I’ve had my PCG-TR5GP for about a year and love it dearly. Two weeks ago the hard drive died. The laptop was secondhand and didn’t come with recovery CDs.

Thanks to posts on this forum, I was able to disassemble the TR5, check the hard drive type (Toshiba), purchase and install a replacement. I’ve even managed to put XP Pro back on it, although I have yet to deal with the OEM vs upgrade product key issue.

Again thanks to this forum, I’ve found Rahul’s excellent resource of TR drivers. I realise I’ll have to try them out and see if they work with my model. But can someone tell me what the process is for installing these drivers? I figure I burn them to a CD and put that into the Vaio ... but then what?

It sounds a dumb question just writing it! But I have no idea how to apply the drivers. The XP Pro install hasn’t requested any so far, but wi-fi’s not working and it’s running video at 1024x768. I’m not sure what else under the hood needs to be updated.

I’m glad this forum’s here.

Thanks ...

OK, alright, fine ... if I’d waited through the “I’ll just try this” phase I wouldn’t have started this thread. Here’s what I did to get my PCG-TR5GP drivers restored.

[1] Download all the files in Rahul’s archive.
[2] Unzip each of these files into its own folder and burn all those folders to a CD.
[3] Put the CD into the Vaio.
[4] Open Control Panel / System / Device Manager.
[5] Go to the “Other devices” section where there’s probably an unhappy huddle of yellow question-mark icons.
[6] Double-click on each icon in turn and select Reinstall Driver.
[7] Check “No, not this time” in answer to Windows’ wheedling request to connect to Windows Update. Click Next.
[8] On the following screen leave “Install the software automatically” checked and click Next again.
[9] Watch with immense satisfaction as Windows finds and loads the appropriate driver.

For two of the drivers (audio and video) a restart is required. Everything else comes up immediatement.

I also went through the CD I’d created and manually installed Sony Utilities and Sony Shared Library, which then allowed me to manually install Power Panel (otherwise the Power Panel install complains about a missing system file). Manual installation is a simple case of going into each folder and double-clicking setup.exe.

Cheers ...