Software Installation

Now you should be at the stage where you have a working, clean installation of Windows, but you’re not finished yet. There is at least some software which Sony provide that is useful or even necessary.

At this point I like to join my wireless network activate my copy of Windows (it’s probably nagged you to do this a couple of times by now already). Then I do a Windows Update as many times as required until no updates are left. You may find that during your first Windows Update, a number of keyboard and mouse related hardware devices are discovered and will need to be installed. The drivers should be found automatically or if not, they will be on the Window XP Media Center Edition 2005 CD1 disc. I don’t know why these devices are found since the keyboard works straight off, but I let the installation continue anyway.

Now you will want to consider installing a few of the utilities provided by Sony. The utilities can be found at

[System Recovery DVD]\VAIO Applications\Applications. It’s up to you what you choose to install (hence the whole point of doing a clean install) but here are my comments regarding each item in this folder:

AverMedia MPEG Encoder	This encoder relates to your TV capture card. I’m not entirely sure what it’s used for –
	perhaps recording live TV. I install it every time.
SonyUtils DLL	Information about this one online is sketchy, but it seems to have something to do with
	special keys on the keyboard (like “Fn” keys), and possibly interaction with the DVD drive’s
	eject button (without it, the eject button doesn’t seem to work once you’re in Windows). I
	recommend installing this one.

Sony Shared Library	Install this after SonyUtils DLL. It is a prerequisite for other Sony utilities including VAIO
	Hardware Diagnostics and VAIO Event Service.
Intel Matrix Storage	This article: http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/matrixstorage_sb.htm from Intel
	explains what this software is all about. From what I can gather it has to do with managing
	your RAID array and gives improvements in data security, and hard disk performance. With
	things like this, I figure why not? I installed it.