Windows Vista forum: NOT ALLOWED TO DOWNGRADE from Vista....

Vista Business and Vista Ultimate OEM users are eligible for a downgrade to XP Professional. OEM copies of Vista Home Basic and Vista Home Premium, on the other hand, are granted no downgrade rights. In addition, since the OS was preinstalled Sony is responsible for any/all support and making the individual decision concerning letting you downgrade. In short, the licensing agreement Microsoft has with manufacturers such as Sony passes the responsibility to Sony and precludes Microsoft from helping you in situations such as this.

As for the drivers, that's something that the individual device manufacturers are responsible for providing. Microsoft may package drivers for convenience, but only if the manufacturer offers them to Microsoft for that purpose. In your case, I am willing to bet you could have 100% compatibility under Windows XP. The issue is that Sony only provides the drivers for the operating systems the computer was designed to run, and the computer was not designed for XP. You do, however, have two other options:

1.) Look on Sony's site for a similar model that was sold just prior to Vista's launch. Sony, like most others, reuses the same basic hardware in most of their computers, so chances are the drivers will work as expected.

2.) Use a free program such as Everest to identify the actual components of your computer (sound card, graphics card, optical drives, etc) and then visit the websites of the manufacturers of each of those components and download the appropriate drivers, which are completely compatible.

While this is, unfortunately, business as usual for most manufacturers, there are ways of getting everything to work. I wish you luck, and let us know if you need any help.

John

Thanks for the reply.

Am a small business owner, with some IT experience, but had hoped Sony would have their "act" together.

My system spent the last month with a local support person (not Sony). After escalating my calls via Sony Support I was able to speak to someone who sounded more like he was in US. He'd mentioned that randomly as of 10 days ago he'd personally received a dozen similar calls but could not speak to the fact of Sony actually doing something about this but indicated possibly.

Also of note, the store front guy I brought my system to has several other requests to DOWNGRADE from Vista to XP. He said he's having similar problems with a DELL notebook. Beware.

He needs the Intel 82801GHM SATA Raid driver or the whole thing can't work. From his research he thinks he'll be able to find it by Mid May.

In the meantime, I am using a recovery disk to get stuck back on Vista. Word of warning. Don't get an engraved notebook, Sony will not take it back (dumb of me I know but I really had no idea how ridiculous this was going to be, maybe that is why they came up with the idea of engraving). I'll post again when I find the driver for XP.

Thanks much for re-iterating the XP Pro and Vista Business license issue.

Have you guys tried driveragent.com. Simply registered and scan. It will scan your computer and tells you what driver is bad and good and gives you a link to download the bad ones.

Hope this helps

Let me know how it goes.

It was a big mistake that was sooo easy to make.
An invitation to "engrave your computer" for free.
Thought it a good branding opportunity, but with the engraving you basically can't give the computer back to Sony.

At this point I am glad I have the warranty for accidental damage and drop. I want to "accidently drop" the thing off a cliff.

Am still hoping Intel steps up with these and Sony steps up and coordinates their release.

Thought that I would send this in and I know from working with HP printer the first day that Vista came out, it could not install HP alinone because the OS was not recognized by HP. This site helps -RadarSync
Hope this helps

My story is lengthy, so I will confine myself to conclusions.

1) Sony makes overpriced junk.

2) Sony does not understand what service is. When people pay top dollar for Sony they expect a quality product with superb service. They fail miserably on both counts.

3) Sony is condescending, with an unresponsive bureaucracy.

4) Sony is a weasel on warranties.

5) I have over $6000 worth of garbage Sony notebooks...gathering dust.

6) I will NEVER by another Sony product.

7) With my affiliations I am in a position to influence large numbers of buyers and by inclination I am prone to tell the good and the bad. In Sony's case it is mostly BAD.

Ronald J. Riley,

President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR .at. PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR .at. InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org - RRiley .at. PatentPolicy.org
Washington, DC
Direct (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 9 pm EST.

Install XP Service Pack 2 before trying to install drivers etc. Service Pack 2 has many newer drivers in it. Many times I have tried and failed to install drivers on a raw install of XP only to have them "magically" install and work after SP2 is installed. You'll probably have to have SP2 burned to a CD as frequently it's the NIC drivers that fail to install so you have no network connection.

Also worth noting. Some laptops/PC's have a driver directory on the C: drive with drivers listed all the way back to Win9X. look for that and burn it off to a CD. One other option is if the computer came with a rebuild disk, it may have the drivers there as well.

Because of these problems, I am in no hurry to get a PC with Vista. I'll wait a while until the rest of the world comes up to (drivers) speed. Remember, we all had the same problems when XP came out.

Hi friend i am sathiyaraj from india. I also met a very similar problem as you faced. I bought compaq notebook one month before. It came with Vista Home Basic. Since it has only 512MB Ram, the system was too slow. Except 3D appearance Windows XP Professional is as good as Vista Home Basic. So tried to install Windows XP Professional. But as like you driver softwares were not available for my notebook for Windows XP. So I was totally frustrated.
And then i tried the driver softwares that comes with other notebooks (having Windows XP) of my friends. Some softwares i downloaded from the motherboard (intel) site. Fortunately the combonation of these two was worked out. Now my Notebook is worked perfectly as i expected.

Greetings Jay
I've taken my computer to a technician. Very interested in how you were able to get your VGN-AR370 to run on XP. He's unable to find the drivers for the hard disk but thinks he's found drivers for others...

He's looking for Intel 82801GHM SATA RAID is this the same as yours or do you have a different HD? Any advice you can offer would be very welcome.

Let me know which audio driver you're looking for (I think mine is a Sigmatel High Definition Audio CODEC, but I could be out of my depth. I'll let you know if he finds it as part of my quest to downgrade.

Many thanks.

Many thanks for this. I will pass it to my technical person and let you know how it goes. Will let you know if he gets to sound. Is it that you aren't sure which drivers are missing or just aren't sure where to find them? If you know which audio drivers/function button drivers you're looking for let me know. And again thanks, I look forward to more feedback from your endeavors.

Hello, Jay:

Thank you very much for the great suggestions/posts on CNET.com. I was facing exactly the same problem with my new sony Vaio VGN-AR370. With your post/suggestions, I was able to load the windows XP on this new laptop machine. However, I could not find the right Nvidia graphic driver for the Geforce go 7600 GT for XP. Would you mind providing any link/update you have? Many thanks.

Regard,
Hai

Message was edited by: admin to remove e-mail address

No luck on the Audio...I can get the SigmaTel driver to install. But it fails to startup. Also if your computers have the Modem you will need to get the drivers for those also once the Audio is set.

I been trying everything. Dell drivers, HP drivers. Packs from http://driverpacks.net and no luck yet.

Hi, guys:

Hope all problems with your sony notebook running XP have been resolved. I did try to get the audio working and was able to do it by following the instruction listed on the weblink below:

http://www.softwaretipsandtricks.com/forum/drivers/33390-audio-modem-not-installed-after-dual-booting-xp-sony-vaio.html

Now the only problems left are:

(1) UGX
(2) Function keys do not work

If anyone here has got the above two problems resolved, please let me know. Many thanks.

I have goten everything my self to work on this laptop that I can see. The only things I need that I see in the Device Manager are...

Mass Storage Controler
UGX
PCI Device (Sound)

I have no clue what UGX is. I am guessing it is Blue Tooth and no idea what drivers for the Mass Storage could be even though I have the Intel Matrix Drivers.

For the Video I took the latest Beta Drivers from Guru3D. I then took the inf driver from http://www.laptopvideo2go.com and replaced it since the drivers aren't there yet. When you do the install it will ask for a dll file that isn't included. If you have a PC with an Nvidia Card, it should be there and you can copy it to the folder and it will work.

If anyone has any ideas for the UGX and Mass Controller Driver that would be great. This user purchase this laptop and the University I work at won't support Vista on the network yet and we need to convert this $3,000 laptop to XP.

Thanks!

Where is this discussing in the XP forums? I did a search and didn't find anything.

I have done the search on the UGX, but I sw nothing that solves the problem and there were many terms on it. Where are you looking that talks about what to do with the Blue Tooth? I am not seeing it in the search.