Installing Windows XP on SZ450

[wselby]

The owner of my company swears by his Sony Vaio SZ120, until it broke this weekend while he was on assignment out of state. He told me to go buy him a new Sony Vaio and be sure to not get Vista since he doesn't want to adopt that this early. So I go out and check all the stores around, the only Sony Vaios that are available have Vista preloaded on them, so I figure, okay, we have a corporate version of XP I'll load when I get back to the office. So I buy an SZ450 and bring it in to the office, and begin installing Windows XP on it. I leave the System Restore partition buy I wipe the Vista install partition.

Now, I am having a heck of a time finding any kind of drivers for this. Sony will only let me download Vista drivers. If I try and download drivers for the SZ370 components that are the same (i.e Video Card, sound, etc) that have XP drivers, I get an error that I'm using the wrong model laptop for the drivers.

Is there anywhere out there that I can get drivers to make this thing work, or should I take it back to the store where I bought it and try and exchange it?

[jpagel]

Is it the VGNSZ450N or VGNSZ450NC??

[wselby]

Vgnsz450nc

[jpagel]

Chipset drivers here
http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scri...bmit=Go%21
Video Drivers can be obtained from www.nvidia.com

What other drivers do you need?

[jpagel]

Oh yea and sound drivers -
http://drivers.softpedia.com/get/SOU...61053370.shtml

[wselby]

Let's see, I've got the following drivers so far -

Video
Audio
Wireless Network
Ethernet Network
Chipset
Wireless Switch

What I need still -
Any of the Sony Specific utilities or drivers (other than the wireless switch)
Bluetooth
Fingerprint Reader (Biometric Coprocessor)
Camera
Modem

And I left the system at work and I've come home. That's all I can remember off the top of my head, the biggest problems were the Chipset drivers and the Sony hotkey drivers.

[bogart]

These SZ3 XP drivers and utilities are compatible with the SZ4 and don't check the model of the notebook before installing so they should work fine.

ftp://ftp.vaio-link.com/pub/Vaio/Ori...Z3_Drivers.zip

ftp://ftp.vaio-link.com/pub/Vaio/Ori..._Utilities.zip

[agent007]

So how did the computer break? an accident?

[wselby]

So how did the computer break? an accident?

I'm not real sure. The user has been in Alaska on assignment for the past 6 months or so, and he called me up on Friday and told me that his couldn't get any more power to his SZ120, no matter what he tried. He was out of warranty, and was on his way back to the office over the weekend and wanted me to pick him up a new one.

Thanks for the links, I'll try those out and post back if I get everything up and running.

[wselby]

Okay, for some reason I can't get the Bluetooth to work, I'm not sure how to activate the Fingerprint module or the Camera, and I'm still getting a few unknown devices in the device manager -

Mass Storage Controller
UGX (I think this is the Bluetooth, but I'm not sure)
USB Device

Any more thoughts on what I should be looking for to make these items work?

Also, thanks for all of the help so far, you've saved quite a few of my braincells in the process!