BIOS Updates - Why are there *NONE*??

[MYOB]

I have a PCG-R600HMP, which I bought not for its shinyness or its included software but for its hardware to size ratio. I don't regularly use Windows, and Sony's are known for being good with other OS's

However, its never, ever had a BIOS upgrade made available for it. Other Intel i830 based machines have had to have massive updates to fix problems with the RAM-stealing on the video card, HDD compatibility, etc. This hasn'tbeen a major issue for me until today, when I attempted to reinstall Windows.

No matter what way I install Windows, be it 2000, XP or 2003, the MBR cannot be written sucessfully. I'm not using the Sony restore CD's as I'm not installing off CD and I want to keep my other partitions intact - Sony's CD's will almost certainly eat them.

Anyway, a from-DOS install using winnt.exe doesn't write a working MBR, a PXE based install from Windows RIS doesn't write a working MBR.... This suggests incompatiblities between the hard disk and the controller. As the hard disk, a replacement 80GB Hitachi, works perfectly, it seems to be nothing more than a minor bug, one that would be fixed if there was a BIOS upgrade. Which there isn't.

Looking around the vaio-link site, it seems Sony have bugger all BIOS upgrades for their machines - its as if the concept is entirely alien to them. My Dell laptop had 33 BIOS revisions. I doubt Sony's BIOS engineering team, if they have one and aren't just using commercially available ones, is that much better than Dells....

So why the complete lack of updates?

[TygerTyger]

There are various BIOS and firmware updates for hardware, but Sony only release them when absolutely necessary from what I gather. On the whole their updates in general, including software and drivers are quite poor in my opinion, and has often been the subject of a few complaints on this forum. Why I can only guess, presumably they don't consider it a priority.

[Foxhound]

Wow! The R600, now that is waiting a really long time. Don't hold your breath when waiting for Sony to release new firmware or updates. They are really far and between.
A lot of people having optical drives problems too. There no solution for it, since Sony VAIO's sell good anyway. As long as consumers buy them they will give not much about after service.
Imagen a windows pc was a car. You would never put up with the problems it shows, crashing every now and then, not doing the things it should do. Strangly enough because it is a "Windows PC" they accept it. What choice do we have?

[kee-lo_]

Yeah it's an early model, and I doubt Sony will update the BIOS ever.... shame isn't it?

[MYOB]

Its not really an 'early' model - its a 1.2Ghz PIII, 256 RAM, 40GB HDD and onboard wireless.

Vaio-Link charge for support on machines this old. Dell don't. HP don't. IBM don't.

In Ireland, the only other company that charge for tech support on out-of-warranty machines is Apple.

The original HDD died and the new one works fine, yet Windows cannot write an MBR to it - one of two things is wrong - the BIOS for the IDE controller is faulty, or Sony have the machine locked down to take their Windows disks and only theirs. Which I can't use.

The network card has had firmware updates since the machine was made. The PXE Boot ROM has had a major, major update since the machine was made. The RAM-Theft on these boards has a proper BIOS based configuration option now, assuming you're using a non-Sony machine that is

Sony - Nice hardware. Shame about the tech support.

[kee-lo_]

Yeah they're as bad as Apple for this.

Have you tried the stuff on bootdisk.com?