windows 10 upgrade

[brinaylor]

Hi

I am looking to upgrade to windows 10 but sony have not cleared my vaio for the upgrade.

When will this happen if at all considering they are not continuing with the vaio.

Brian

[Spendwell]

Why don't you carry out a No Risk fresh install. Think of it as a dummy run.

Here is how.

Make an image of your 7/8 installation using either Macrium Reflect (free) or Acronis (not free).

Make a seperate back up (on a usb stick) of all of your drivers using free software Double Driver.

Fresh install W10 after downloading it (see Media Creation Tool).

Wait 20 minutes for Windows to find and install all your drivers.

Go into Device Manager and see what is missing. (For example.... Sony Firmware Parser will probably be missing. Click on update driver.....choose.....point the update at your Double Driver Backup file. Sorted).

Lets imagine that your video driver is not behaving. Maybe the brightness slider is back to front? Click on update driver and point the update at your Double Driver back up file.

But wait........Maybe you were hoping there would be a Sony tweaked Windows 10 driver for every possible device? Well.....that is probably not going to happen. Your old driver will get you up and running and Windows may even find a better (generic) driver at some point.

So you now have a working install of Windows 10.

Do you want the Vaio Control Centre so that you can tweak the keyboard backlight and (perhaps) disable the track pad if you use a Mouse?

To get the Control Centre you need to install Sony Hot Keys and Sony Shared Library. Find them both on the support page for your Vaio.

Install Hot Keys first. Not in compatibility mode. Just install it. Be patient. It will ask you to reboot and then it will appear to repeat the install procedure. When you are sure it has finished look at your Windows 10 apps. You have a new item.....Vaio Control Centre. Don't try to use it yet.

To make it work you now need to install Sony Shared Library. Do that.

You now have a working Control Centre. (There is a Windows 10 update for your Control Centre which has a slightly different look......worry about that later).

What if any of this goes pear shaped?

Well.....You have a backup of your Windows 7/Windows 8.1 installation. You can revert to this any time you wish.

Maybe you didn't want to Fresh Install? If you wanted to install over the top and have the full range of Vaio Software....then I would ask you to consider this.  Sony have let Vaio go. Maybe it is best if we join them. All of us.  

Isn't there a song called Let It Go? Let's all sing it together.  ♫  ♪

Good luck.

[brinaylor]

Hi

Thank you for replying to my query and for giving me such a comprehensive reply.

I am not particularly competent with technology so will have to read through your suggestions a few times before attempting anything but here goes...!!

Thank you once again.

Brian

[Spendwell]

You are very welcome.

The backup image of your current set up is the key. Once you feel very confident about restoring your current Windows installation you have nothing to fear from trying Windows 10. I use Acronis True Image  but I have tried Macrium Reflect, which is free, and it is impressive and very easy to use.