Full instructions to downgrade an AR31M from Vista to XP Pro

[costasp]

I am the happy owner of an AR31M, which came pre-installed with Vista. The story below explains how I managed to downgrade it back to XP Pro (UK) and got all devices to work: RAID, S-ATA, Video, Bluetooth, sound, camera, network, etcetera.

What you need before you start:
- The AR31M (in my case with 2x 100Gb S-ATA Hitachi drives)
- An XP Pro full pack installer CDRom
- The AR21M XP drivers
- The AR31M Vista drivers (for the VCC4 camera only)
- A USB floppy disk drive for accessing the RAID & S-ATA drivers during the XP-setup (unless you dare to follow this instruction)
- A floppy disk with the RAID & S-ATA drivers, here's the one I created.
- The NVidia unified GeForce Go driver plus the corresponding *.inf file from http://www.laptopvideo2go.com to make it recognize the AR31M's 7600 version. Here's the one I used.
- Patience.

Assuming a clean install, make sure you've backuped all your important stuff to CDRom.

Step one: install the XP basics
The challenge is to get the XP-setup to load two drivers from one floppy disk, this requires merging the txtsetp.oem files from both the S-ATA and RAID driver. Save yourself time and use the one I made, listed above. The rest is easy: press F6 at the installation start, setup will ask for the disk and assign the two drivers from the menu. Once XP is up and running (in VESA mode) run windows update.

Step two: install the video driver
The XP driver from the AR21M is supposed to work, but it doesn't run stable on (my) AR31M. Alternatively, download the NVidia unified GeForce Go driver instead, place the new *.inf file in the install directory and run setup from there. Note, check http://www.laptopvideo2go.com to make sure you have the right *.inf file.

Step three: sound
Install the audio-hotfix KB835221 from the AR21M audio-driver directory before installing the actual driver.

Step four: install all remaining XP drivers and utilities from the AR21M, except for Bluetooth and the camera
It may be a bit of a puzzle, but simply go through all unidentified devices in your device manager and 'update driver' with drivers from the AR21M XP driver CD. Skip the UGX driver for now.

Step five: Bluetooth
The 'unknown' UGX driver is a really annoying one. It's not recognized by XP and you can't seem to download it anywhere. I found this excellent instruction on how to trick XP into using its own driver & stack (instead of the Toshiba one) which works just as well:
Go to Device Manager and find the "UGX" with the exclamation point, and "Update Device Driver". Tell it you'll find the software, and when it gives up, tell it to show you all hardware available. Select Bluetooth, and then "Alps USB Bluetooth Adapter". Let it install the drivers. After a restart, your bluetooth adapter should be functioning normally, but with the Windows stack instead of the Toshiba one.
But... if Windows won't let you use its built-in driver, go to Device Manager, select the UGX, and go to Properties. Under the Details tab, select "Hardware IDs" in the dropdown box, and copy both of those "Vid\Usb...." strings. Edit the "bth.inf" file in your %windir\inf directory (probably c:\windows\inf), and add new lines under the Sony section, with a name of your choosing and the PnP IDs you copied above. Just follow the same format as all the other lines in the Hardware section of that file. It should be easy enough to figure out. Save it and try the above again.

Step six: the Camera
In the device manager, XP will probably already have recognized the camera as a USB Video device, and it may actually already work fine. But on my system it didn't, whenever I installed the VCC4 driver (from your AR31M-Vista driver CD), the device would fail to start. I found an instruction somewhere on the web (can't remember where exactly) suggesting this could be because of faulty power handling at USB-hub level. To bypass this, go to you Device Manager, click view-by-connection and the find the USB Hub to which the Video USB device is connected. Open its properties, click the Power Management tab and then uncheck the option allowing windows to switch the device off. This worked for me.


Step seven: the missing memory stick icon
The annoying 'blank' memorystick icon... luckily there are people on the web looking into stuff like this and publishing solutions. It's actually quite simple:
Copy snymsico.dll to your C:\WINDOWS\
Edit registry (run > regedit): HKLM > Software > Microsoft > Windows > CurrentVersion > Explorer > AutoPlayHandlers > DeviceGroups > MemoryStick
Set Icons to %SystemRoot%\snymsico.dll,0
Set NoMediaIcons to %SystemRoot%\snymsico.dll,1
What this does is, gray out the memory stick icon when no media is inserted, then when a memory stick is inserted it changes the icon to blue.

Step eight
Enjoy your awsome AR31M, in a clean, lean and mean XP environment (and forget about Vista).

Costas

[Deemat90]

(XP VGN-FE41Z) With a little effort and thanks to some excellent pointers and assitance on this site, I have managed to get my FE41Z up and running (dual boot) with Vista and XP... but don't ask me how long Vista will stay. I suppose there must be some misplaced hope for a Vista future stuck in the back of my head somewhere. Then again, by the time anyone reads this, Vista could be well be confined to the fryer. The fact is, with XP (SP2) my FE41Z runs like a charm. XP definitely does "appear" to run much faster than Vista, but then this could simply be due to XP running totally uncluttered (Vista and Sony clutter combined is a nightmare). Clutter aside, XP is certainly much smoother, applications definitely hit my screen in a much faster time, and I no longer yawn during start-up. Granted, my function (fn) buttons don't work; neither do the S1 and S2 buttons... and UGX (bluetooth installation) may be an issue (I've not tested BT yet). Evidently the "fn" and S1/2 buttons are handled directly by proprietory Sony (Vista) utilities. But do I care? Not a jot. I now seem to have the machine the FE41Z was perhaps supposed to be, and what I thought I had actually bought in terms of performance. In truth, the only thing I found I really liked about Vista was a reasonable attempt at a "sidebar" but, for me at any rate, "Desktop Sidebar" does a much better job (it runs under XP, is fully configurable, and it's free). As to XP drivers for the 41Z, simply do as per the original post here but look to download the FE31Z XP drivers from Sony. You will need the original Vista driver for the webcam but it works just fine, I assure you. It simply all takes a little patience.

[oftagel]

I'd like to install Win XP to AR21M. I am not shure-does it have RAID or not? Those SATA drivers with floppy doesn't seem to be enough for a clean install. The floppy You created isn't there...could You upload it once again? Thanks!

[costasp]

Hi Guys - I re-uploaded the floppy driver disk, as well as the nv4_disp.inf for installing the video card. They got lost recently when switching servers.
Cheers
Costas

[Iando]

Hi i recently bought an AR41S and would like to put XP Pro onto it. could anyone tell me if any of the features this laptop has will work on XP Pro?

and alos if anyone has done it?
thanks

[turbomaximus]

Hi, i'm a vaio user and i just succeeded in downgrading my sony vgn ar31s from vista to XP everything is fine apart from BLUETOOTH, CAMERA, TV CARD AND TOUCHPAD IS NOT FULLY FUCTIONAL, please if any one has any bright ideas or ways to solve this i'll really appreciate it, thanks
a lot. AND ALSO BIG THANKS TO COSTAP U'RE THE BEST

[sergiovaioar]

hi guys, i tried windows xp mce in a vaio ar41m (very similar to the ar31m) and couldn't get dvb-t to work. The avermedia tv card drivers install ok but the image in media center gets frozen intermittently and there's no sound (of course, in windows vista works perfectly). In analog channels, however, didn't have those problems.
I tried ar21/ar31/ar41 tv tuner drivers and with all of them had the same problem.
Any1 solved this?

[javidel]

Hi Deemat90

I did the downgrade to XP Pro to my VGN-FZ19VN and had the same problems with the Fn keys + Volume and Play controls. I solved part of them appling the last updates from windows update site. I'm still fighting with the External VGA, and I don't know If the problem is Fn + LCD/Ext keys or that the XP does not recognize the external VGA port.

I you find a solution I'd appreciate to know it.

[ksmanis]

Hi,
I havE VGNFE48M. I HAVE INSTALLED XP AND ALL OTHER DRIVERS.THE DISPLAY IS NOT AS RICH AS VISTA DISPLAY. NOW MY ONLY PROBLEM IS BLUETOOTH IS NOT WORKING. WHAT TO DO FOR THE UGX DRIVER. I TRIED THE SAME THING AS THAT FOR THE AR31. BUT IT DID NOT WORK. CAN SOMEBODY HELP ME AND ALSO WITH THE DISPLAY PART....

THANX IN ADVANCE

[95725525]

Hi, my name is Sergey. I am from Russia. I saw that you have been sucsefully downgraded in XP. You lucky man. I want to make the same actions. But i have got AR41SR. What you think is it really for this model?

Thanks in advance,
Sergey.

Sorry for mistakes.

[calauer]

hi to all

great success, my vgn-ar41s works with xp, thanks to costas. however the hotkeys like disc open, mute, volume, s1 and s2 won't. did anybody manage?

greetz clemens