Tag Archives: Windows 7

Sony VAIO VPCEC2SOE

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A high-end multimedia laptop released in 2010, featuring a Core i5 processor, 6-8GB of RAM, a built in Blu-Ray player and a Radeon HD 5450 graphics processor. 

The laptop comes with Windows 7 Home Premium with some Sony software included. When I got the laptop it had a fresh install with Windows 10, but the recovery partition was broken on this model as it could not complete a restore. And even worse the laptop shipped with a 5400rpm hard drive which was slow after using SSD’s for a few years. Recovering the install was another issue, since the only recovery disc I could find online was intended for a similar model, but the recovery utility still would not co-operate due to the model number mismatch, despite the laptops having similar specifications.

A work around was to extract the recovery image and use a utility to extract the files. They are actually Windows Installer files but in a container format (.mod) which is run during the Sony restore utility. By using this method we can install the Sony itilities and drivers, making this close to an actual install. For installing Windows 7, I used a standard OEM Home Premium found online and activated it using the product key found underneath the notebook itself.

Here’s the recovery image I used/extracted

Sony VAIO Recovery Patcher – A bit time consuming to run, I found it easier to extract the mod files and run them as Windows insallers (double click to run). Some of these are redundant since they are designed for specific regions, and some just install registry keys. For more information, see the support page

VAIO Control Center

This acts as a control panel that is customised for Sony’s specific functions, here you can change settings relating to power management, Network and display options. It’s a more simplified interface of the Windows control panel.

It will also display the heath of your battery (this one happens to be a GreenCell battery I got off Amazon, which shows as healthy yet struggled to hold a charge when disconnected from the AC adaptor. 

There is also a battery care function that limits the charging to 80%, which is supposed to extend the life of the battery.

VAIO Media plus

Sony’s Media Centre that lets you view photo’s video and music that is stored on your notebook in a full screen view. Possibly intended for use when you connected your VAIO to your HD TV.

There is the SenseME feature which analyses and organises your music into different modes/playlists, depending on how energetic or smoothing the song is.

VAIO Gate

This acts as a shortcut launcher that appears at the top of the screen, and has shortcuts to most preinstalled utilities. You can also pin applications here for pick access, similar to the Mac OS X dock or the Windows Quick Launch that was deprecated in Windows 7.

Whilst intended to be useful, its placement can be annoying, by default if you place your mouse cursor anywhere near the top of the screen it will poppet, making it difficult to use iof you’re using a browser such aa Google Chrome, or any browser that places it’s tab bar at the top of the screen, which is all of them.

At the time this was released, this design was uncommon as Firefox and Internet Explorer placing their tab bars near the bottom of the toolbar. Just above the web page itself with the applications title bear residing at the top.

PlayStation Tools

If you owned a PS3 gaming system at the time of this laptop, Sony bundled two useful utilities to use with your PS Triple.

Remote Play

Sony bundled two utilities to allow fours with the PlayStation3, which was their current console when this computer was released. Remote Play will let you control and stream your PS3 console to your laptop.

Setting it up requires pairing your PS3 to your computer by entering a code, you can then enabled and allow the PS3 to functional a WiFI hotspot to allow your remote device to turn the PS3 on. This is only for remote play use, you cannot share your internet connection this way.

The performance leaves a lot to be desired, even when both devices are connected via ethernet, the performance is just too poor with the lag reaching to around 3-5 seconds delay to respond to a button press. This gradually gets worse as you use it.

A common occurrence

Also to play games, the PS3 game itself must support remote play since it required a certain amount of system RAM to be reserved, along with a spare SPU to encode the video. The amount of titles supported is very small, too much that I don’t have access to a game that is on the list.

PS1 games are supposed to work and a few of the digital titles do work, but you could just download an PSX emulator and play it that way instead, then you woudnt have to deal with the poor latency.

Overall it’s a waste of effort. I remember this working much better with the PSP instead.

Remote Keyboard

The other utility is the remote keyboard, which lets you pair the PS3 via Bluetooth to allow your VAIO’s keyboard and trackpad to functional it it were connected to the PS3. The setup will guide you on how to pair both devices and once enabled, you can fully control the XMB. This does prevent you from using the laptop whilst connected to the PS3, requiring you to disconnect it from the PS3 XMB, or by pressing Ctrl + Alt+ Backspace on the keyboard.

It useful but niche, how often are you going to be using this in games? Maybe for text entry for games that require it, but many games just don’t need this.

There are a few select titles that did support the keyboard function for gameplay, Unreal Tournament 3 was one such title (the PS2 port of Unreal Tournament also supports this) allowing me to enter a match and play using the PC traditional WASD controls. 

There are issues when sending a keystroke and moving the mouse at the same time, making aiming jerky. You can also send only one keystroke at a time, making dodging or jumping difficult. Really you’re best of getting a cheap Bluetooth keyboard and mouse and just pair it directly top the PS3. Maybe at the time these were much more expensive which made it a nice addition, but I just can’t see this being useful.

The only other use for it would be to browse the PS3’s web browser, which again is pointless since the laptop’s browser will be a much better experience. 

Upgrade Options

This is one of the few laptops that supports upto two internal SATA drives through the use of an aftermarket adapter which allows you to connect two SATA drives which would have been ideal to add an SSD as a extra SATA drive. These are very difficult to find now, so I had to replace the internal HDD with the SSD instead and leave the second bay empty. 

Still the laptop also features an eSATA connector which you can use to attach an external eSATA hard drive or optical drive. eSATA hard drive enclosure’s are difficult to find, but the Dell external optical drives are easily available for eBay.

There is also an ExpressCard connector, which allows for an expansion card to be inserted. A USB 3.0 card can be inserted, or alternatively a Firewire 800 card can be installed instead. The power supply is limited over Expresscard, so for high power devices you will need a power adaptor that supplied an additional 5V or a powered USB 3.0 hub.

Panasonic TOUGHBOOK CF-53

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Panasonic is another Japanese brand that’s produced notebook computers, Panasonic largely specialise in rugged laptops, hence the name Toughbook. They are mostly used in field engineering which can be rough environments for laptops. They feature reinforced exteriors, spill-resistant keyboards, and enhanced shock absorption to withstand rough handling.

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The default Windows 7 desktop, with a custom theme from Panasonic applied. Just a solid white wallpaper.

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A view of the system info with details of contacting support.

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A look at the reference manual that provides instructions on how to use various features the laptop, including how to make use of the removable drive bays. These can be swapped out for a different device or drive, similar to some models of Dell’s Latitude series.

Dual Express card slots, you don’t see these on laptops now. Typically you can add addition wires, USB 3 expansion cards, 3/4G modems or just plain storage devices through these.

The notebook comes with WinDVD playback software included, but refuses to launch as it performs a BIOS check on startup.

Toshiba Bluetooth

Toshiba Bluetooth Stack: Instead of using the standard Windows 7 Bluetooth utility, it appears to have its own installed. I’ve seen this a few times on Toshiba and Dell laptops so It appears to be common among OEM’s, some users also prefer it over the Windows default stack.

Roxio Creator

Roxio Creator comes bundled with the laptop, Roxio Creator is a software suite designed for multimedia creation, editing, and management. It allows users to create, edit, convert, and burn CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs, as well as manage digital media files.
Audio Cd’s can be ripped or burnt to a disc, if you don’t wish to use Windows Media Player. Data disc images can be managed also, supported formats are iso, go and udi.

It’s a very barebones installation with only a handful of utilities included, as these notebooks were designed to be used in a corporate environment who would install the appropriate software.

eMachines eTower (Part 2)

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There’s quite a few OEM customizations included here, so I’m curious what gets transferred over and if anything breaks. The original system came with Windows ME which was built on the 9x/Hybrid DOS kernel.

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Windows XP

Since we are going from a 9x to NT-based install, changes are going to be drastic with new device drivers requiring to be installed. Before installing, Windows does a compatibility check for existing applications and drivers and will alert if any are found to have issues or require updates. This only alerts if Windows finds a known issue with the program based on Microsoft’s testing, some lesser-known applications might not have been tested.

The install appears to have started, but after a few seconds the screen went blank and the VM was unresponsive. Rebooted and was greeted with an option to start Windows or cancel XP Setup.
Booting into Windows ME instead boots directly into the XP Setup, which appears a little darker than usual

Not sure why it’s prompting to create a password, never seen that before

The default desktop post-upgrade, along with the eWare banner above the taskbar

Adaptec CreateCD requires an upgrade before it can function. Interestingly is this is generated by Windows XP. RealJukebox works but failed to load the previous files since the documents directly have changed from Windows ME. What’s strange is the music files have been renamed?

Windows Vista

And we hit the wall, since the drive is formatted as FAT32 from the ME install, we cannot install Vista without reformatting the hard disk. We also have to convert FAT32 to NTFS

There were a few obstacles, first we had to expand the VMWare disk, as it was set to 8GB by default. Once expanded we had to extend the partition which wasn’t possible in XP’s disk management utility, so I had to use an old version of EASEUS Partition manager to extend the partition.

We can also use EASEUS to convert the disk to NTFS, so we can finally install Vista, and hopefully Windows 7. Before conversion, a quick disk check is done.

Some issues were found but some of these are part of the VM and might not apply to the actual machine, either way it lets us continue

The Flyswat toolbar appears to be broken, and we are missing some buttons on the eWare taskbar

Some of the Windows 98 themes still remain and surprisingly they work. Color schemes, sounds and screensavers.

Adaptec CreateCD has now stopped working completely and will not launch, instead displaying the above dialog box. Later versions of Windows usually keep a database of incompatible programs, including ones that require patches to work.

Windows 7

Install was a lot easier since most of the prep work was done for Vista

Application compatibility is the same as Windows Vista, Meanwhile the icons on the eWare toolbar have started to function gain. It’s rare that you will be able to install this on the actual machines without extensive upgrades, and I’d imagine the eWare links would also long be dead at this point. Also the eWare toolbar sticks out like a sore thumb when combined with the Windows 7 taskbar.