. I wanted to use Linux to delete the MBR and recreate it - Linux OS unavailable
  11. Using Active (c) Killdisk to try to kill it - failed

So far, I still could not find any other method to repair it. It might be permanently dead.