Clean Install of Windows 8 on Sony Vaio S15

Hardware
Published Dec 20, 2012

Sony Vaio laptops are rumored to suffer from two defects: the preloaded OS image being full of crapware, and being extremely difficult to clean install. The former is true for nearly every laptop vendor. I do not care about it because I reinstall anyway - I know from first-hand experience how much can go wrong building an OS image. The latter is bad since it obviously jeopardizes my remedy for defect #1.

Impossible to Install?

Despite having been warned by a colleague (who owns a Vaio and said he had failed at doing a clean install) I ordered the S15. Luckily, probably because I had talked to him, the first thing I did was to create a disk image (which is still possible on Windows 8, though well hidden - the tool you need is called Windows 7 File Recovery). Then I installed a fresh copy of Windows, formatting the disk in the process.

</a> [bindiyah](http://www.flickr.com/photos/aloshbennett/2442908486/) by [aloshbennett](http://www.flickr.com/photos/aloshbennett/) under [CC](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.de) — bindiyah by aloshbennett under CC

Things to Do

Here is my list of things to do to get a fully working yet extremely “clean” version of Windows 8 on your Vaio, in UEFI mode, of course!

Salvage drivers and other software from Sony’s installation:
- Copy C:\Windows\Drivers to a safe location
- Optionally copy the installers for some of the software Sony installed (I ignored that)
Create a bootable UEFI USB flash drive:
- Format the flash drive with FAT32
- Copy the contents of the Windows 8 DVD to the flash drive
- Optionally copy additional files you plan to use (e.g. the drivers you salvaged from Sony’s installation)
- Set the BIOS mode to UEFI
Install Windows 8 from the USB flash drive. When it is done you will notice that only few hardware components are without a driver.
Open Defender and update the definitions (shipped definitions are more than 150 days old and it takes some time for Defender to update on its own)
Run Windows Update to get new and updated drivers and patches
In Device Manager only these device do not have a driver yet:
- WWAN
- 2 unknown devices
- Fingerprint sensor
Although most devices have a driver, updated versions may be available. Since I could not get Sony’s auto-update tool to work I right-clicked each device, selected Update driver and directed it to search in the directory where I had stored the drivers from Sony’s installation. That removed the two unknown devices and updated 12 drivers.
After a reboot I installed the drivers for the only three devices still highlighted with an exclamation mark in a yellow triangle:
- Fingerprint sensor -> WBFMinSonyx64.msi
- Huawei EM680 w/Gobi Technology (two devices) -> HGDriverSetup.exe
After another reboot I installed from Sony’s website:
- Sony Shared Library
- Sony Hotkey Utilities (installs Vaio Control Center)

That is it. Not too painful. With this procedure you get an extremely “clean” yet fully functional Vaio machine. Enjoy.

Installation Laptop Sony Vaio Windows 8

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