Windows 8 and Sony driver hell...

[dkkian]

This is mostly for you, left outside in the rain by Sony, when they choosed to captivate your head by writing this incompetent message 'Sony has carefully selected the VAIO models that will ensure the best Windows 8 experience'.

In other words: your Vaio is not supported if you choose to upgrade to W8.

March 2012 I bought this new Vaio (paid about £1000), VPCSE just to realise, half a year later, that Sony wouldn't be supporting it if I chosed to upgrade to W8.

Now. I'm a MSDN'er. And so I tried to install W8. Of course the driver installation was a huge mess. Even when W8 RTM officially was releasted, Sony wasn't ready yet (like for instance the Sony Util).

So to make a long story short: I wasn't able to find any sort of documentation about re-installing everything from scratch - and what I found didn't worked out that well on W8.

By trial/error i figured out this procedure:

1) Install a clean W8

2) Install all your drivers - including the SFEP

3) If you have an ATI/Intel-adapter you will realise that this will be a problem.

ATI ships (as far as I know), one huge driver that fits almost all ATI-adapters. This being a 230MB file. The problem is that before you can use it on a Vaio, Sony has to 'touch' it with their magic fingers. If the driver hasn't been touched by Sony, it wont install. This is annoying because the driver exists! But now that Sony has stopped supporting your Vaio they won't touch the display driver you need. So the driver is there - Sony just don't wanna give it to you because "Sony has carefully selected the VAIO models that will ensure the best Windows 8 experience". What an experience - and who has ever asked Sony to be the judge?

I googled. Alot!. I came by Sonys Middle East website, entered a model from a Vaio in the same series as mine (a model i knew was able to get W8 display drivers in the download-list).

The driver was a wreck! - it worked... but the resolution on my seconday monitor was acting weird!

What I realised was that I had to go through with other device drivers. So i googled ATI-drivers and found leshcat.

* http://leshcatlabs.net/

* http://leshcatlabs.net/index.php/category/drivers/

I installed the driver and was happy about not getting the 'Sony hasn't touched the driver'. To me the switch from Stamina / Speed is very importent - I use it when gaming, and this this driver works flawless with the switch.

After installing the display driver, do

4) install Sony Shared Libraries

5) install Sony Util

6) And now - to me, the Sony Util didn't work. So I Googled again and ended up on in the Middle East finding this Sony Util that worked (go to http://www.sony-mea.com/support/download/523042 )

All in all this took me about one month to get running smoothly.

I am not saying that it will work for you, but I would recommend you googling alot and try different ways.

Anyways - my Vaio VPCSE is now running with all drivers. And I'm happy.

Message was edited by: -Cass-

Removed profanity and mention of hacking as not allowed on the forums.

[Blencogo]

Hi dkkian.

If a Vaio is 'unsupported' for an upgrade to Windows 8, this does not mean that Sony will not be providing drivers and utilities - it means that Sony will not be providing an automated driver update on DVD in the form of a VAIO Windows 8 Upgrade Kit.  Windows 8 drivers for many models will appear on the download website and an upgrade to Windows 8 will be possible.

While I have sympathy with your frustration, You cannot expect Sony to provide Windows 8 drivers before the OS has been released.  It would be wasteful to work on software for what is still a beta system.  It is my recollection that for XP, Vista and Windows 7, Sony drivers were not available before the public release of the new version of Windows and support for previous models was limited to the provision of drivers.

Thank you for posting your experiences - they may well help other users who are struggling to upgrade to Windows 8 - however, I'm sure most users would prefer to use the Sony drivers which are becoming available for most recent models as we speak and most users will wait for a full set of drivers before upgrading. A bit quicker with the AMD drivers would have been welcome.

I see there is a Hybrid AMD Radeon™ HD 6470M / 6630M and Intel® HD Graphics driver on the Sony USA website - have you tried this?  It is for most S-Series US Vaios but you do not give us the full Vaio model - just VPCSE.  I don't know if it will install.

http://esupport.sony.com/US/p/swu-download.pl?mdl=VPCSE16FX&upd_id=8128&os_group_id=24

I'm very pleased you have got your Vaio working with Windows 8. 

[.Kian.]

Hi there,

And thanks for the link. It's not that I don't agree with you regarding the expectations about drivers before the consumer RTM has been released. I waited about one week before my frustration started.

My model is VPSCE1C5E. I agree with you about the genuine driver will be the best - but when not available there is really choice.

I think I'll keep my current driver and then try you link next time i re-install.

Just to put a note on it: It is really frustrating that you'll have to install everything in correct order. And no one tells you in what order. Its all about trying and if you f*** it up you can just as well start all over because there is no uninstaller... you can use Windows Restorepoints but I'm not that keen in that functionality.

Thanks for pointing out about the migration roadmap... I thought I was kinda left outside. But for now I only have the firmware update for Camera Richo listed as available download in the Windows 8 column.