Sunday, September 2, 2012

Reinstall Windows 7 on Sony S13A (SVS13A190X)

I recently posted a review on the Sony S13 laptop that I just got.  I'm going to reinstall Windows 7 SP1 because I like to know what is on my machine.  Even though I ordered it with Fresh Start (limited bloatware), there was still a crapton of Sony utilities, links to services, and other applications that I don't want.  I'm also installing an SSD.

The first step was to recover the applications from the restore partition on the existing drive.  There is a good explanation in this thread, which I'll expand on later.  There is a slightly different procedure with the UEFI machines, which is documented in post 21 of that thread.

In addition to the software that came with the machine, I downloaded all of the latest drivers and applications from the Sony web site.

I downloaded Windows 7 x64 Ultimate sp1 iso from Digital River and created a Universal Installer so that it can install Windows 7 Home, Professional, or Ultimate (delete ei.cfg in sources directory).  I installed to a USB drive and modified it so it could install on an older machine with a regular BIOS, or the Sony with UEFI.  I'll document that later.

I replaced the Hitachi hard drive with a 256GB Samsung 830 SSD.  It was a little tricky to remove the existing drive and ribbon cable.  Once it was out, there are two rails on the hard drive which I transferred over to the SSD.  I put the SSD in and replaced the bottom cover.

The next step was to install from the usb stick.  I chose the correct version and let it rip.  It took about four minutes to the first restart.  I had to pull the usb drive so it could reboot to windows, where it completed installation and restarted again.

On this restart, I enter user name, computer name, and password.  Then I entered the windows product key, which was on the bottom of the laptop.  After that, I was at the desktop, where I could start installing drivers.

I followed this guide for installing the software.  This is the order that I used.  Reboots took about 11 seconds.

Motherboard/SATA


  1. Intel chipset driver 9.3.0.1019: INDCHI-00265280-0042.EXE (reboot)
  2. Intel® 7 Series Chipset Family SATA AHCI / SATA RAID Controller Update 11.1.3.1001: INDOTH-00269039-1040.EXE (reboot)
  3. Intel® SATA Driver Registry Patch 120417: INDOTH-00268213-0042.EXE (reboot)
  4. Intel® Management Engine Interface 8.0.0.1262: INDMEI-00267507-0042.EXE (no reboot)
  5. Microsoft® Hotfix KB2708549 Update 6.1.7601.17832/6.1.7601.21854: MIOOTH-00268675-1042.EX (reboot)
    This hotfix resolves an issue where a blue screen may occur during startup when a USB hard drive or port replicator is connected after running a System Recovery.
  6. Sony® Firmware Extension Parser Device Driver 8.0.2.3: SODOTH-00264792-0042.EXE (reboot)
    This enables support for function keys and other laptop specific functionality.
  7. Sony® Shared Library 5.10.0.12150: SOASSL-00264711-0042.EXE (no reboot)
    Required for Sony applications (not sure which ones)
  8. Hotkey Utilities 1.0: SOAOTH-606A0000-0042.EXE (reboot)
    After reboot, it continued installation.  (reboot #2)
    This enabled the function hotkeys
  9. Intel® USB 3.0 eXtensible Host Controller 1.0.4.220: INDUSB-00266909-0042.EXE (no reboot)
  10. Realtek® PCIE Card Reader Driver 6.1.7601.92: REDMCC-00266072-0042.EXE (reboot)

Graphics

I couldn't take the low resolution any more; it was making my eyes bleed.
  1.  Intel® HD Graphics 3000 / 4000 Driver 8.15.10.2712: INDVID-00267845-0042.EXE (reboot)
  2. NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 640M LE Driver 8.17.12.9618: NVDVID-00267034-0042.EXE (reboot)
  3. Intel® WiDi Software 3.1.26.0: INAWID-00266775-0042.EXE (reboot)

Sound

  1.  Realtek® High Definition Audio Driver 6.0.1.6570: REDAUD-00265997-0042.EXE (no reboot)
  2. Audio Driver Registry Patch 20120308: REDAUD-00266875-0042.EXE (reboot)

Network

  1. Realtek® PCIe GBE Family Controller 7.53.216.2012: REDETH-00266641-0042.EXE (no reboot)
  2. Intel® Centrino® Advanced-N 6235 Driver 15.0.1.1: INDWLL-00265236-0042.EXE (reboot)
  3. Intel® Centrino® Wireless Bluetooth® 4.0 + High Speed Adapter 1.0.13.30079: INDBLT-00265296-0042.EXE (reboot)

Other (touchpad, camera, fingerprint scanner)

  1. Synaptics® PS/2 Port TouchPad 16.0.0.5: SPDTPD-00267239-0042.EXE  (reboot)
  2. WebCam Companion® 4 Software 4.0.21.457: ARACCU-00266402-0042.EXE (no reboot)
  3. AuthenTec® AES1660 Fingerprint Sensor 3.2.1.10: AUDFPD-00265311-0042.EXE (reboot)
  4. Infineon® TPM Professional Package 3.70.2281.0: IFAOTH-00264024-0042.EXE (no reboot)
At this point, I had a fairly clean system with all drivers and necessary software installed.  I wasn't sure if I wanted the Vaio CPU fan control, Vaio Hardware Monitor, or Vaio Smart Network, so I skipped those.  I realized that there were more recent Intel drivers for the HD 4000, USB 3.0, and WiDi, but I left those for later.

Before I did anything else, I activated my copy of windows.  I had entered the product key during install, but activation said that I had to call the automated telephone system.  Rather than do that, I reentered the key from the label on the bottom of the laptop.  It activated fine that time.  I should have done that first in case there were any issues.

Windows Update

The first thing I had to do was update windows update.  Then two rounds of updates.

Applications

  1. Firefox: I downloaded the latest version using another computer to a network share.  I installed Firefox and copied my profile over.  I started firefox using "firefox -profilemanager" to create a new profile and choose my profile directory.  The profiles are stored in %userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles by default.
  2. 7-zip: this is a great free zip/rar/archive tool that opens just about everything.
  3. MS Security Essentials: A nice, lightweight free antivirus.  I used firefox to download the current version.  I installed it and ran a scan right away.
  4. Keepass: I use keepass to store my passwords, so I installed this.  I use the keefox plugin for firefox, so this actually pulled the current version and installed for me.
  5. Dropbox and Boxcryptor: dropbox application and an encryption helper for it.
  6. Steam: wanted to start downloading games.

Optimize Windows 7 for SSDs

Now that Steam is downloading games, I wanted to tweak the SSD.  I followed several guides:
Here is what I actually did.
  • Disable system restore.  I never use this and wouldn't trust it anyway.  Go to System, System Protection, click Configure, and disable it.
  • Disable indexing by right clicking on the ssd drive and selecting properties.  Go to the General tab and uncheck "Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties."  Select for that drive and all subfolders.  You may have to give administrative rights.  There might be an error when trying to apply attributes - select ignore all and let it update all the files.
  • Disable disk defrag by right clicking on the ssd drive and selecting properties.  Go to the Tools tab and click "Defragment Now..."  On the Disk Defragmenter dialog, click "Configure" and then uncheck the "Run on a schedule (recommended)" box.
  • Disable hibernation.  I haven't used it for a long time (I had an SSD in my previous laptop) and don't miss it.  It reserves disk space equal to the amount of memory you have.  I have 12GB of memory, so this is a good chunk of space.  Open an administrative command prompt and type:
    C:\>powercfg -h off
  • Turn off the pagefile.  I have 12GB of memory and can do without the pagefile for now.  If I had only 4, I might leave it on.  Go to System and select Advanced System Settings.  In the Performance section, select Settings.  In the Performance Options dialog, under the Virtual memory section, select Change.  Uncheck "Automatically manage paging file size for all drives."  Choose "No paging file" and click Set.  Accept the warning, then click ok to get out of the dialogs.
  • Disable superfetch and prefetch.  These are used to load frequently used programs into memory so that they load faster.  They'll load fast enough from the ssd.
    • Run regedit.  Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters.  
    • Right click on EnablePrefetcher.  Select Modify, enter 0, click ok.
    • Right click on EnableSuperfetch.  Select Modify, enter 0, click ok.
    • Close regedit 
    • Go to services (run services.msc).  Scroll down to Superfetch and set it's startup type to disabled.
  • Windows Search.  This is the indexing service.  Go to services (run services.msc), scroll down to Windows Search.  Double click to bring up it's properties.  Stop the service if it is running, then change the startup type to disabled.
  • Disable startup splash screen.  Run msconfig.  Go to the boot tab.  Select the "No GUI boot" checkbox, hit ok.

Other

At this point everything is functional.  It's just a matter of adding some favorite applications and transferring any remaining data from the old laptop.  Here's a list of some basic applications to install.
  • Systernals Suite
  • Printer drivers
  • Pidgin (IM client)
  • VLC
  • Virtual Box
  • Java
  • Flash
  • Foxit (pdf reader)
  • Chrome
  • Media Player Classic
  • MS Office or alternative (Open Office)



Posted by at
Labels:

2 comments:

  1. udflyerMay 11, 2014 at 11:59 AM

    JB, How dod you physically replace the drive. I have the exact same model, bought a Sumsung 840 pro, can't figure it out.

    ReplyDelete
  2. jb03June 3, 2014 at 9:15 AM

    I'm sorry I haven't written back sooner. There are two philips head screws on the bottom that you remove, then you take the plate off. It looks like the picture here: http://www.mobiletechreview.com/notebooks/image/vaio_s13_guts.jpg

    Once the plate is off, there are four screws holding the hard drive in (if I remember correctly). Gently remove the drive and the cable and replace with a new drive.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)