VGN-FE31Z Brightness Fn keys stopped working

[BruceCk]

I recently took my VGN-FE31Z from XP to the free Vista upgrade that it came with (clean install), then bought a Win 7 upgrade and did an in-situ upgrade, as most of the drivers are Vista.

It was working nicely, with all the Sony dedicated keys working OK. The Brightness Fn keys (F5 and F6) have now stopped working after waking from hibernation (fine after reboot). They move a step or two on screen, but nothing changes. Same with the control panel sliders. I have tried reinstalling all the relevant updates from the support page for:

Setting Utility Series

VAIO Event Service

Sony Shared Library

Sony Utils DLL

VAIO Control Center

VAIO Update

nVidia Video Driver

These were all the Vista version, as there are no Win 7 versions, and Vaio Update is already on v6. I have also tried a couple of system restores, and could go back further, but means reinstalling loads, and I'm not convinced to would work again anyway.

This seems to be a horribly common problem with various Vaios over the years. Anyone got any suggestions other than re-installing Win 7?

Bruce

[Blencogo]

Hi Bruce and welcome.

You are right - there seem to be some 'waking from sleep' problems when using Vaios designed for XP with Windows 7.  As you have found, your model is not supported fully for use with Windows 7.

All I can suggest is trying to reinstall the Sony Utilities in the set order and, if necessary, try reinstalling them twice.  The recommended order is: -

1. Sony Utils.DLL

2. Sony Shared Library

3. Vaio Event Service

It's worth a try but I fear this is a problem that may not be fixed after all this time.

Which version of the nVidia Graphics Driver do you have installed?

[BruceCk]

Hi Blencogo

Thanks for your reply. It was supposed to ship with Vista, but it was late, so they shipped it with XP, and supplied the free Vista upgrade. I avoided this till the death of XP, and bought a reconditioned Win 7 rapidly! So the hardware was designed for Vista. I've heard of the same problem on Win8 Vaios, so it seems an ongoing weakness.

I will try re-installing in the order you suggest. I wondered if the order made a difference, and that is the first time I've heard mention of it, so thanks for that. Certainly no mention on the Sony support page. As I said, it was working fine for a while, but I assume something I installled stopped it working (possibly one of the Sony drivers out of order).

The nVidia drivers are the latest Vista version from the support page (Intel Graphics Driver Version 7.15.10.9813😞

http://www.sony.co.uk/support/en/product/vgn-fe31z

If your suggestion doesn't work, do you think it is worth trying the older XP version?

[BruceCk]

I tried your reinstalls in that order, doing each twice as they all came up with a dialogue saying it might not have installed properly. They all seemed OK the second time using recommended settings. Sadly, it didn't work.

Since then, I've been testing various power settings. I had hibernate on lid close, and sleep on power button. Setting lid close to do nothing, the Brightness controls WORK after hibernation! I've set the power button to hibernate, which works OK strangley. If I need it to sleep, I'll just have to use the menu. The other thing I tried was disabling the slide show I had as part of the theme. Setting that to one fixed desktop image keeps the Brightness controls working. I think both are necessary, and no big deal. Great to have it working again without major re-installs! Thanks for your help anyway.