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August 28, 2009 

Sony Vaio function keys and Windows 7


UPDATE 28/10/09: As of 26/10/2009 Windows update is listing an update for the Sony Firmware Extension Parser Device, if you have followed the guide and installed this driver and it didn’t work it might be worth installing this update and trying. I am going to install this now and post back if it has any positive or negative effects. (Bearing in mind my function keys are working correctly after using method below.)

UPDATE 2: Update went fine, and everything working as expected. Driver version went (for me) from 7.0.0.5 (dated back in 2006!) to 8.0.1.1 (dated as may this year). Maybe this will fix any issues you have had. As a precaution its worth creating a system restore point (Right click computer, properties, system protection and press create!).

Windows 7 is just around the corner, the RTM build is now available to Technet/MSDN/MAPS subscribers and the official release is set for October. I know there are a lot of Vaio users our there who will be itching to upgrade (especially from Vista). One problem I came across with the RC was that my function buttons didn’t work and i couldn’t control screen brightness without doing it in control panel so I did a bit of research and with the help of about 10 forums posts from all web I managed to get  them up and running. To try and save others time I decided to put everything together in one place so that other users can have something concise to work from. This is based off the RC build but this also works on the final RTM build. This should work for most modern (18-months-2years) laptops. Read on for the step by step guide :)


1) First off visit the Vaio website which for the UK and Europe is at http://www.vaio-link.com and you should find a couple of drop down boxes where you can choose the series and model of your laptop. (If you have used the site before it should have remembered your last choice).

2) Once you have arrived at your model specific page click the download link and then choose the option for originally installed. These will most likely be Windows Vista drivers as the majority of Sony’s laptops have been shipped with Vista and the XP downgrade option for the past could of years. From this page you should be able to download two original packages of the utilities and the drivers.

3) Extract both of the archives onto your computer somewhere useful so you can get to them easily, ive plonked mine in a folder on the c: drive and then taken a copy on my USB drive for safe keeping.

4) Load up device manager and check for devices that Windows 7 did not automatically find drivers for. Hopefully there should be one either called Unknown Device or something calling itself an Intel LPC device with a yellow exclamation mark. If you find this then right click the device and choose properties and then find the details tab. From here you should have a drop down box and one of the items will be Hardware ID. Choose this option and make sure that the hardware ID is SNY5001. (If it is not then see 4a for instructions to track it down). If  the ID  matches then you can  click the drivers tab and click to install driver as normal. From the drivers folder you extracted look for the Sony Firmware Extension Parser driver and install. (the folder may possibly be named SFPE driver)

4a) If you cant find this device it may already have been installed by windows or you may have loaded an incorrect driver. First check in device manager under human interface devices for the Sony firmware extension parser driver. If its already there then you can carry on to the software installation below. If its not then we will need to manually find the hardware id and track down what driver windows has assigned to it. For this we need to download the Devcon tool from Microsoft from (Click Here). This is a command line tool that can be used to dump what is in device manager out to a text file, including the hardware ids and what the system is currently calling the device by name, this will help you track it down if windows has loaded a completely different driver by itself.

Once you have downloaded and extracted the tool run the following command line.

devcon hwids * > hwids.txt

This will output to hwids.txt and somewhere in there should be something like this.

ACPI\SNY5001\4&28A9283&0
Name: Sony Firmware Extension Parser Device
Hardware ID’s:
ACPI\SNY5001
*SNY5001

As you can see it lists the hardware ids along with device name, so if yours has a different name then you should now be able to find it in device manager.

Once you have found the rogue device then follow the same instructions as above and from the details tab install the SFEP driver.

5) This step is important, you need to install the following software in the correct order and reboot between each install otherwise it wont work properly. You have been warned. (That said if you do jump the gun for whatever reason you can un-install everything apart from the shared libraries)

1. VAIO Event Service (From Utilities Folder)
2. Reboot
3. SONY DLL Utils (From Utilities Folder)
4. Reboot
5. SONY Shared Library (From Utilities Folder)
6. Reboot
7. Sony Power Management (From Utilities Folder)
8. Reboot (last one!)

After all that lot you should find that your buttons now work. Its hard work but far better in my opinion that upgrading a vista installation full of Sony bloatware.

If you use the fingerprint scanner on your Vaio you can also get the Windows7 drivers/software from UPEKs website.

x86: http://www.upek.com/support/downloads/windows7/w7x86.asp
x64: http://www.upek.com/support/downloads/windows7/w7x64.asp

The drivers are just a quick a quick install and reboot job and you’ll be ready to roll.

I would appreciate any re-tweets for this so as many vaio users as possible can benifit.

If you have any problems or questions please post a commend.

I hope this info proves useful!

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  • Jon

    Worked !! =) Sony Vaio VGN-NS20E

  • Zenlim22

    In your ‘Start’ menu click on ‘Run’ and type in services.msc
    You’ll see a long list called Services (Local), click on the name parameter to have them sorted alphabetically.
    Find the one called VAIO Event Service. Double click this and ensure that for Startup Type it says ‘automatic’, if it does not, change it to ‘automatic’ and click ‘apply’.
    Then be sure below that, that the Service Status says ‘Started’.

    This should help, I had the same problem where I could not use my Fn key to adjust volume or brightness and this solution worked for me. Bonne Chance!

  • Zenlim22

    In your 'Start' menu click on 'Run' and type in services.msc
    You'll see a long list called Services (Local), click on the name parameter to have them sorted alphabetically.
    Find the one called VAIO Event Service. Double click this and ensure that for Startup Type it says 'automatic', if it does not, change it to 'automatic' and click 'apply'.
    Then be sure below that, that the Service Status says 'Started'.

  • http://www.funys.net Ben Gillam

    Thanks for the tip hopefully it will come in useful for others :)

  • http://www.helpcomputing.net wecanhelp

    Whoa, and then it all starts to tumble into place!

    SD card reader found here: http://www.downloadwindowsdrivers.info/pci/ven_1180/dev_0822/subsys_903f104d/

    I used the latest driver there against an entry in Device Manager that began SD Host Controller.

    Armed with that success I began to look for a driver for the Base System Device that I figured must be the Sony MS controller. The driver that worked was on this page:

    http://www.downloadwindowsdrivers.info/pci/ven_1180/dev_0592

    I used the latest driver there 6.03.00.0061.

    So now my card reader is working! Hope this helps others.

    Regards,

    helpcomputing

  • http://www.helpcomputing.net helpcomputing

    Sweeeeet! The process worked for my TT21JN. But didn't activate my built-in card reader :-(

    The search goes on.

    Just thought I'd say that the Sony website for the TT21JN has the DLL (drivers) listed separately. But Windows 7 had most of those down. Still, I downloaded those that seemed like I might need them, like the chipset drivers and the memory card reader drivers and installed them where I could. And followed Ben's order.

    And now my front panel works!

    Cheers Ben!

  • Peter

    worked perfectly on my sony vaio vgn-c2z/b. Thanks a lot! A couple of my devices were disabled in the device manager i noticed afterwards and i just enabled them again. Whether that was after this specifically i cant say.

  • Simon

    I recently rebuilt my VGN-SR51MF/S with Win7 Ultimate from an original DVD (not the rebuild discs).  I wasn’t aware there were problems getting the function keys to work so I’d already installed a bunch of stuff before I discovered the problem. 

    I uninstalled all of the bits from your step 5 and then reinstalled them in your order, with the restarts (including installing updates to the first two things, with restarts) i.e. 5(1) original, restart, update, restart, 5 (3) original, restart, update, restart, 5 (5) restart, 5 (7) restart.

    Thanks for this, saved me ages of mucking around.

  • Cartersf

    Terrific post… I’ve just downloaded all the drivers for my ancient but beautiful Vaio TZ31VN, and nowhere is there anything I can identify as the SFEP driver. I’m also terrified as there are at least three different posts out there from different people sayin ghow to install W7 and get all the drivers functionin – they all say you need to follow a particular order, but the order is different from one to another! Any ideas much appreciated…

  • http://www.funys.net Ben Gillam

    Hi, not sure what to recommend as this was a long time ago. The SFEP driver may not apply to all systems.
    As far as order is confirmed the below worked for me and for all those that have commented here that it worked other orders may also work.
    I would say your best bet would be to create a system restore point before you start or if you really want make a disk image before starting them you can always switch back if it all goes pear shaped.
    Let me know if you get this sorted!

    Kind Regards

    —
    Ben Gillam

    —

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