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Sony VAIO VGX-XL201 Clean Install Manual
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Sony VAIO VGX-XL201 Clean Install Manual

Sony VAIO VGX-XL201 Clean Install Manual

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Download this manual See also: Troubleshooting Manual, User Manual
Sony VAIO VGX-XL201
Media Center PC
Clean Install Guide
Version 1.0
Author: William Warby

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Summary of Contents for Sony VAIO VGX-XL201

  • Page 1 Sony VAIO VGX-XL201 Media Center PC Clean Install Guide Version 1.0 Author: William Warby...
  • Page 2 Sony. Also, due to the pace of software development, by the time you receive your PC, most of the freeware software will be out of date, and Sony, like most PC manufacturers these days have a tendency to give you old versions of retail applications like Adobe Photoshop Elements or WinDVD.
  • Page 3 Product Keys This guide was written with the assumption that methods described in Club VAIO forum threads for using the Windows product key from the sticker on the back of your PC would work in this slightly different scenario. My experience has been that following the instructions in this guide to the letter, I was unable to activate Windows after installation using the product key on my PC, although it happily let me install Windows.
  • Page 4 Creating the Recovery DVDs When you first power on your PC, you will have to go through the motions of finalising your installation of Windows. This involves pairing the wireless keyboard to the PC, choosing regional settings and time zone, accepting Microsoft’s EULAs, enabling automatic updates, naming your computer, setting and Administrator password, registering with Microsoft (or not) and setting up your first user account.
  • Page 5 • Run the VAIO Recovery Utility and select “Create Recovery Media Kit”. • Press “OK”.
  • Page 6 • Press “Next”.
  • Page 7 • Choose the type of DVDs you want to burn. I don’t have any double layer recordable DVDs mostly because they are hugely more expensive than single layer discs at the moment) so I used 2 DVD-Rs. I recommend doing the same since I this guide will assume the file structure of the 2 disc approach.
  • Page 8 • Press “Start” and give feed the application with blank discs as required. I made two copies of each for good measure but you only need one set. • Burning the discs on my VGX-XL201 took about 20 minutes for the Application Recovery Disc and 30 minutes for the System Recovery Disc.
  • Page 9 Returning to the Factory Installed Image Should you ever feel the need, you can restore your system to it’s factory default image at any time using these discs by booting from the System Recovery Disc. When the System Recovery disc boots, you will have some options to choose from: You can recover just the C: drive, leaving your D: drive in-tact.
  • Page 10 Note: These files are required to make your MCE 2005 CDs to accept the OEMBIOS.CA_ OEMLOGO.GI_ product key from your Sony VAIO computer. They are not visible on the OEMBIOS.DA_ PIDGEN.DLL recovery DVDs so the only way to extract them is from C:\Windows\I386 with OEMBIOS.SI_...
  • Page 11 Files from the System Recovery DVD Copy the contents of [System Recovery DVD]\VAIO Applications\Drivers to C:\CleanInstall\Drivers Tip: These files can also be found at C:\Drivers, and can also be downloaded from the VAIO Link website Copy the contents of [System Recovery DVD]\VAIO Applications\Hotfix to C:\CleanInstall\Hotfix Tip: All of these hotfixes can be downloaded from Microsoft’s website, but not all of them will get installed automatically by running Microsoft Update.
  • Page 12 Creating the Custom Operating System Install Image Sony do not provide you with an installable operating system CD, so you need to obtain one somehow. Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, the operating system we will be using in this guide comes on two CDs. I don’t know whether it is possible to obtain these CDs from Sony, because I am a Microsoft Developer Network subscriber, and my subscription grants me access to all of Microsoft’s operating...
  • Page 13 • Run nLite and press “Next”.
  • Page 14 • Insert MCE 2005 CD1 and press “Browse…” to select your DVD drive. • nLite will ask you where you want to save the CD installation files for modification. Click “OK”.
  • Page 15 • Browse to C:\CleanInstall\OS_Default and click “OK”. • nLite will copy the contents of the CD to your hard drive.
  • Page 16 • nLite will ask to copy CD2 to the same location as CD1. Insert CD 2 and press “Yes”, then browse and select your DVD drive. • nLite will copy the contents of CD2 to C:\CleanInstall\OS_Default.
  • Page 17 • Don’t click “Next” yet. It has been my experience that you may want build your nLite modified operation system install image a few times before you get it right, so you want to be able to easily get back to this point. •...
  • Page 18 • Copy the contents of C:\CleanInstall\OS_Default to C:\CleanInstall\OS_Custom. This is so that you are modifying a copy of the OS rather than the original, and you can quickly start again if things go wrong. • Click “Browse” and browse to C:\CleanInstall\OS_Custom.
  • Page 19 • If you have run nLite before and you are going back to tweak the image, settings you used on previous runs will be shown here. Select the occasion you want to use and press “Load”, or if you saved settings to a file, press “Import”...
  • Page 20 • This is where you select how much or how little customisation you want to do with your custom operating system image. • “Hotfixes and Update Packs”, “Drivers” and “Bootable ISO” are required for the purposes of this guide, but I recommend selecting all the options I have selected in this screenshot.
  • Page 21 Microsoft hotfixes into the installation. In theory, you should be able to embed all of the hotfixes provided by Sony. I haven’t tried this however, because prefer to run Windows Update after installation and get the most current hotfixes that way.
  • Page 22 • This is where you embed device drivers into the installation. • Click “Insert” and select “Multiple Driver Folder”. Browse to C:\CleanInstall\Drivers and click “OK”.
  • Page 23 • nLite will scan the folder you selected for drivers which it can use in the image. It won’t be able to use all of them because some of the drivers provided are in the format of a setup executable rather than an unpackaged INF driver (for the VGX- XL201 this includes TV Capture, Wireless LAN and Intel Quick Resume).
  • Page 24 • I don’t know which of these RAID drivers you actually need, but selecting all of them does no harm so I recommend doing that. Select all the drivers and click “OK”.
  • Page 25 • Once you have selected all the drivers, you should see something like this.
  • Page 26 • In order to prevent you from removing stuff you actually want on the next page, this compatibility list lets you choose what functionality you actually need from Windows. Just select everything you might possibly want to use in Windows.
  • Page 27 • None of this is required for the purposes of this guide, but it’s cool to be able to knock out things from the installation you don’t want. Also, if you knock out enough components, your final image will fit on a CD rather than a DVD.
  • Page 28 • Change as many or as few of these options as you like. The only one you need to enter is your product key. This can be found on the sticker on the back of your PC. • Suggestion: Set “Unattended Mode” to “Fully automated”.
  • Page 29 • Again, this page has no impact for the purposes of this guide. Change the options as you see fit.
  • Page 30 • The patches tab also has no relevance to this guide, but I recommend the settings I have selected here. • The “Maximum unfinished simultaneous connections” option has to do with a security fix Microsoft put in place that limits unfinished TCP/IP connections to 10.
  • Page 31 • I love this tab. Again, nothing to do with this process, change all or none of these features and it’ll make no difference to the process. What this tab does though, is allow you to change hundreds of settings that you probably go through manually after you’ve installed Windows.
  • Page 32 • You’re ready to kick off the process of actually changing the installation CD contents. Press “Yes”. •...
  • Page 33 • The process is complete (nearly). We still need to embed the files we copied from the C: drive. • Copy the contents of C:\CleanInstall\I386 to C:\CleanInstall\OS_Custom\I386, replacing any files that already exist. • If you have gone over the 700MB limit for CDs, I strongly recommend copying the following folders to C:\CleanInstall\OS_Custom :...
  • Page 34 • I suggest burning the installer to an ISO image. That way you can copy it, back it up and easily recreate it if the disc gets lost or damaged. Choose settings as shown in this screenshot and press “Make ISO”. •...
  • Page 35 • Use your preferred tool to burn the image to a DVD (or a CD if you’ve managed to hack out enough from the installation that the ISO is under 700MB). • I used Roxio DigitalMedia SE which is preinstalled on the PC.
  • Page 36 Installing the Custom Operating System Install Image OK, by this point you should have an operating system disc completely customised to your requirements with your Windows product key, device drivers and any other customisations you saw fit to make. The annoying thing is that if this disc doesn’t work for you, depending on how far you get in the installation before it fails, you may have to reset back to the factory image using the System Recovery DVD in order to tweak the image again (unless you have another computer on which you can tweak the image, and you had the good sense to follow my instructions and back up the CleanInstall folder).
  • Page 37 After the disk as formatted your computer will restart. If you used nLite to fully automate the installation, the next time you interact with your computer will be when it has finished installing and Windows has loaded. During the installation on my PC (presumably after the graphics card driver is loaded) the screen resolution is increased to 720p and the Windows installer routine which is fixed at 640x480 resolution moves to the top left corner, taking up only half of the screen (the rest of the screen is a nice shade of blue).
  • Page 38 Post-Installation Cleanup • For some reason unknown to me, as I ran through the installation, this worked example Windows created two entries in boot.ini instead of one. This has the annoying effect of making you wait 30 seconds or press any key during start up.
  • Page 39 You may want to format your D: drive now if you didn’t do so already during the installation process. At this point I like to reassign my drive letters, because Windows will almost certainly have put removable drives before the DVD drive which is one of my pet hates.

  • Page 40: Software Installation

    I let the installation continue anyway. Now you will want to consider installing a few of the utilities provided by Sony. The utilities can be found at [System Recovery DVD]\VAIO Applications\Applications. It’s up to you what you choose to install (hence the whole point of doing a clean...
  • Page 41 Viiv. Sony MP4 Shared Library The first one I don’t bother with. It’s probably used by a bunch of Sony applications that I don’t install, and certainly isn’t needed for playing MP4 files generally if you install a codec pack (more on codec packs later).
  • Page 42 equivalent product to do it, but it saves you several steps in the reinstall process and is a nice clean way of getting back to a fresh newly installed operating system (assuming there are no significant hardware changes in between reinstalls). Now you need to consider what software applications are missing from your installation that you need.
  • Page 43 Codecs and Video Playback You’ll find until you’ve installed WinDVD or equivalent, you can’t complete Media Center setup. When you come to select the number of speakers you have it will probably tell you that “The video decoder has either malfunctioned or is not installed”. It is not installed. You don’t need to install a complete product like WinDVD or PowerDVD, but you do need some decoder software.
  • Page 44 (InterVideo) but you haven’t actually installed WinDVD. So far as I can tell from reading up on the Internet, what you’ve done is perfectly legal. Besides, you have a right to use WinDVD anyway – it came with your PC, Sony just decided not to let you get at if you want to go the...
  • Page 45 I would suggest very little, if any of it. Most of it is out of date, poor quality or just plain useless. You can’t just pop the DVD in and install what you want, Sony has an all-or-nothing way of installing the DVD but that’s it. However, there is a way around this problem.
  • Page 46 Create yourself a folder where you want to extract the applications to. For now, I’ll assume its C:\SonyApps. Create an MS-DOS batch file (just create a normal text file with the extension .bat, e.g. ExtractCD.bat and put the following test in the file: C:\KCAP.EXE E:\APR\SP-006356-08.pac C:\SonyApps C:\KCAP.EXE E:\APR\SP-009681-01.pac C:\SonyApps C:\KCAP.EXE E:\APR\SP-010812-01.pac C:\SonyApps...
  • Page 47 Before running it, check the list of files matches your DVD. This is a complete list from my Application Recovery DVD, but Sony may change the list in the future. Adjust as appropriate and double click on the MS-DOS batch file to run it. Note that the files Sony.pac and Sony2-5.pac don’t contain any applications or useful information.
  • Page 48 Installs some crappy HTML content that links to a special offer for discounts when buying Adobe products. Avoid. SP-007741-14 VAIO Entertainment Platform WS-000087-00 Environment Settings for Windows XP (VB Script) WS-000089-01 Environment Settings for APR (VB Script) SP-007842-04 OpenMG Updater (http://www.sony.net/Products/OpenMG/overview/index.html) SP-009079-01 VAIO Media AC3 Decoder SP-009458-01 Unidentified SP-009464-04 AOL 9.0 SP-009777-05 OpenMG Secure Module...
  • Page 49 SP-010838-02 VAIO Media Integrated Server SP-010862-03 VAIO Media Redistribution SP-011275-08 WinDVD BD for VAIO (This doesn’t seem to be the regular version of WinDVD, but special Blu-Ray version, presumably for the VGX-XL202 Blu-Ray model) SP-011275-10 WinDVD DB for VAIO (Seems to be exactly the same as SP-011275-08 except the data2.cab file is about 5mb smaller) SP-011460-00 VAIO Information FLOW...
  • Page 50 I hope you found this guide useful. Respectfully I ask that you don’t contact me for support relating to your Sony VAIO PC or relating to this guide. I am just a PC owner like you, and I decided to take the time to write this guide as a courtesy to other consumers who have purchased the same product in the hope that others may not have to go through the same 30+ hours of trial and error that I had to go through to get a clean operating system installation on my PC.
  • Page 51 Thanks to Akash84, also a Club VAIO member for his thorough writing up of the process he went through to make a clean operating system install for his VAIO laptop, found here: http://www.club-vaio.sony-europe.com/clubvaio/mvnforum/viewthread?thread=36891. This thread helped me to understand how to make your VAIO operating system product key work with a regular operating system install Thanks to philfree, another Club VAIO member for his explanation of the KCAP.exe utility for extracting “.pac”...