Clean Install on my Sony VAIO Laptop

Found the solution! Through the recovery discs, I installed the Sony Shared Library. The system now has all the functionality I had hoped for. This thread is now solved. :)

I found the information in Sony Vaio "FN" Keys - Page 10



It's all 64-bit, and no, there is no choice. The laptop comes with 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium, so all the software and drivers provided are also 64-bit. The only choices I have are Windows 7 64-bit or Windows XP (which I assume are the x86/32-bit versions).

Great work, Mike! This will help many others.

Have you figured out what Sony Shared Library is exactly? Possibly includes .dll files needed to enable various functions in the various apps when installed individually?

Sony Shared Library: It provides more functionality to VAIO applications by enabling those applications to send commands to affect the hardware of the system.

The above is the simple explanation. Basically, what the shared library does is provides an interface between VAIO applications and the device drivers so commands can be passed to the drivers to affect the hardware.

Most laptops have this ability through the combination of the Function (Fn) key and the F keys at the top of the keyboard. VAIO also provides specific power management to systems for special thermal control and additional functionality for added hardware like my keyboard backlight. I also have a light sensor that gives power management for my screen brightness and whether to turn that backlight on. As a robotics engineer, autonomous functionality like this is pretty cool!

This is a happy ending that reminds me of one epic thread which didn't end as well. It is also the only other discussion I can recall of OEM software refusing to work correctly when following carefully the recommended steps to Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 .

I wonder if some acilliary software could have helped Nicole get her Samsung touchpad gestures and cam features working correctly. Samsung kept telling her she needed the software off of the Recovery partition she'd deleted instead of what they had posted on her model's downloads page, and they wanted her to pay for reloading it on her HD again!

Nicole fought a long valiant battle made especially frustrating due to an atrocious Samsung "Tech Support" parody troupe heckling her efforts. They were rewarded with a top Google search result which documents the whole ugly episode: New laptop, changing partition disks?