The story of a 64bit operating system and my Vaio...

[helloimgeoff1]

About an hour ago I got my FZ21Z ready to instal Vista Ultimate 64bit... I had the 3 recovery DVD's ready to install all the applications after the install. And I had plenty of time to do it all.

I got Vista Ultimate 64bit installed nice and easilly, the operating system appears to be working fine. BUT.

The recovery disk applications are mostly 32bit, and aren't supported in 64bit.
A: Is there anyway I can get 64bit versions of these applications? If so, how? I've already looked on Vaio support and they only have the drivers etc for the factory settings - which is 32bit.

When I did a Windows update, it also failed in most of the updates - it sucessfully completed 6 of them, failed the other 48. I'm currently trying these again - hoping they will work second time around.

B: Anyone else tried to use a 64bit version of Windows on a FZ series laptop? Or know about this kind of situation?

Thanks, Geoff.

[tonybeard]

My bitter experience with my AMD 64 desktop ensured I didn't boldly go where no drivers have been before with regards to the older brother of your model the AR31S. At best the manufacturers that made the componants that collectively makeup your FZ Vaio may have been provided the 64 bit drivers which will work but won't of course be vaio in origin which may cause conflicts.
An example of this is a particular model Belkin wireless pci card had a Broadcom chipset and when you dug around internet forums you found advice that guided you to the broadcom website and the 64 bit drivers that would fire up the wireless for you. As I have a simular 64 bit emulating processor and own a copy of Vista 64 bit Ultimate I will have a dig around the handful of 64 bit websites and get back to you. All I can say is it is likely you will have very limited hotkey functionality and the wireless won't work. What updated did install matey?

[helloimgeoff1]

I've managed to get the Wireless to work with the drivers that were provided with it, it gave me a 32 and 64 bit driver for that.
I've managed to get all of the Windows Updates now, persistance is the key with those. I just keep restarting them after it stops them. Then I get a few more - etc etc.

The main things that I'm wanting now are the buttons at the top right of the laptop (S1 etc..) and the application to modify the webcam when using it. I think it was called Magic-I, then of course, WinDVD - I have the patch to make it play BD's, but can't find WinDVD anywhere.

From what I've seen of Vista 64 so far compared to what I was running this on, it seems alot slower... Maybe that's just because it's missing 2 drivers for things that I don't know or what... but it's definatly lost alot of speed...

When I try to reinstall an application of my backup DVD's, for the majority of them it gives me "Error 505: 41".

[helloimgeoff1]

Well after a long day of toying with Vista Ultimate 64, and Ubuntu on the same machine, I decided it'll be easier to just say "sod it, recovery disks". Just too many things didn't work, that I wanted to work in 64bit, it was too much of a let down to make me want to go back to it anytime soon, just got to reinstall Ubuntu on my spare partition now then I'm good to go :D... Soon my laptop will be ready to overtake the world

Geoff.

[tonybeard]

Wise move ...'Tis a frustrating thing to hear Bill Gates back in 2004 talk about the advent of the 64 bit bandwidth becoming commonplace and then years later no one in the industry has taken him seriously. Well he HAS got underwater speakers in his swimming pool . 64 bit rips along but Flash player doesn't work for browsing meaning nearly all video content out there is bland even if you do get the device drivers for your router.
I did some 64bit forum checking and most people have ditched the 64 bit adventure as Vaio is very fussy...but at least you are future proofed for 4 gig of Ram to work not 3.5 with 32 bit.
My AMD is getting and upgrade to the 9000 duel core motherboard bundle with kingston 4x4 gig RAM modules giving me 16 gig of RAM. I plan on running a proxy server system for inventors to build their websites on using autodesk inventor. nice and secure.