Windows 7 on SONY VAIO-FE890 (N)

I am looking to upgrade my Sony VGN-FE890 to windows7, so thank you for the post.

I have looked up the specs for the 890 and it used the i945GM chipset from Intel, which should support 4GB of memory according to Intel. I ordered 2 2GB SODIMMs (DDR2 PC2-5300) and installed under Vista (Home Premium, not Business) 32 Bit. The operating system sees all 4GB (uses 3GB) so obviously boots and runs fine (a little faster, in fact). However, it will not wake from sleep with the 4GB installed...hmmm. The BIOS sees 3 GB of memory (was poking around to see if I needed to change something in the BIOS to make it work right).

Any suggestions for why it will not wake from sleep with 4GB?

Thank you in advance for you help.

burright said:

I am looking to upgrade my Sony VGN-FE890 to windows7, so thank you for the post.

I have looked up the specs for the 890 and it used the i945GM chipset from Intel, which should support 4GB of memory according to Intel. I ordered 2 2GB SODIMMs (DDR2 PC2-5300) and installed under Vista (Home Premium, not Business) 32 Bit. The operating system sees all 4GB (uses 3GB) so obviously boots and runs fine (a little faster, in fact). However, it will not wake from sleep with the 4GB installed...hmmm. The BIOS sees 3 GB of memory (was poking around to see if I needed to change something in the BIOS to make it work right).

Any suggestions for why it will not wake from sleep with 4GB?

Thank you in advance for you help.

muffin: Did you have any trouble with the 890N using 4GB of memory on sleep and wake with Vista? Do you have any trouble with windows7? I could not account for much difference in the 890N vs my 890 (which the Sony 'Detect my model' called an 890E) which would cause any difference in memory usage.

Hello burright,

Regarding the version 890N/890E/890 and the amounth of memory, it isn't any difference.

The sleep problem I don't have it, but the hibernate problem yes (ex: if it goes to hibernate it isn't starting up; gives a error). From my research i think the problem is between the video board and the memory; but i'm using 4gb from 2 years and everything works good.

In BIOS also i have only 3GB (Vista/7 recognisez 4GB but they work only with 3.4 the rest goes shared to the video board). If you want to use all 4GB install a 64bit windows.

muffin said:

Hello People.

After some searches and test's with the windows 7 beta & RC on my vgn-fe890n, i finally installed all the features on it (including the FN functions and S1,S2).

Here are the step's I've taken (obviously after you installed the windows7):

1.Install NVidia driver (ver 195.39) from here.
2.Install Sony Shared Libraries from here.
3.Install Sony Utilities DLL from here.
4.Uninstall Vaio LAN Settings & another one similar with this (can't remember perfectly).
5.Install Firmware Extension Parser from here.
6.Install Memory Card / Touchpad / Camera with drivers from here.

And that's all. It's working perfect for me.

PS: before you install a driver, go to Properties and under COMPATIBILITY hit Vista SP2 and under PRIVILEGE activate As an Administrator
PS2: RESTART after each update!!!

Cheers,
Andrei

Hey Andrei,

Did you install 32 or 64 bit Windows7 Professional?

I have installed 64 bit Windows7 Ultimate and things are mostly working (sans the memory stick duo pro slot, the web cam, and the S1, S2 buttons...this buttons don't bug me too much, the the others would be nice to have working). I also have a hibernate issue, but sleep works, so I just disabled hibernate for now.

I am in search of 64 bit drivers. In my attempt to install the drivers for the camera, I went to properties and checked vista SP2 and run as administrator, but I got a dialog saying I needed to run the 64-bit version of DPInst.exe on this machine...thus a search for 64 bit drivers....