SONY VAIO

[jamie]

My VAIO laptop is starting to do funny things. the wireless bluetooth switch has become faulty and turns itself on and off all the time meaning i keep loosing internet for a minute or so. Does anyone know of anyone or anywhere that fixes laptops/VAIO in Hamilton or Auckalnd? Need it fixed asap as my part time job involves me commentating sport and uploading internet pages with a solid internet connection.
Also the screen needs tightening on its hinges, but thats a simple fix i think.
Also i would like to install some more ram into the beast as its starting to run rather slow. Runs on XP and only has 512MB of ram which isnt bad for XP but its getting rather full and slow in its age. Does anyone know of someone that can install some for me?

Cheers
Jamie

[tgsnoopy]

Portables Plus (in Auckland) would be my first call (assuming they are still going).

Good luck.

[jamie]

Sweet ill look them up tomorrow

Cheers

[Manukau heads obs]

ram installation you should be able to do
there should be a panel you can unscrew underneath it
then find what ram it has now
note that you either will need to add another 512 stick, or if already 2 sticks to make up 512, then just add a 1gig stick (you need to match type, e.g ddr2 , but speed only needs to be matched if adding another stick (will not matter though if a new stick is faster than than the older one (most likely) by too much

[Tornado Tim]

This might help you.
Over time the windows drivers for the computer may get corrupted and you may need to reinstall them.
Try that first. Use your OEM driver disk that got supplied with the laptop to install them again..
As with RAM beware that you don't void your warranty by doing RAM install.
Some company's are very picky in what you change on the computer by your self in terms of hardware installs.
But since you say it is already aging, id say that you could do it. Because the warranty wont even be valid anymore.
As was MHO said check what type of ram it uses, going by what you said Id say its a DDR2 SD-Ram laptop sized of course.
Upgrade to 2 GB, if the motherboard can take that is. And youll see a vast improvement in speed.
Another thing, you may want disable startup programs that you do not use or are not required.
To do this go start then run then type in "msconfig"
This will startup a nice little utill which can stop some programs from launching at startup..
Go to the startup tab and uncheck what you do not want.. .Most computers like to have there own bluetooth assistants and own utills but really they are not required at startup.
And as always Defrag your comp.
If you know the advanced stuff you could go and disable services that do not apply to you... but that is not recommended if you don't know what your doing..
Let me know how you go...

Oh I forgot: Get 2 Ram sticks that are the same size as that will be faster than uneven sized sticks such as 512 and 1 GB.

[NZstorm]

Just picked a serviced laptop up this morning from Portables Plus. They seem to be a good outfit.

[Vertigo]

Oh I forgot: Get 2 Ram sticks that are the same size as that will be faster than uneven sized sticks such as 512 and 1 GB.

this isnt entirely correct.. size of ram has nothing to do with speed per se: rather, more ram will let you do more and load more data without swapping to the hard drive, using virtual memory. hard drives are always much slower than ram, so the more ram you can pack in, the faster the pc will appear when doing a lot of tasks, or even just booting up windows (or whatever your flavour of OS is..).

and you can quite happily run different sizes of ram sticks without performance loss. the only time this doesnt apply is when you are running in so called dual channel configuration, where every ram stick must be matched with a nearly identical other stick.

what matters more is the actual speed of ram you install. as some have said, you can mix and match speeds to a degree.. ram will always run at either a) the speed of your cpus motherboard interface, or b) an arbitrary speed set in the bios. either way, you can find the speed of your ram at the initial boot up screen. if you install new ram, it will run at this speed, regardless of what its rated for, so be careful to only install ram that is rated for that speed or higher. dont buy slower ram, as it will most likely fail, and take your pcs stability with it, until its removed. no lasting damage should occur, but just dont do it

[Tornado Tim]

Oh OK i got told that that ram runs better if it has the same size...
have a look at this too vertigo.
http://en.kioskea.net/faq/sujet-993-mem ... al-channel
and this: http://www.techimo.com/forum/technical- ... emory.html
Im not getting defensive it just that is what I have learned...
But the thing is, it is only apparent on bench marks probably not on everyday usage of the computer.

[Vertigo]

yep, thats dual channel tho. if a motherboard supports it, it can improve performance, i forgot to add that. not sure if it can apply to laptops however.

[jamie]

thanks for the advice guys.. much appreciated.