Please note that the following worked only on the TR3AP3 notebook. I do not know if it would work with other TR’s as well. A lot of the stuff (steps 1 through 6…most of the writing was done by Hexley…I only modified some of it..there onwards, its all my work) .posted by Hexley at http://www.hexleyinmotion.com/archives/2004/03/06/how-to-install-windows-xp-professional-on-sony-tr3a-with-everything-working/ worked fine for me however I have modified a few things given by him which did not work for me. I have also added some stuff of my own which got the 4 buttons on the lcd, camera and function buttons to work.
1. Create the recovery CDs from the Recovery Wizard. You will need to burn 10 CDs (1 startup disk and 9 other discs numbered 1 through 9). You could also order the DVD recovery set from Sony. They sent it to me free of charge…its a pity the one they sent me was for the TR2AP notebook.
2. Put your Windows XP Pro CD and boot from it. Kill all the Sony partitions, and create your own. Install as you would normally install XP.
3. After you are all done installing Windows XP. Get your Recovery Disc 7 (i.e. the disc numbered 7). When you first put it in, it will autorun and give you a dialog box saying how you should insert Disc 1 and start from there instead. Ignore the box. It doesn’t know what it’s talking about! Run :\drivers\ssl\setup.exe. This will launch the installation of Sony Shared Library files. Reboot when prompted to do so.
4. Create a directory in your Windows directory called “Sonysys”. Now, insert the startup disc. And you should see a window offering to install application software. You should pick “VAIO Driver Recovery Wizard”, don’t pick anything else yet, since some software won’t work until the drivers are properly installed.
5. After you install the “wizard”, you will note that it didn’t really do anything. I will tell you what it does, the stupid “wizard” just puts the drivers on your harddrive, but it doesn’t do anything with it.
6. Install the drivers manually. Go to Device Manager and manually update the drivers for each device you have an exclamation mark. The drivers are located in C:\WINDOWS\Sonysys\__$$ucd\0334209.SND\Drivers directory.
For your convenience, here are the driver mappings when you specify the driver location:
Base System Device -> Nbridge
Base System Device -> Nbridge
Ethernet Controller -> Network
Multimedia Audio Controller -> Audio\SMAXWDM\W2K_XP
Network Controller -> WLAN
PCI Modem -> Modem
SM Bus Controller -> Sbridge
USB Device -> Camera
Video Controller -> Video
At this point you should see no entries with exclamations against them. Also, get the USB 2.0 driver from
ftp://aiedownload.intel.com/df-support/5498/eng/usb2.0.exe and install it.
7. Once again, goto Device Manager. Under Universal Serial Bus Controllers, you should see 4 entries named “USB Root Hub”. The 3rd one should be for the camera. Double click on it and select the Power Tab and make sure you see something like “Sony Visual Communication Camera VCC-U01” under the Attached devices label. If thats not the case then select another USB root hub and try the same. Now, click on the Power Management tab and uncheck the entry which says “Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power.” Click OK and exit device manager.
8. Now insert the disc numbered 1 into your dvd drive and select the following applications for installation when the VAIO Application Recovery Wizard pops up:
HotKey Utility (this would be for the 4 buttons on the lcd and the function buttons on the keyboard)
Network Smart Capture
SonicStage Shared Library
Sony Utilities Library
Sony Video Shared Library
Once you select them and click next it will ask you to install disc number 6. Go ahead and do so and once its done installing , reboot the computer if it asks you to do so.
9. After rebooting (if it needed to), once again insert disc no. 1 and select the following applications for installation when the VAIO Application Recovery Wizard pops up:
Memory Stick Formatter
PowerPanel (very useful util…gives details of battery usage…also can find out the batteries new max charge capacity after a few months of usage)
Smart Capture Library
Once you select them and click next it will ask you to install disc number 6. Go ahead and do so and once its done installing , reboot the computer if it asks you to do so.
After the reboot, all four buttons on the lcd, the camera and functions keys must be functional.
10. Now install the latest updates from the sony website. Goto http://www.ita.sel.sony.com/support/. Then click on downloads. Select VAIO notebook computers for product and PCG-TR3AP3 for model. When you click on search the updates page should be the next page to load. At the time of writing this there were 5 updates available:
DVD-RW Firmware
Microsoft Windows
RealPlayer
Wireless LAN
Touchpad
download all of them and install them (I left out realplayer since i didnt install it).
11. Goto windowsupdate.microsoft.com and install all the “Critical & Service Pack” and “Windows XP” updates (15 and 19 respectively at the time of writing).
For extras, I would highly recommend customising the windows interface, running ad-aware to remove junk entries from the registry and then using a software like drive image to back up your current installation so that in future if the need arises you wouldnt need to go through all this pain and can simply restore that image and have all the sony specific hardware functional right away.
