Sony Vaio Laptop Drivers (No such model)

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Looking for drivers for my vaio C series.

http://www.sony.co.uk/support/en/hub/VAIO

Trying to input my model into the above and I get nothing found.

I'm putting in the correct model according to the photo showing where to look.

Model is: PCG-61814M

There is a:

Service Tag
S/N/
Product name
Model

All those iirelevant stupid bits of information and not one of them will work on the Sony site. What's the point in having forty three model numbers if you can't use any of them.

Can anyone see where I'm going wrong.
 
Sony have the worst model naming system ever.

Chances are it's a regional model so will only appear on the correct Sony site OR it's one of the other models/types/other bull stuck somewhere onto it.
 
are you sure you have the correct model number as there is this one pcg-61611m which will show up on Bing but not on the Sony web site.
This comes up with the pcg number, VPCEE3J0E, and it is shown on the Sony site
 
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I hate fixing Sony laptops, they have the worst driver download page and sometimes need 3rd party software just to get brightness/volume levels working.
 
I hate fixing Sony laptops, they have the worst driver download page and sometimes need 3rd party software just to get brightness/volume levels working.
yea my stepson has one and updated the graphics card drivers was a pain in the bum!

the normal ati catalyst crap refuses to download the drivers because its a "sony" machine..

sony never seemed to bother releasing the drivers themselfs either...

i found a work around though
https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/674/920...obile/10-12_mobility_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc.exe

change the driver version number to the latest...

hate to think how much of a pain that laptop would be if i didnt have recovery disks
 
My VAIO FW4 series doesn't even recognise the battery anymore. Nice laptops, but the support etc for them isn't great.
 
Thanks lads!

Well... I couldn't agree more, definitely the worst system around. I eventually found "A" model number on my invoice receipt. Which doesn't correspond too much on the actual laptop. However, when I enter this... it shows up as a being a pink laptop and not the red one. It actually states this as well, not just as an imagine for illustration purposes.

The chipset driver wont install and I also can't get the backlit keyboard to work or the screen brightness as someone else suggested. I can't see any drivers for these.

It's quite comical because in the driver download page, there is a "preinstalled Windows 7 drivers" No drivers were installed by Windows. I've managed the graphics, audio and the wireless driver. That's as far as I've got.

SONY - Vaio VPCCA2S0E/R 14" Laptop – Red

Taken from invoice ^^

Model - PCG-61814M
PRODUCT NAME - VPCCA3E1E
CODE ON LID - VPCCA

There are a lot of extensions on the "Product name" for e.g. /r /w etc after it. I couldn't find out which one mine was anywhere and I looked a lot of places. The only place that it told me was the receipt. Ridiculous, how else are you supposed to know.

I must have installed drivers on over 500 laptops ranging from 2002 right through to 2012 on all strange makes and models and this is by far the most annoying and difficult, especially when it's a brand new Sony. Crazy!

/rant

:)
 
They are clowns, I never recommend Sony laptops to people because of their daft driver /software setups
 
They are clowns, I never recommend Sony laptops to people because of their daft driver /software setups

I did a fresh install due to all the bloatware... literally a million apps I wont use or need and it made the laptop very slow to boot.

Luckily I kept the original installation, I just shrunk the volume and created another partition to install this OS onto. Looks like I'll be using the bloatware version for a while until I get this sorted out.
 
Are there any specific drivers that you have left to install?

I download the 7z files from driverpacks.net, unpack them and then point Device Manger's update driver at the folders, It sorts out most things
 
Are there any specific drivers that you have left to install?

I download the 7z files from driverpacks.net, unpack them and then point Device Manger's update driver at the folders, It sorts out most things

chipset, lan, usb 3 and one other thing in device manager. The keyboard backlight also wont come one and I can't adjust the screen brightness. Apart from that... it's fine.
 
as you've realised you will jump through hoops to get this sorted...last one I fixed I ended up cloning the hard drive with the drivers on onto an external drive, and then re-installing and pointing windows at the cloned drive where it finally loaded the drivers back...

I imagine this should work for you too...
 
I had bags of fun trying to get the screen brightness buttons to work on my old Sony laptop after reinstalling Windows. Turned out that not only did it need a cocktail of obscure system management drivers, but they had to be installed in a specific order or it wouldn't work.

Never encountered a machine so awkward to configure as the Sony. Didn't help that they pre-installed so much crap that a fresh install was virtually mandatory, and then compounded the problem with a rubbish 5400rpm hard drive. Do these guys not think that when a machine takes several minutes to boot up straight out of the box, it doesn't leave a good first impression?
 
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tbh this is one of many reasons Sony are struggling like they are. They have been relying on their supposed great name for years, whilst in all honesty in so many areas they are miles behind...
 
I had bags of fun trying to get the screen brightness buttons to work on my old Sony laptop after reinstalling Windows. Turned out that not only did it need a cocktail of obscure system management drivers, but they had to be installed in a specific order or it wouldn't work.

Never encountered a machine so awkward to configure as the Sony. Didn't help that they pre-installed so much crap that a fresh install was virtually mandatory, and then compounded the problem with a rubbish 5400rpm hard drive. Do these guys not think that when a machine takes several minutes to boot up straight out of the box, it doesn't leave a good first impression?

Exactly! The 5400RPM drive really is starting to bug me!

Strangely I am now being directed to the correct driver page and the laptop model shown is indeed mine. It changed overnight!!!

However, still can't get the brightness to work. Very annoying. I can control it manually in the control panel, just not with the hotkeys, which are apparently supposed to be working as I get status messages when I put on numlock etc... some utilities program at 125MB that is totally unnecessary and stupid.
 
tbh this is one of many reasons Sony are struggling like they are. They have been relying on their supposed great name for years, whilst in all honesty in so many areas they are miles behind...

In all fairness. Apart from the crappy 5400rpm drive (Which most laptops have) it's a great machine in every other aspect. The amount of bloatware and the drivers is definitely their biggest issue.

Some of the bloatware may be interesting to some people though, the dock for e.g.
 
The 5400rpm drive in my FW4 actually failed and I replaced it with a 7200rpm drive. Helped out a lot.

My laptop orginally came with vista and all the bloatware that you mentioned. As soon as the Windows 7 RC appeared I put it on the laptop instead.
 
If you think this is bad you should try upgrading a vaio vista x86 machine to w7 x64, most of the general drivers were on the windows 7 x64 page (not connected to the main sites :-?) while the usb and track pad ended up coming directly off the manufacturers websites.. The only real problem was the custom kb driver like yours, and I did manage to get that working, but how for the life of me I cannot remember :(

Basically it is possible, but painful. If you created a system resort disk you might be able to pull the drivers off of that..
 
I ended up using a program called "double driver" and backing up the drivers from the original installation. I then installed a few other things like vaio utilities and one other program that shouldn't have been necessary. Anyway, to cut a long story shot. All the drivers installed fine and the keyboard shortcuts now work fine, including the brightness.

Just to add. I had to do a system restore as it kept going into hibernation with an error message stating the battery was incompatible and or faulty. Which of course it isn't. I'll never be doing another reinstall again, disaster!
 
generally to get things going theres the SFEP driver you need -_- I've found this out!

If you want PM me I can through you a few links to guides for fresh/bloatware installs etc :)
 
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