July 20, 2008 03:58am pdt

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2. PUNKY 4,000
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4. seriousnick 2,000
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4. nNifty 2,000
7. ntscott 1,500
8. rindi 1,400
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10. xema 750
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15. rid 500
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15. FOTC 500

1. garycase 15,500
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5. rid 3,850
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05.08.2007 at 06:23PM PDT, ID: 22560593

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6.8

How Do i Update The BIOS Of Sony VAIO TX790P Laptop?

Zones: PCMCIA Laptop Interface, General Laptop, PC Laptops

Tags: vaio, sony, bios

Hi, I have a 2 year old Sony Vaio TX790P Laptop. It has Windows XP. It's battery does not charge. It remains at zero. I have ordered another battery.

Also, a Verizon wireless broadband card is not recognized by usb and closes down the system with the NMI Parity check/Memory parity error. The system has plenty of memory since I recently removed everything I had on it, so that the machine could be sent to Sony for a new keyboard. There is nothing wrong with the wireless card. Verizon sent me a replacement and the same thing happened with it.

Anyway, someone mentioned that the BIOS might need to be updated and that this could cause battery problems. I searched on the internet and on the Sony website, but could not find any download or instructions on how to do this. Would someone be able to tell me step by step in practically novice language how to update the BIOS or even better, tell me where to download software that will take care of all the steps?

Thanks in advance.

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Question Stats

Zone: Computer Hardware

Question Asked By: HJ2749

Solution Provided By: DMTechGrooup

Participating Experts: 4

Solution Grade: A

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05.08.2007 at 06:49PM PDT, ID: 19054225

DMTechGrooup:

Doesnt look like they have one for your model out. When they do it will show up here:

http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/swu-list.pl?mdl=VGNTX790P&UpdateType=Everything&SelectOS=7

Accepted Solution

05.09.2007 at 01:20AM PDT, ID: 19055343

ryanarak:

Are you able to use any other USB devices without having Windows crash? There's a good chance that your battery is just dead. Laptop batteries are known for a short life span.

05.09.2007 at 08:55AM PDT, ID: 19058021

Rank: Wizard

rid:

The BIOS doesn't go bad by itself. Unless you've done some major O/S changes, this is highly unlikely to be a BIOS problem. The battery, as suggested, is a much more probable culprit.

The USB wireless card problem is probably a drivers problem (for the card itself or for USB generally) or a power issue with the USB port. Re-installing drivers for the card and for USB could help.
/RID

05.10.2007 at 09:36PM PDT, ID: 19070148

HJ2749:

Update: I received the new battery and it charges fine so far. I get the same error with the Verizon Broadband card (both the old and the new one they sent me). On installation the card has a step to make sure the latest drivers are being used. I will check out other USB devices and see if those drivers need updating. Thanks guys. I'll check back in later.

05.11.2007 at 05:29PM PDT, ID: 19076515

ryanarak:

When you say the system closes, do you mean the computer either blue screens and then freezes or does it restart? You can check in C:\Windows\Minidump for the .dmp files. Run them through the Windows Debugger to see what is really causing it to do that.

Do you have a USB mouse or keyboard that you can connect to this laptop to test and verify that the USB ports are okay?

05.12.2007 at 10:14PM PDT, ID: 19080375

pheidius:

This is a Verizon problem. Thier cards play havoc with the usb bus. Their devices try to hog the whole bus and cause problems for other usb devices.I would turn my attention to their tech support until they fix the problem/get you a card that will work or refund your money and void the subscription. I have an HP ZV530us that they were never able to get a working card for. Unless you have a express card slot you may never get a card form them that will work. but it is their tree you need to bark up. ome thing from vexperience here is you may need to do a clean install and install nothing else before you can proove to them that it is their problem

Assisted Solution

05.19.2007 at 08:28AM PDT, ID: 19120634

HJ2749:

Update:

This is an ongoing saga. I tried other things in the USB port and they work. Is this actually called a USB port where the wireless card goes? Because it's a card slot. Are the USB ports and the card slots linked? Also I made a mistake in the age of my computer. I actually bought it last year so it's only one year old. As I mentioned it's already been to Sony once, and they stripped it clean of all the settings and configurations it had. Whatever they did rendered the battery unchargeable and it was less than a year old. I've never had to replace the battery on any laptop I've ever owned and I've owned many. I didn't tell them about it. I just bought a new one. The Verizon cards both old and new work fine on 2 other laptops I have which are running Vista. The problem computer is running XP which I am told should not be a problem.

The blue screen I get is a little blue square which says (copied from another board):

*** Hardware malfunction
Call your hardware vendor for support
NMI: Parity check/ memory parity error
*** The system has halted***

The screen at that point is totally frozen, and the computer must be rebooted manually.

The laptop has been to Circuit City a couple of times for their FireDog people to look at it. The error was reproduced, but no one knew how to fix it. Same thing with a Verizon shop. Since the laptop came back from Sony with all these new problems, I think I'll just have to send it back again and see what they can do.

I'll keep you guys updated. Thanks.

05.20.2007 at 12:00PM PDT, ID: 19123798

Rank: Wizard

rid:

The "card slot" is probably a PCCard (or CardBus) slot, or even this new thingy, PC Express or whatever, but very likely NOT a USB port. Slots ar for housing cards that have like 30 connector holes in 2 rows, USB connectors are usually the same old little rectangle with a metal sleeve and four contact prongs inside.

The problem can be your PCMCIA controller or the slot itself gone bad, or the card(s). You should try the machine on a different O/S (like Knoppix; live CD > no installation) and see if the card slots can be used at all. Try any kind of card (memory, modem, NIC) in the slot and see if it's detected. If yes, proceed with the problem card. What happens?
/RID

05.25.2007 at 09:03PM PDT, ID: 19160871

pheidius:

K, Having been around the block with Verizon on this one I can tell you definitively that their Pmccia cards/drivers do use(hog) the USB bus to function. If you don't believe me, look at what their driver package adds in device manager. If you are not sure how, ask a Verizon tech how to do a clean unistall and he will point it out for you. On the other hand, if your lappy has an express card slot, then that has a nice fat bandwidth controller all for its self. I suspect that your laptop is using a pmccia card though. Your note that the cards work fine on other OS's shows your cards to be good. The problem is that XP drivers/ chipset functionality with Verizon PMCCia cards is a crapshoot. They will just send you different cards till they run out of different ones. So, yes, even though a PMCCIA card is not a physical USB port, Verizon drivers try to link them because they need the USB bandwidth to offer their so called broadband service. And, yes, some boards hardware objects to this linkage attempt and will throw fits. To cya, even Verizon has a list of known boads/chipsets that will work with their cards so if you don't have one, it may be time to get them to let you out of your contract. As far as testing the card slot that is not a bad idea. I did that with a firewire card before I started to hammer on Verizon and it tested out fine. The only other thing worth doing otherwise would be to have the shop swap out the ram and retest as those errors are often bad ram errors. I suspect, though, that they are really USB bus hicooups.

06.15.2007 at 12:16PM PDT, ID: 19294598

Rank: Wizard

rindi:

HJ2749,
This question has been classified as abandoned. I will make a recommendation to the moderators on its resolution in approximately four days. I would appreciate any comments by the experts that would help me in making a recommendation.

It is assumed that any participant not responding to this request is no longer interested in its final disposition.

If the asker does not know how to close the question, the options are here:
http://www.experts-exchange.com/help.jsp#hs5

rindi
EE Cleanup Volunteer

06.18.2007 at 10:27PM PDT, ID: 19313350

Rank: Wizard

rindi:

No comment has been added to this question in more than 21 days, so it is now classified as abandoned.

I will leave the following recommendation for this question in the Cleanup topic area:
Split: DMTechGrooup {http:#19054225} & pheidius {http:#19080375}

Any objections should be posted here in the next 4 days. After that time, the question will be closed.

rindi
EE Cleanup Volunteer

06.29.2007 at 03:01AM PDT, ID: 19387831

AnnieMod:

Forced accept.

AnnieMod
Cleanup Admin

20080236-EE-VQP-29