Some problems with my new VAIO VGN-FE41M

[wolfstad]

Hi,

I bought a new VAIO VGN-FE41M yesterday with Vista Home Premium.

Under All Programs are a lot of VAIO links and programs, but most of them don't work. If I click on "Go to VAIO Web Support" it comes with an error "Your model information could not be found on the server". The same happens when I start "VAIO Update Options". When I go to "VAIO media" it says "Cannot find any servers". If I go to "My Club VAIO" it says "Please connect to the Internet". But I am connected to the Internet. Everything else works fine, except the VAIO software.

Another problem I have is with my monitor. I have an Acer AL2017 LCD monitor attached to the notebook, but the screen often shows bright colours (fringing?) around text on web pages with a light background, and texts often doesn't look sharp. The overall colours also seem dull to me. I have the latest drivers installed for my monitor and it is at its optimal resolution of 1400 x 1050. I looked on the VAIO website for drivers for the graphics card (NVIDIA GeForce GO 7400 GPU), but my model number isn't listed.

Any help with these two issues would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Arthur

[Shaun_Chapman90]

Yes, I have the exact same problems with the VAIO software. I have a Sony VGN-FE41E, that i bought yesterday, which has Windows Vista pre-installed. Everything works fine on it. I couldn't be happier with it. Its just the VAIO software that Im not so happy with, as they come up with errors every time. Even the camera software says it cant communicated with the camera. Is your camera working. Mine was working once, then never again.

I also have trouble with the VAIO update 3.0. It always comes up with the error that it cannot find the model number on the server. Also, 'My Club Vaio' is also a piece of software I have trouble with. It always starts-up when I log on automatically, and there is no way of turning it off or uninstalling it, and when it does appear, it is always a blank screen. Do you get this. Help would be much appreciated.

[ceesklumper]

Similar problems here. Bought a new VGN-FE41M yesterday, and each of the myclubvaio icons(documentation, the club, updates) goes to the same page that says something like "please connect to internet to download vaioclub" - it completed the download once (many files) however this did not seem to be successfull in the end, and now every time I click on one of the links (for example, to try and find the documentation that goes with this #@$! machine, and it goes back to trying to download the same files all over again, only to freeze/hang up on the second-to-last file.
Also have the other problem of "your model number could not be found on the server" when trying to find patches for this problem, and sure enough it is not on the puldown menu of Sony's own website. So it would appear that Sony released the model without appropriate support in place.
Then the keyboard keys do not correspond to the commands generated. For example, the @ sign is above the 2 rather than above the '. Go figure.
Finally, I get constant reminders to upload the trial version of the Norton anti-bad-things software but during the update process it keeps saying that the current user does not have the system rights to perform the operation - even though I am the only user with full administrator rights.
Are these the typical problems when you buy a newly released machine with a newly released operating system (Vista)?

[Thalamus.]

Hi,

The My Club Vaio problem has been mentioned before, see the thread here , we are currently waiting for a solution from Vaio Support..

I'll try and chase it up for you..

[wolfstad]

ceesklumper wrote:

Finally, I get constant reminders to upload the trial version of the Norton anti-bad-things software but during the update process it keeps saying that the current user does not have the system rights to perform the operation - even though I am the only user with full administrator rights.

I have similar problems with my Windows Vista. I constantly don't have rights to do something, it's very annoying. I've noticed that if you right-click a program icon you can select "Run as Administrator" and then the program has more permissions to perform actions. This is very strange; I'm the only user with administrator rights on this computer. You can also right-click a program icon and go to Properties, then on the Compatibility tab you can tell that the program should always run as Administrator, but I have some programs where this box is grayed out.

The constant screens of confirming that I find it okay to open a program that I just clicked on are also driving me nuts. I think I finally got around this by turning off User Account Control in the Security Center. Of course, now Windows keeps tell me that my computer is not secure.

I've just been using Windows Vista for two days now, but my first impression is that all the extra security measures are really preventing me from using the computer properly.

[andrewmeikle]

I managed to get the camera working again by rolling back the driver in device manager.

No idea if this has fixed it for good though.

[bruceflo]

I also have trouble with the VAIO update 3.0. It always comes up with the error that it cannot find the model number on the server. 

I had this problem but have just tried it again and it has cleared. I still have the Club Vaio and camera problems though

[wolfstad]

It looks like Sony has added the VGN-FE41M as a model to their site. All of a sudden the web support and other links work now, and there are even some updates available for download that were posted yesterday. Thank you Sony.

[Blencogo]

Hi ceesklumper and welcome to Club Vaio.

Then the keyboard keys do not correspond to the commands generated. For example, the @ sign is above the 2 rather than above the '. Go figure.

I think you will find that you have the US keyboard set in Vista.

Control Panel -> Clock -> Language and Region -> Change Keyboards -> Look in the Keyboard List.

Change it to whatever keyboard layout you are using - the English (United Kingdom) keyboard has the @ and ' on the same key.